The election campaign is drawing to a close and Montrealers will choose their next mayor on Sunday evening. Will they give Valérie Plante a second term or will they give Denis Coderre a second chance? The tumultuous end of the campaign gave rise in the last few days to strong attacks on both sides, but Montrealers will have the last word.
When Denis Coderre entered the arena in the spring, the polls were favorable to him. Over the months, the gap with his main opponent has crumbled. A poll published Thursday by The news Now gives an advance to the outgoing mayor with 46% of the voting intentions, against 40% for the leader of Ensemble Montreal. The quagmire in which Denis Coderre found himself this week on the question of his income for the last four years is perhaps not unrelated to this result. In the past few days, Valérie Plante was also the target of her opponent’s arrows when allegations of sexual assault concerning Craig Sauvé surfaced, which led him to withdraw from the Project Montreal caucus.
“We can not say that it was an exciting campaign,” said Rémy Trudel, professor at the National School of Public Administration (ENAP), however. According to the expert, no file has really emerged as a “ballot box issue”. “Housing, the environment and public safety could have been, but neither of the candidates, we put ourselves in a position for it to become a discriminating choice. According to him, the candidates presented electoral platforms in the form of a “buffet” to cover all the issues. “It means that we are transported to the field of personalities. “
The smile, a campaign weapon
Valérie Plante asks Montrealers to bring her back to power in order to continue the work undertaken to make the city more resilient in the face of climate challenges. In recent weeks, she has multiplied electoral promises.
Several personalities from Projet Montréal are no longer in the race. Elected officials like Rosannie Filato, François Croteau and Cathy Wong have decided not to stand for re-election. Valérie Plante has, however, attracted a few recruits in whom she has great hopes, including Dominique Ollivier, who could become the president of the executive committee, and Will Prosper, candidate for mayor of Montreal-North – who found himself on the hot seat because of his actions when he was a police officer with the RCMP.
“In my opinion, she had a flawless campaign, but not an extraordinary campaign. We did not have a bang like “the man for the job” in 2017, ”said Bernard Motulsky, professor in the Department of Social and Public Communication at UQAM. According to him, the smile that Valérie Plante displayed on her electoral signs tinted her campaign, more than her electoral promises.
Rémy Trudel retains from Valérie Plante’s performance his benevolent attitude, highlighted by the pandemic. In this regard, its decision to put $ 500 million on the table for the Eastern Metropolitan Express Network (REM) project has positioned it well. “We could not ignore the movement of indignation over the architecture set out by CDPQ Infra,” he said.
And his smile is not a negligible weapon, believes Mr. Trudel. The remark of Denis Coderre, who launched during a debate: “When you laugh, you are nervous”, perhaps even served Valérie Plante. “We felt, after that, a much more developed assurance at Valérie Plante. “
Coderre 2.0
Last March, Denis Coderre presented himself as a new man, who had learned from his defeat in 2017. He had carefully orchestrated his return by publishing a book, Find Montreal, in which he unveiled his vision for Montreal and which served as the basis for his party’s electoral platform. He nevertheless abandoned certain ideas, such as authorizing the construction of buildings taller than Mount Royal, which aroused indignation.
His team has been enriched with new recruits, including Nadine Gelly, to whom he promises the position of president of the executive committee if elected, as well as Guillaume Lavoie and Serge Sasseville. But Denis Coderre also had to exclude certain problematic candidates, including Joe Ortona and Dan Kraft, and come to the defense of Antoine Richard, his candidate for mayor of Verdun. He also showed the door to Ali Nestor, to whom he wanted to give a post as an unelected councilor, due to allegations of sexual assault.
The saga of the cell phone while driving has plunged him into a controversy that he could have done without, but the episode of his income of the last four years will perhaps be even more damaging, believes Bernard Motulsky. “It’s reminiscent of Formula E which had somewhat killed its campaign in 2017. We talked about it for several days instead of solving the problem,” explains the expert, who believes that the campaign of the leader of Ensemble Montreal was uneven .
“Denis Coderre, he’s the boxer, he’s the Lucian Bute of politics. Against all odds, he rushes, ”for his part, Rémy Trudel. However, he believes that this attitude, although attractive, was surpassed by the kindness of Valérie Plante.
The third way
Faced with the two main candidates for mayor, several candidates tried to set up a third way. After Félix-Antoine Joli-Cœur dropped out of the mayoral race, Balarama Holness of Mouvement Montréal and Marc-Antoine Desjardins of Ralliement pour Montréal joined in. They finally agreed to an alliance in order to increase their chances of accessing the Town Hall, but this union did not go smoothly, Marc-Antoine Desjardins having finally thrown in the towel, in deep disagreement. with some proposals from Balarama Holness.
Although a neophyte, Balarama Holness was able to gain a certain credibility – especially among English speakers – and bring an element of freshness to the countryside, recognizes Bernard Motulsky. His plea in favor of a bilingual city may have caused him to lose support among francophones, but he stayed the course: “He assumed the consequences without denigrating French. “
“Holness’s message is that members of the Anglophone and Allophone communities now have a channel to express their resentment,” says Rémy Trudel. According to him, the presence of Balarama Holness, who collects only 5% of the support in the most recent poll, risks harming Denis Coderre more than Valérie Plante.