Radio-Canada and TVA say they are “sorry” for having wrongly announced the victory of Marie-Josée Savard as mayor of Quebec during their election coverage on Sunday. If the two main French-speaking news channels promise to investigate and review their methods, voices are raised to denounce their race for results and call for more caution.
“Our system is not infallible, but what happened yesterday remains an exceptional situation”, indicated the management of Radio-Canada in an update broadcast Monday.
The management of TVA Nouvelles also explained the “regrettable” turn of the evening. electoral. “When declaring Mme Savard elected, a significant number of polling stations were counted, and the trend continued […] As soon as the trend reversed, we corrected the situation. Like all media, we elect candidates on trends, “defended the subsidiary of the TVA Group, promising to” conduct a review “in the coming days.
The two broadcasters said they were “sorry” to have announced the victory of the runner-up of the former mayor Régis Labeaume. At 8:28 p.m. Sunday evening, Radio-Canada was the first media to declare it, wrongly, the winner. Barely three minutes later, at 8:31 p.m., TVA Nouvelles followed suit. All that was needed was for the print media to follow suit, which relies heavily on 24-hour news channels to make their decisions.
Marie-Josée Savard then enjoyed a considerable lead of almost 5,000 votes over her opponents Bruno Marchand and Jean-François Gosselin, neck-to-neck for second place. However, only 30 minutes had passed since the closing of the polling stations and only 300 of some 1,500 ballot boxes had been counted.
Mme Savard delivered his victory speech to his supporters gathered at the Quebec Imperial shortly after 9 p.m. But as the evening progressed, the gap between her and Mr. Marchand began to melt like snow in the sun. Two hours later, the strong and proud Quebec leader (QFF) was declared the winner with 834 votes more than his rival.
“It’s the thing you never want to do: announce the victory of the wrong person. […] The extremely improbable happened, wrote on Monday evening on Twitter Patrice Roy, who hosted the election night of Radio-Canada the day before. Mrs [Savard], I renew my apologies. “
Auditor complaints
This turn of events surprised more than one Sunday evening, and the two main 24-hour news channels were quickly pointed out, accused of lacking rigor and of having chosen a winner too early. At the time of writing, the Radio-Canada ombudsman had already received two complaints to this effect, and the Press Council had registered another. This is not to mention the rain of criticism against them on social networks.
In the opinion of pollster Jean-Marc Léger, the media made the mistake of misjudging the impact of advance polls – on a larger scale this year – and the evolution of trends revealed by the polls. Leading from the start in voting intentions, Mme Savard has seen her lead gradually melt away since mid-October in favor of Bruno Marchand who, according to a Léger poll dated last Saturday, garnered as much support as she, with 31%.
At the end of the day, that is the conclusion reached by Radio-Canada. “After discussions with the Office of the returning officer of the City of Quebec, it appears that the scale of the advance polls stripped down in the early evening, combined with a change in the trend in the race more important than expected, has shaken up the parameters under which we establish our projections of results, “said management in a press release, specifying” to re-examine [son] decision process accordingly ”.
Race for results
In the eyes of Mr. Léger, the television networks go “often too fast”. “It takes more caution to avoid this kind of situation. “
An opinion shared by the experts contacted by The duty. Philippe Lapointe – who directed the TVA and Radio-Canada newsrooms between 1990 and 2005 – denounces the race in which the media enter on each election night to first announce the defeat or victory of a candidate. “Everyone will know that same evening, it’s not a scoop. Knowing that at 8:20 a.m., 8:22 a.m. or 8:31 a.m. doesn’t change a thing. […] Viewers watch election coverage to get clear results, detailed analyzes, reactions on the ground. “
Alain Saulnier, former director general of information at Radio-Canada, agrees with this. “We don’t care about the competition, the important thing is to have good results. He recalls the 2007 provincial election, when Radio-Canada mistakenly announced that Jean Charest had been defeated in his riding of Sherbrooke. “I had just returned to my post at the time. The situation was similar to that of [dimanche]. We didn’t know when the advance poll was going to come in, so we took it for granted that it was counted as it went. When he came home suddenly, at the end, it completely changed the results. “
“The lesson in all of this is to show more modesty by acknowledging your mistake and apologizing,” says Saulnier. We also need to be less confident and more careful with the numbers. “