haroldchorneyeconomist

A new poll by Forum Research, the same group that released a poll right after the first debate that showed the Liberals in the lead at 35 % has come out showing the PQ back at 33 %, the Liberals at 28%, the CAQ at 27%, the left wing sovereigntist Québec solidaire at 8 %,the Greens at 2 % and Option National the splinter party from the PQ at 2 %. The poll was of 2618 electors and has a margin of error 19 times out of 20 of 1.9 %. Among non francophone voters  the Liberals are preferred by 67 %, the CAQ by 19 %, the Greens by 5 % and the PQ by 4 %. The Globe and Mail has published an analysis that predicts on the basis of the polls to date , previous election results and constituency analysis a narrow PQ majority. But it may well yet turn out differently with PQ losing 2-3 seats to its left wing sovereigntist opponents and also more contests that it expects to either the CAQ in the Québec city area and exurban suburbs north and east of Montréal and to the Liberals in the Montréal island and north and south shore areas. However, once again the perils of the first past the post non proportional voting system that we use in Canada may well be revealed yet again.The system cries out for reform but no one in power seems in a hurry to do something about it. A party with as little as 32-3 % of the vote in Québec might  still win a majority of the seats and plunge the country into a much disliked constitutional crisis. The will of the majority to avoid such a destructive path may well be  thwarted by this archaic electoral system. Another problem in Québec is that the smaller , cities ,towns and rural areas are over represented with more than half the seats in the assembly. The major urban areas which tend to vote for a federalist option like the Montreal agglomeration and Québec city area account for 58 % of the population but less than 50 % of the seats in the National Assembly.

This latest poll was taken after the recent debates and suggests if the percentages held up on election day that the PQ would win a minority government. The PQ are heavily in the lead among francophones and in the seats outside of the Quebec city and Montreal island areas. The CAQ is leading in the Québec city area.  The Liberals have a huge lead among non francophones.67 % to 9% for the PQ and 15% for the CAQ and among older voters. They lag far behind among younger voters. The poll is based on a telephone survey of 1929 people selected from an on line population of 185,000 voters sampled in such a way as to mirror the electorate . However, as I have pointed out before these sorts of polls are less reliable because of the lack of randomness than properly conducted sample surveys because they contain a measure of self-selection and they can underrepresent certain classes of voters who are less likely to frequent the internet thereby biasing the sample.For example, older voters may be less internet savy and less likely to be part of the population from the internet that is sampled.(For a good discussion of problems with these sorts of polls see http://www.wnd.com/2000/10/6728/; and also NY Times Jan 15 , 2012 Nate Silver’s  blog http://www.fivethirteight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/15 before=citing-a-poll-read-the -fine-print.  ) The danger is that the public and many journalists are unaware of these sorts of problems and can use erroneous polls to shift public opinion in one direction or another.

We shall see how other polls compare.

The confrontation between François Legault, the leader of CAQ and Pauline Marois the leader of the PQ was heated as many expected. In the early part of the debate the fact that both parties have skeletons in their funding closet led to the issue of corruption being given only a short exposure in the debate. There was a much more extensive and heated exploration of health care with Marois once again insisting that Legault was making unrealistic promises to fix the problems in the system and Legault insisting that she was trapped in a dysfunctional status quo because she was stuck in the past and too close to the unions. a similar short of discussion took place on economic policy, employment and debt management. Legault also faulted Marois for not having a full costing of her program ready for scrutiny.

The debate  was often rather acrimonious making it difficult for viewers to follow. Once it turned to cultural and national identity things got rather interesting. Legault went to great lengths to pin Marois down about the timing of a referendum. Marois was less evasive than in the past more or less admitting that party militants  who he compared to the caribou leading the herd over a cliff, apparently a familiar analogy in PQist circles, could organize a petition which once it received 15 % support in the population would trigger a referendum. At one point Legault called this irresponsible because it would trigger a referendum at a time when support was low and would likely result in a disastrous(for the sovereignists) third loss.

This was interesting because it revealed both Marois’s intentions and the conditional nature of Legault’s position on sovereignty. For the moment he is, as he admitted, neither an advocate of sovereignty nor a defender of national unity  but a Québec nationalist. Marois quickly counter attacked and raising the old separatist strategy of couteau à la gorge invented by   Stéphane Dion’s father Lion Dion,   argued that without any sort of threat Quebec’s PM would weaken its bargaining position with Ottawa(Prime Minister Harper and Mr.Mulcair please take note)

For we political junkies a fascinating debate between two  former sovereignist stars. Legault did rather well I thought but for the most part Marois seemed unruffled even when she clearly was losing the argument.  We shall now see how these three debates plus the original 4 party leader debate play in the polls. Charest did well enough to keep him close to the lead and Marois shored up her base against Quebec solidaire but it may well come at the expense of her overall total and it also firmed up the base of support among voters determined to stop her from becoming Premier by voting strategically come election day.

