As the Québec election grinds on, three firms have been tracking public opinion: the established and respected firm Léger, as well as two emerging and innovative research shops, Synopsis and Pallas.
The “topline” from their work seems clear. No party enjoys more than 30% support at this point in time. (The future is of course unknown.) Five parties have between 10% and 30%. If you count the undecided, only one in four supports the front-runner – the Parti Québecois (PQ). Some caution is needed here in so far as a surprisingly efficient vote could yield a majority with less than a third of voters. Yet the situation is a departure from many past elections or the last election when the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) won a strong majority in 2022.
Some voters may yet shift to the leading parties, as we saw in the last Canadian federal election. Swing voters may also face a difficult choice. My colleague Kevin Paquette wrote about that choice recently. Each party carries reputational baggage. Each has sacrificed by putting forward distinct offerings to key constituencies.
The result is that Québec politics looks more like what we now see in Britain or Europe. Multiple parties are spread across two or three voting blocs. The CAQ “coalition” used to be just that. Some nationalists have since left it and gone back to the PQ. The CAQ are competing with the Conservatives (PCQ) for some business-minded, fiscally responsible voters who in the past might have voted Liberal (PLQ). Québec solidaire (QS) appeals to an urban, left-of-centre cohort that would have supported the PQ a generation ago. QS and the PLQ have, to varying degrees, won support from immigrant communities.
Each party has a distinct offering, but they share some common principles. If no party wins a majority, there are myriad ways they could work with or against each other, depending on the issue.
So while voters face difficult choices, and “none-of-the-above” may yet be a critical factor, the polling reveals some key constituencies. The PLQ obviously enjoys strong support among non-francophones. Despite a tarnished reputation, the CAQ actually leads among francophones aged 55+. In the event of low turnout, this age skew could help the CAQ. QS enjoys more support among voters under 35, particularly in francophone Montreal. The data is less consistent for the PCQ, but some polling suggests the party depends on younger or middle-aged men and that women may be almost half as likely to support it. The PQ enjoys its strongest support among voters 35-54. Sovereignty appeals both to some younger voters as well those who voted “yes” in 1980 and 1995, but that middle-aged cohort faces significant cost-of-living pressures and polling across Canada finds this group is the most likely to demand change.
Within each group, different parties enjoy outsized support such that few age or linguistic groups seem similar. The PLQ and CAQ lead among some groups while nearing (or in fact at) single-digit support with others. Each party might even seem competitive or popular in the minds of their supporters, assuming like-minded peers are sharing their views with each other (and not staring at the polling as we have).
During the recent Canadian federal election, there was much talk of the generational divide that appeared as a fault line between the two leading parties. In Québec, the divisions seem deeper and exacerbated by culture, region, nationalism and the economy.
