Asked before the 2022 election about the considerable energy deployed by François Legault’s government to eliminate the Parti Québécois (PQ) from the political map, a CAQ strategist explained, according to a witness: “There is no place for two nationalist parties in Quebec. »
The answer seemed meaningless to me. If we believe in the virtues of nationalism, we can only observe that parties more or less animated by this conviction have coexisted since the 1970s and that their interaction has served to fuel the national demand rather than weaken it. In this case, that nationalists wanted to plan the disappearance of the PQ, the ultimate bearer of the independence demand, seemed even more serious to me. The extinction of the party of Lévesque and Parizeau amounted to obstructing a way out that must necessarily be preserved, for the time when Quebecers would be (will be?) willing to take it. When they have lost, to use Gérald Godin’s words, their “taste for adventure”.
The political reversal of the last year, however, sheds new light on the observation of the CAQ strategist. He was perhaps sufficiently informed of the electoral vulnerability of his own party to believe that there was no place for the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), if the PQ were to be reborn.
The last two polls, Pallas and Léger, prove him right. Integrated into the weighting algorithm designed by Philippe Fournier in Qc125, these results, once projected on the electoral map, would give 57 seats to a minority PQ government (63 are needed to reach the majority), 27 to the Liberals, who would retain their status as official opposition, 19 to the Caquistes, then 15 to the Solidaires and 7 to the party of Éric Duhaime.
Fournier presents his results by attributing chances of success to each party in each constituency. Some of the 125 constituencies show “pivot” results, where two or three parties are almost tied; some are referred to as “leaning,” where one party is ahead; finally others are “solid”, one of the parties being assured of winning. What is striking about the list posted online on December 7 is that there is no “solid” constituency for the CAQ. Zero. Here is a party whose feet are made of clay so crumbly that it could go from a resounding victory last year, with scores of more than 50% of the vote, to such vulnerability that it should watch its rears in every corner of the territory.
(Warning: CAQ MPs wishing to have a good day should stop reading now.) The problem with this prediction is that it underestimates the CAQ fall. The algorithm is cautious and only integrates recent data with the oldest, which was more favorable to the CAQ.
When we integrate only the results of Pallas and Léger into the simulator (this was possible for a few days, before Fournier made his upgrade), the results are devastating. The PQ is moving into very clearly majority territory. The CAQ is down to just one MP.
They say we should be wary of polls. This is false, at least 19 times out of 20. However, we must be wary of voters. They sometimes practice partisan infidelity with fury.
Barely a year ago, the same algorithm predicted an identical fate for the PQ. The last of them would have been Pascal Bérubé, resisting at the top of the final PQ barricade, located in Matane. I already mentioned it here, I offered to help him write his book: The last PQ player. So I wanted to know who would be the last CAQ player. It’s cruel. This would be the member for L’Assomption. François Legault. I’m not sure he would accept my proposal.
The dramatic arc of the story would nevertheless be powerful. It would begin with Legault, having resigned from the PQ, alone at home in the summer of 2009, imagining the creation of a new party. It would end with Legault, alone in his small deputy office, in a corner of 3e floor of the Parliament Building, in the fall of 2026. We would hear him grumbling against the system and its injustice. Because his party would still have won one vote out of five, only to obtain one seat out of 125. We can easily imagine the chapter where he would remember his 2015 promise to put an end to this unacceptable democratic disruption: “I wish for fewer cynicism, he said, more trust between citizens and the political class. This involves a mixed proportional voting system. »
Would he ask himself why, once in power, he torpedoed this noble promise? He would remember that he had been told that it was to better ensure the passage of the PQ from life to death. He would curse himself for having thus prepared the conditions for his own isolation. Because if he had kept his commitment, he would have a good dozen deputies today. Enough for his party to be recognized. Enough to have within it an elected official ready to take their place in a leadership race. Also enough to make two nationalist parties coexist in Quebec.
But today, who will want to lead their empty shell? And if he, the last CAQ member, resigned as is often the case when a prime minister loses his election, the PQ would certainly steal this last corner of CAQ land, thus extinguishing the political flame lit by Legault, perhaps forever. .
He would also wonder why the hell he committed, in December 2023, to run again in 2026. A promise that he should have broken in time, like the others, to avoid dishonor and blame his successor for the reasons for the debacle. “Without Legault,” the columnists would have written, “the CAQ could not survive. » But today they say: “Even with Legault, he is dying. Or because of him. »
Jean-François Lisée led the PQ from 2016 to 2018. He has just published Through the mouth of my pencils published by Somme Tout / Le Devoir. [email protected].