Jean Charest has now completed his cycle of three debates against the other party leaders. Once again he showed himself to be a skilled debater strongly defending himself against attack and inflicting some damage of his own on his opponents. Of course, one’s judgement depends upon one’s perception which is heavily influenced by one’s own values and preferences. But from my perspective Charest effectively showed why for most voters in Québec, Madame Marois is overly obsessed with sovereignty, referendum, divisive cultural policies and unpleasant identity politics. With respect to François Legault, who was much more polite than Marois, Charest was able to plant seeds of doubt about improper fund raising in the past by one of his star candidates Jacques Duschenau in a previous 1996 campaign for mayor of Montréal. He also raised important questions about Legault’s reliability as a federalist and the internal logic and financial coherence  of his policies.

On the federalist front Legault had a good counter citing the Quiet Revolution of the nationalist Liberal politician Jean Lesage whose own cabinet when he was premier in the 1960s included René Lévesque the first leader of the PQ and Eric Kierans, later a leadership canidate for the federal Liberals and member of the cabinet of the first government of Pierre Trudeau .

Legault argued that he was fashioning himself in this Lesage mould. It is a legitimate point and certainly Robert Bourassa like Legault was a conditional federalist. But unlike Legault, neither Lesage nor Bourassa were Parti Québecois cabinet ministers. Legault had some interesting ideas about educational reform and lowering Québec’s appalling high school drop out rate which deserve serious consideration but they will be undermined by the sort of budget slashing he wants to undertake. All in all then I thought Charest did a good job given the difficult situation he is in . Marois , on the other hand overplayed her sovereignist cards.

In fact, she may well have gone too far even with some of her own supporters.The latest poll from Forum research relying on a telephone survey of 1600 Québecers shows the PQ losing ground to the Liberals with some of their support leaking away to Québec Solidaire. The poll, one of a series to appear in the next few days shows the Liberals at 35 %, the PQ at 29 %, the CAQ at 24 % and Québec Solidaire at 9 %. If this holds up in other polls then the Liberals will win a strong minority and possibly a small majority government. However, for the moment its a single poll and we need more information from other surveys.

The first of four leader debates in the Québec election has taken place. There was no clear winner. Françoise David exceeded expectations and perhaps she will win her seat and perhaps Québec Solidaire will chip away at some of the PQ’s vote . François Legault was an aggressive performer but I am not certain that he will be found convincing. He is clearly a conditional federalist essentially arguing now is not an opportune time for sovereignty . So the debate clearly confirmed that there are three parties in this election who are either sovereignists or will lean that way when conditions permit. Charest performed well but there were times because of the four way participation where he was relegated to the sidelines . He defended himself and his party against the accusation of corruption by going on the offensive citing an earlier judicial report that criticized the PQ  for improper funding. Whether this will be found convincing remains to be seen.

Some of the more interesting portions of the debate focused on health care and the lack of adequate number of family physicians in Quebec. Legault promised to fix the situation in 12 months. Marois dismissed this as unrealistic  and Charest blamed it on bad decisions taken years before by the previous PQ Governments which is undoubtedly partly true. David pointed out that cuts in government budgets pushed by neo-con/neo liberal ideology were at fault, also partly true. Charest had some progressive things to say about the deficit in infrastructure investment and the importance of social accounting and the economic crisis but not enough time was devoted to this topic.

Cultural identity was mentioned briefly with Marois denouncing xenophobia, ironic since it was her insistence on opening up the issue of laicité in the way that she did which led eventually to the xenophobic remarks by the mayor of Saguenay. Bill 101 also came up, but sadly there was a consensus except for Charest that strengthening it and tightening the rules on access to education in English was a good thing. So all in all Charest did fairly well, Marois was less impressive although she scored some points on Legault and Charest on several issues. Legault also scored on both Charest and Marois but beat a retreat on several counter attacks . His net result may be to slightly weaken his attraction for disgruntled Liberals. David benefitted by exceeding expectations and because both Charest and Legault wanted to promote her in order to weaken the PQ vote.The debate was also rather technical which may turn off some potential voters who watched part of it. We shall see if there is movement in the polls.

The latest polling numbers continue to show the PQ narrowly ahead of the Liberals with the CAQ in third position about 8 percentage points back. In the last election the Liberals captured 66 seats, the PQ 51 and the ADQ the predecessor to the CAQ 7. The Liberals received 42 % of the vote, the PQ 36 % and the ADQ/CAQ 13 %. The average of the latest polls shows the PQ at 33.1 %, the Liberals at 31.4 % and the CAQ at 24.4 %.

If these percentages hold up on election day then the Liberals will be losing 9.6 percentage points of their vote compared to the last election, the PQ 2.9 % and the CAQ will be gaining 11.4 percentage points. When we apply these trends on a constituency basis it is possible to identify 23 constituencies where the Liberal margin of victory was smaller than this decline in their vote and also in the case of 15 of these smaller than a diminished PQ vote. In 8 of the cases the CAQ if it receives a boost in its vote equivalent to the increase in its poll numbers will be the party that will defeat the Liberals. So if we assume that this outcome is likely to occur in 2/3 of the ridings we have identified that would result in the Liberals losing ten seats to the PQ and 5-6 seats to the CAQ. The PQ would then capture 61 seats, the CAQ 12-13 and the Liberals 50-51. Quebec Solidaire seems likely to win 1 seat perhaps capturing a second seat from the PQ reducing their number to 60.A majority in the Québec national assembly is 63 seats. A very close election indeed.