Quebec’s 2014 election was not a defeat for identity politics

Contrary to the myth, the charter of values helped PQ rather than hurt it

Identity politics won’t work, either in Quebec or the rest of Canada, some people say. As proof, they point to the defeat of the former Parti Québécois government in the 2014 general election.

The PQ ran on its anti-hijab “charter of values” and lost. Therefore, these people reason, the PQ lost because of the charter.

It’s faulty logic, leading to a false conclusion. And the evidence suggests that the PQ lost the election in spite of the charter, not because of it.

Before the election, polls consistently indicated that, especially among the French-speaking majority that decides elections in Quebec, the charter was significantly more popular than the party that proposed it.

The problem for the PQ is that the charter wasn’t the only issue in the election, or the most important one. The dominant issue was the possibility that a re-elected PQ government would hold a referendum on independence.

This was confirmed in an Ipsos Reid poll for CTV News shortly before the vote. The charter was only the third most important issue, and among the Frenchspeaking voters for whom it was a top issue, most were in favour of it.

Shortly after the election, polling analyst Claire Durand of the Université de Montréal concluded that the charter had backfired against the PQ; the party had failed to translate support for the charter into votes for the PQ, while the charter had mobilized non-francophone voters for the Liberals.

But Durand identified only three seats that the PQ lost to the Liberals because of the charter, all in Montreal-area ridings with significant non-francophone minorities. Overall, the PQ lost 24 seats, came up 33 short of a majority and lost the election to the Liberals by 40.

And one study published last week says the charter helped the PQ more than it hurt it.

That’s what I called the “dying Péquiste” study presenting new evidence that the PQ is the party of a single generation, the baby boomers, and is doomed to extinction by demographics.

Based on polling immediately after the 2014 election, the study was done for the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship by professor Éric Bélanger of McGill University and postdoctoral researcher Valérie-Anne Mahéo of the Université de Montréal.

One of their findings appears to contradict the Ipsos Reid-CTV News pre-election poll suggesting that the referendum was the most important issue in the campaign.

In Bélanger’s and Mahéo’s survey after the election, the referendum ranked only fifth in importance among all voters, though again, it was ahead of the charter. Some people say the charter drove young voters, in particular, away from the PQ toward the Québec solidaire party.

Bélanger and Mahéo did find that voters in Generation Y, aged between 18 and 34, were more open to cultural difference than the baby boomers, aged 55 or older.

Support for the charter was significantly weaker among members of Gen Y, or millennials, than among older voters, and support for QS was stronger.

And the PQ lost nearly half its Gen Y support from the previous election in 2012.

But Bélanger and Mahéo also found that the self-reported turnout rate — that is, the proportion of voters saying they had cast ballots in the election — was much lower among the millennials than among older voters.

And the charter had a positive impact on PQ support in all generations, though to a much lesser extent in Gen Y. The PQ did lose millennial votes to other parties, but it was for other reasons.

So the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the theory that the PQ lost the 2014 election because of the charter is wishful thinking on the part of people who were against the charter.

Jean-François Lisée, for one, believes it’s a myth. He’s staked his political future on identity politics in the PQ leadership campaign. And so far, it appears to be paying off for him.