Once again the polls were inaccurate. The vote for the CAQ was much larger than predicted, 1.4 million votes and 37.7 % of the vote while the Liberal vote collapsed to an historic low level of just over one million votes and just 24.8 % of the vote. Given the perverse undemocratic nature of the first past the post voting system the Liberals were reduced to 32 seats and the CAQ captured more than double that number, 74 seats. The Quebec Solidaire received 16.1% of the vote and 10 seats in the National Assembly – just 8 % of the seats, the PQ 17.1 % of the vote but only 9 seats -7.2 % of the seats. Under a proportional system the CAQ would have received 47 seats, the Liberals 31 seats, the PQ 21 seats and Quebec Solidaire 19 seats. Instead the CAQ with a minority of the votes command a four year majority mandate.
Voter turnout was an unimpressive 66.7 % . Once again austerity as a policy was shown to be a bad political losing strategy as well as I have argued for decades a damaging and irrational policy. We shall see how much difficulty for federalism and the state of human rights and democracy the dramatic CAQ victory delivers. But clearly a more sophisticated and progressive debt management strategy might have avoided the political debacle that was delivered by the Liberal party Austerians. Perhaps out of the wreckage a new progressive realignment of political alliances might emerge. But then again it may not and we will simply suffer repeating the mistakes of history .
Update on the results . Elections Quebec states the results as follows.
CAQ 37.4% of the vote, 74 seats with 1,509,428 votes.
PLQ 24.8 % of the vote, 32 seats with 1,001,148 votes.
QS 16.1 % of vote, 10 seats with 649,488 votes.
PQ 17.0 % of the vote 9 seats 649,488 votes
Greens PV 1.7 % , 0 seats 67,870 votes.
Conservative party 1.5 % of the vote, 0 seats 59,053 votes
NDPQ 0.57% of the vote, 0 seats , 22,863 votes.
haroldchorneyeconomist 