Can QS turn good vibes into votes?
It’s the same dilemma the party has faced since Day 1.
The more people see the Quebec solidaire leader in action, the more they like the left-wing party, which is trying to hit the big time in this election campaign.
Surging in the polls four days before the election, not even recent controversies — including brutal attacks by the competing Parti Québécois, which has accused the party of having a hidden Marxist agenda — have deterred Quebecers from telling pollsters they feel like voting QS.
The party has grown so strong there is speculation it might be on its way to replacing the PQ, the traditional left-of-centre option, or hold the balance of power in the legislature in the event of a minority government.
Lots can change in the final days of the campaign, but QS is pumped, with officials predicting it will add to its current stable of three ridings on the island and, more significantly, make a breakthrough in the regions including in two key ridings: the student-rich riding of Sherbrooke and the downtown Quebec City riding of Taschereau, which currently is PQ.
QS currently holds three seats in the centre of Montreal: Mercier, Gouin and Sainte-Marie-Saint-Jacques.
The party has been down this path before and was disappointed. QS’s problem, as it has been since the day it was founded in 2006, is transforming all that good and enthusiasm into actual votes in the box on election day. In the 2014 election, only 55.7 per cent of voters aged 18 to 24 cast ballots. The voting rate in the overall population was 71 per cent.
“We are aware that our main challenge is to make sure that young voters vote,” QS co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois told the Montreal Gazette’s editorial board this week. “We have the very bad habit of not voting a lot.
“My generation has to vote, it has to vote massively, it has to vote at historical levels. If they do that, Québec solidaire will cause a huge surprise on Monday.”
In this election the youth vote — which identifies with QS hobby horse issues such as a fairer tax system and climate change — has never been so robust.
According to Quebec’s chief electoral office, 28 per cent of the eligible voting population now is between the ages of 18 and 35.
That vote is a vast untapped resource for QS, which has seen its support in the polls grow throughout the campaign largely as a result of the three leaders’ debates where Quebecers got a good look at co-spokesperson Manon Massé.
An Ipsos poll done for La Pres- se and Global News this week shows QS up five points to 16 per cent support, just four points behind the PQ. The Liberals and Coalition Avenir Québec are tied at 30 per cent while the PQ is at 20 per cent.
QS leads all four parties in the 18 to 34 category with the support of 27 per cent of youth, a number Ipsos pollster Sébastien Dallaire said could have a “major impact” on Monday’s results if they actually go vote.
Université de Montréal pollster Claire Durand said this week that the increase in QS’s vote is coming essentially from youth. Of the 12 Quebec ridings with the most young voters, three are already held by QS MNAs. Three others — Laurier-Dorion and Hochelaga-Maisonneuve in Montreal and Taschereau in Quebec City — are on the QS list of targeted ridings in this campaign, Durand said.
But Université Laval political science professor Eric Montigny said getting youth to vote is a tricky business even if QS has developed a sophisticated digital system on social media to motivate voters.
“The studies all show the same thing,” Montigny said. “Older voters cast ballots out of a sense of duty. Younger people have to be motivated by an issue which mobilizes them.
“They have to feel a cause is in question.”
But QS’s presence seems to be here to stay. In a surprisingly frank comment, François Gendron, the retiring dean of the PQ caucus, told reporters Wednesday that the party’s popularity among youth is “incontestable,” because it allows them to dream of a better world.
At a news conference Wednesday, Massé also tried to tap into that spirit of renewal.
“I remember a people that didn’t let fear win out,” Massé said. “I remember an era where we didn’t vote for the least bad but with enthusiasm, with hope for the future.”