VOTERS SETTLING ON A CHOICE
New paradigm had Quebec dithering
Almost from the beginning, we knew this campaign would be a game changer.
Quebecers had grown so used to the years of campaigns obsessively focused on the federalism-sovereignty debate that when it failed to emerge this time around many were left dazed and confused, displaying the same withdrawal symptoms of someone coming off an addiction.
A 50-year habit will do that to you.
Suddenly, the battle for Quebec took on the attributes of a regular Canadian provincial election, with decisions to be made about policies and visions, leadership and trust.
Quebecers have been forced to look at the extremes, whether they want a left-of-centre government — offered by Québec solidaire — or something more to the right in the form of the Coalition Avenir Québec and its team of managers and technocrats lead by former airline executive François Legault.
Incredibly for a Quebec election, one of the biggest debates was whether a family of four could actually live on $75 worth of groceries a week (yes, said Liberal leader Philippe Couillard, if you start with a piece or pork tenderloin on Day 1 and mix it with macaroni on Day 2 and turn the whole thing into a pâté chinois Day 3 and so on …).
For some, it was just too big a leap. When the immigration debate reared its ugly head, they bolted. Legault was proved right in his prediction the Liberals would replace sovereignty with the immigration issue as a way to terrorize its base.
Already skeptical about Legault and his past role as a PQ minister, the non-francophone vote stampeded back to the Liberals — barely glancing at the other items on the election menu in their haste. At last count, 76 per cent said they would vote Liberal on Monday.
“It may take another election before we get a majority of anglophones voting for the CAQ,” Legault conceded at the midway mark of the 39-day campaign, which ends Monday in a vote.
For others, however, including that vast middle 20 per cent of the voting population which often decides who wins and loses in Quebec, the decision has been gruelling.
For the first time in Quebec history, seasoned fence sitters woke up to find four really good teams on the ice — each equipped with their own playbooks and star forwards. The Liberals did in fact recruit a former hockey player, Enrico Ciccone, who is running in Marquette after the unceremonious ouster of MNA François Ouimet.
The undecided have dithered to the bitter end. While polls showed about 68 per cent of Quebecers wanted a change, the decision on what kind of change and who best incarnated it was a puzzle. One week before the election, 38 per cent were saying they might change their minds on who they would vote for.
The vote has solidified considerably since then, but making any predictions on the outcome Monday perilous at best. Studies conduced by the Léger polling giant show as many as 33 per cent of voters don’t make a final decision until 48 hours before the vote.
Eight per cent don’t decide until they are in the voting booth, pencil in hand.
Analysts will tell you some of these voters wait because they wait to see which way the wind is blowing so they can be on the winning side. Others are indulging in a growing trend in Quebec to vote strategically.
A pollster’s nightmare, such behaviour explains why the results of many recent campaigns have been surprises or upsets. Some analysts are cautiously predicting a minority government of some sort Monday, but even that is unclear as the parties continue to push hard over the weekend.
There are other factors jumbling up the usual indicators, including a splintered voting pool owing to the disappearance of the federalism sovereignty debate, said Université Laval political science professor Eric Montigny.
It has been replaced by the leftright faction on one level and a nationalist versus cosmopolitan point of view at a deeper one, he said.
“I call this the big shakeup,” Montigny said in an interview. “What’s new is with the end of the Yes-No cleavage, the vote is structured in a different way. For youth, sovereignty is the last thing on their minds.
“How will this end? The concept of partisan politics has been blown up, so we should not be surprised to see public opinion splintered. People no longer vote in blocks or for a party like before. In the past you were red or blue, but now you have several fractures in a vote that is all mingled.”
The good news is that this campaign made history in other ways. For example, there are more women candidates than ever before, 40 per cent out of a total of 940 candidates seeking office. There are 125 seats in the legislature.
On Sept. 17, the leaders participated in a first ever televised English debate, an event which may set a precedent for future elections. There were also two televised French debates.
Montigny said the campaign also confirmed that so-called retail politics are here to stay since all the parties have played the game of tailoring their promises to target various interest groups. The PQ’s plan to provide lunches in schools is an example, as is the Liberal pledge to allow children to have two medicare cards.
At last count, the four main parties made an estimated total of $57.5 billion worth of election promises.
The loss of the federalism-sovereignty debate had another side effect; we really experienced two campaigns in one.
While a battle for first place raged on the right of the spectrum between the Liberals and CAQ, another, on the left, dragged on between the PQ and surging Québec solidaire.
“I am expecting the top race to be tight and the race at the bottom as well,” said Léger polling vice-president Christian Bourque.
That explains why, entering this last weekend, many ridings are embroiled in epic three-way races, with some wins Monday expected to be by slim margins.
The campaign focus nevertheless shifted along the way. The theme at the start was Quebecers’ desire for change but, in the end (if they pick the CAQ), it may be that they didn’t want that much change after all.
Compared to picking the PQ or QS, which would be a significant leap into the unknown, electing a CAQ government — which promises to focus on the economy, job creation and lowering the debt much as the Liberals have for nearly 15 years — can hardly be seen as a radical move.
The campaign was also useful for what it revealed about the leaders. Voters did not express any real rancour towards Couillard.
On the other hand, voters got a good look at Legault — gaffes and
all — and that sort of thing raises doubts his ability to steer the ship, which could result in a minority regime.
But what to say about the other two leaders, Jean-François Lisée of the PQ and Manon Massé, cospokes person of QS? Given Lisée’s decision to shelve a referendum and move the party to left only to find that territory fully occupied by QS, he will find himself on a dangerously slippery slope.
On the other hand, Massé and her co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois will have carved out a permanent place for their party on Quebec’s political landscape, especially if it wins seats off the island.
If much of QS’s support proves to be a protest vote by people who have not really examined the party ’s plan, QS will have to take steps to become a more mature organization and that will mean ditching the Marxist side of its vision.