The survey published in the pages of Montreal Journal Wednesday confirms what several public opinion surveys have been confirming for some time: the CAQ is in complete electoral stall. If the trend continues, it will be swept away in 2026.
We are obviously not there yet. Many things can happen between now and then. But such a drop in the polls raises questions.
How to explain it? This is what several analysts are wondering.
CAQ
Is this the turnaround on the third link? Is it its difficulty in managing inflation, or simply a post-COVID comeback? For several days, we have been wondering if it is about the budget. All of these answers are obviously good. The CAQ, since its re-election, no longer really knows where it is going. She no longer has a compass.
We no longer really understand the meaning of his mandate.
But all these questions are condemned to add fog to the fog if we persist in denying the obvious: the CAQ is paying the price for the failure of its nationalism – we could also speak of the collapse of its nationalist strategy.
Let’s summarize it this way: in 2018, the CAQ won the elections by promising winning autonomist nationalism. In her first mandate, she partially delivered the goods, with Law 21, on secularism, then Law 96, which slightly strengthened Law 101.
It wasn’t nothing. It was a nationalism based on a form of strategic unilateralism.
But the second term turns into a fiasco, as we see with the question of immigration.
François Legault keeps repeating it: we are heading towards catastrophe. Let’s be more precise: the catastrophe is already here. We first became aware of this with the crisis of “refugees”, who arrive in waves in Quebec.
We then understood that they represented only one component of this crisis among others: fundamentally, it is Canadian immigration policy which is hitting Quebec hard and condemning it to demographic drowning. and the collapse of all of its social systems
To confront the crisis, Quebec would need all immigration powers.
But Ottawa doesn’t care. Quebec asks. Quebec demands. Quebec demands. Quebec implores. But Ottawa still says no.
So the nationalism of the CAQ reveals its limits: it is an impotent nationalism, a nationalism of lamentation.
Nationalism
And since the CAQ persists in refusing the very possibility of independence, as if François Legault were hostage to his federalist allies in the Council of Ministers, it is condemned to cry ever more, or to reduce its demands, to the not even saying she is happy to receive crumbs, when she finds them.
Nationalist voters do not forgive the CAQ for this political resignation.
Especially since nationalism remains the great political passion in Quebec. So, voters will look elsewhere. And the CAQ is plunging in the polls.