Duceppe and Mulcair in tight races to win their own seats
With three of Canada’s five federal party leaders running in Montreal ridings, inner city districts could wind up with some serious clout after the Oct. 19 vote.
Party chiefs generally walk away with their home ridings, but that isn’t always the case. Though polls suggest Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has a nearly insurmountable lead in Papineau, the New Democratic Party’s Tom Mulcair and the Bloc Québécois’ Gilles Duceppe appear to be in for a fight on election night.
Much was made of an NDPcommissioned poll, released last month, that saw their candidate Anne Lagacé Dowson ahead of Trudeau by 11 percentage points in Papineau. At the time the Liberals were still struggling to get out of third place, nationally, and the NDP appeared poised to form a minority government.
But now the momentum has shifted dramatically both in the federal and local race. The latest polls suggest Trudeau has the support of 52.9 per cent of Papineau voters versus just 18 per cent for Lagacé Dowson — according to the poll-aggregating website ThreeHundredEight.com.
The website also has Trudeau’s Liberals pulling ahead of the Tories in what has shifted into a two-way race to form Canada’s next government.
Pollster David Coletto says that while having a federal leader run in a given riding can boost the party’s chances by up to eight percentage points, there are also drawbacks to this scenario.
“Local factors interact with the national or regional context to sometimes produce shocking results for a leader,” said Coletto, the CEO of Abacus Data. “And there’s probably no clear rule of thumb on it ... the national swing and mood can swamp even a leader’s riding outcome.”
Recent history is rife with examples of leaders seeing their fortunes sink alongside their parties. During the 2014 election, then Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois lost Charlevoix-Côte-de-Beaupré to her Liberal rival on a night that saw the PQ get wiped off the map in entire sections of the province.
In 2011, federal Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff guided his party to a historic defeat and lost his Etobicoke-Lakeshore seat to Conservative Bernard Trottier.
Even in victory, victory is not assured for party leaders. Premier Christy Clark led the B.C. Liberals to a surprise majority win over the NDP in 2013 but she still couldn’t carry her home riding.
Which brings us to Muclair and Duceppe.
Despite representing the eastdowntown Laurier-Sainte-Marie riding for some 21 years, Duceppe met the same fate as dozens of his Bloc Québécois colleagues during the NDP’s “orange wave” in 2011.
Now Duceppe is poised for a rematch in his former district and polls have him at a near statistical tie with the NDP. The latest polls according to the poll-aggregating site have Duceppe up with 34.9 per cent support versus 34.6 per cent for NDP incumbent Hélène Laverdière.
The Bloc saw its fortunes rise when Mulcair made clear his opposition to the Conservatives’ proposed ban of the niqab during citizenship ceremonies. The ban is resoundingly popular among Quebecers and Duceppe repeatedly attacked the NDP leader in both televised French-language debates.
As the Bloc’s support has risen, the NDP’s numbers are sinking in Quebec. And Mulcair’s slide in the polls has also benefited Trudeau’s Liberals who are quickly gaining ground on the NDP leader in his Outremont riding.
Mulcair easily won his seat in the 2008 and 2011 elections with at least 55 per cent support in the district but the latest poll data according to ThreeHundredEight. com. have those numbers down to 41 per cent. Liberal candidate Rachel Bendayan is within three percentage points of Mulcair.
However, as most analysts will point out, a poll is just a snapshot in time with a margin of error and there’s still time for surprises between now and Monday’s election.