Coderre defiant as poll shows dead heat in mayoral race
Incumbent Mayor Denis Coderre came out swinging Wednesday after a new poll put him in a dead heat with his main challenger, Projet Montréal’s Valérie Plante, with the Nov. 5 municipal elections only 11 days away.
A new Léger Marketing survey — obtained by the blog Qc125.com — polled 500 online respondents between Oct. 20-22. It found Coderre and Plante tied for overall support at 38 per cent each. The poll suggests Coderre has slipped in popularity among francophones, nonfrancophones and voters aged 35 and older.
“It is exciting to see that our strategy, the ideas and the vision I am putting forward resonate with Montrealers,” Plante said during a campaign stop in Outremont Wednesday morning.
Speaking to reporters as he campaigned in Ahuntsic Wednesday afternoon, Coderre said he was not surprised that the race has grown tighter, since it is now down to a two-way fight. (Jean Fortier, who had been the mayoral candidate for Coalition Montreal, dropped out on Oct. 18, throwing his support behind Plante.)
Coderre said he is still confident in his chances, though he is taking nothing for granted. But then he launched into his most vigorous attack yet on Plante and Projet Montréal. He called her Pink Line proposal “impossible” and accused her of “hiding” her team of candidates in the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough because their “ideological” approach would not sell well elsewhere in the city.
He said Plante is making big promises without properly costing them out, and her team does not have strong connections, as he does, with the major federal and provincial parties.
“It’s not time to take chances,” he said. “I think if people ask a few more questions they will realize that they (Projet Montréal) might be ready to make a magnificent official opposition, but maybe they are not ready — with their team that we don’t even see — to take control of a $5.2-billion budget and meet all the challenges of the next four years.”
“We have a great team and we are not hiding it. I mean, where is Luc Ferrandez?” Coderre asked, referring to the incumbent mayor of Plateau-Mont-Royal borough. “He’s never there. All the gang of the Plateau they seem to hide them because we know that their dogma that they are pushing all the time … it’s so dogmatic; this is not the kind of Montreal that we want.”
Plante, meanwhile, has posted gains in support in nearly every demographic, including the nonfrancophone vote, the polls suggest.
Plante said she is excited, but not surprised by the latest numbers. The poll was taken before the candidates faced off in this week’s English-language debate. Plante said she believes she won that debate and has the support of many non-francophones.
“The best compliment I am getting is that our campaign is contagious. I want to bring Montreal forward and I am getting positive comments.”
A Léger poll conducted for Projet Montréal last June found Coderre at 43 per cent support, 14 percentage points ahead of Plante. In September, a Mainstreet poll conducted for Qc125 found Coderre and Plante to be in a statistical tie (30 per cent for Coderre, 25 per cent for Plante in a survey with a 4.4 per cent margin of error.) However the Mainstreet poll also suggested the proportion of undecided voters stood at 41 per cent, while the new Léger poll puts undecided voters at 21 per cent.
The latest poll suggests that nonfrancophone voters, a bloc that helped propel Coderre to power in 2013, are interested in Plante. She saw an 11-point spike in support, placing her at 36 per cent, two points ahead of Coderre with that demographic.
Poll aggregator and analyst Philippe Fournier of Qc125 noted that caution should be used with any individual poll. But looking at all polls posted so far in this campaign, he said there seems to be a trend.
“Except for a few sub-samples, the numbers agree with each other,” he said. Coderre had a 14-point lead in June (in a Léger poll), it was reduced to a five-point lead last month (in a Mainstreet poll) and now it’s tied.”
While campaigning Wednesday morning, Plante promised her administration would do more to help local businesses on the city’s commercial arteries, such as Bernard and Mount Royal Aves. She pledged to bring in a fairer taxation system for small businesses, reduce red tape when dealing with city hall, compensate merchants during major construction projects and better co-ordinate construction projects to reduce impacts on businesses.