Six months on the eve of Quebec’s 43rd General Election and the governing Coalition d’Avenir Quebec continues to maintain it’s overall standing of support at around two fifths of the electorate. The opposition remains divided, with no party consistently polling more than one fifth support. The separatist Parti Quebecois, at one point one of the two main parties since the early 1970s, is in most polls around half their support in the 2018 election, which in turn was their lowest ever level of support in terms of popular vote since it’s founding in 1968.
The PQ has long been dominant in this section of the Monteregie region, essentially that part of Quebec lying mostly to the south or east of Montreal on south shore of the Saint Lawrence River, in addition to Vaudreuil. For nearly the entirety of Marie-Victorin’s 41-year existence it has been held by PQ MNAs. A portion of the riding was formerly in Taillon, which was held by none other than former Quebec PQ Premiers Rene Levesque and Pauline Marois. In the 2018 election, Marie-Victorin was the only PQ win within the greater Montreal region. The last MNA, Catherine Fournier, kept the riding by a mere 700 votes over the CAQ candidate, but later left the PQ and sat as an independent before resigning and winning the mayorship of Longueuil.
The current standard bearer for the PQ is Pierre Nantel, who was formerly the NDP MP for Longueuil-St. Hubert between 2011-15, before losing the riding as the Green candidate in the election that later year. Another noteworthy candidate is Martine Ouellette, for Climat Quebec, herself formerly the Bloc Quebecois leader and before that the PQ MNA for nearby Vachon, also a former PQ stronghold. It is anticipated that while Ouellette may not win more than 10% of the vote, her name recognition is sufficient to draw votes away from Nantel since they are drawing off the same reserve of green, sovereigntist voters.
For the left-wing, sovereigntist Quebec Solidaire candidate Shophika Vaithyanathasarma and Liberal Émilie Nollet, the fight is more for second place as the plausible alternative to the CAQ. The Liberals only held the riding during a brief period of time after a 1984 by-election, losing it again to the PQ in 1985 in what was otherwise a Liberal landslide. All indications are that QS is holding their own in opinion polling, and will likely retain a comparable vote percentage as in 2018. The Liberals may see a decline in vote share, mirroring their province-wide slide in opinion polling – in their view retaining their 2018 vote share may be the best possible result.
The big unknown is the surging Parti Conservateur, a right-wing federalist party opposed to a number of COVID-19 pandemic mandates. Historically the reconstituted Conservateurs are a minor-factor in Longueuil elections, but with some provincial polling putting the party in a distant second place, the likelihood of significant vote gains seems to be high. Contrary to most expectations, however, the Conservateurs have expanded support provincially while the CAQ has effectively retained their vote share, with the opposition parties experiencing more decline than the government.
Part of this could be explained that the popularity of the CAQ and it’s leader, Premier Legault, and their hold on swing voters. Another factor is the fact that the previous Liberal-PQ alignment in Quebec politics spanning 1970 – 2018 concealed behind the question of federalism versus sovereignty a number of left-right alignments, that in the absence of an ideological debate, remained concealed until the alignment fell apart. Therefore, the relative stability of CAQ support, and the relative decline of Liberal and PQ support especially, could be attributed to the resorting of political alignments away from the old federalist-separatist divide. Another factor that might be just as significant if not more so might be the general malaise with pandemic measures fueling Conservateur support from all sides of the political spectrum
In any event, all indications are that the CAQ support, even if it moderately declines to 2018 levels in the riding, will be sufficient to propel CAQ candidate Shirley Dorismond to victory, with Conservateur Anna Casabonne having a good chance of outpolling everyone but the CAQ, PQ and QS candidates, which mirrors the province wide trend.
The bottom line is the ridings’s winner will benefit from voting splits of the opposition, in addition to the province wide trends, and if Nantel loses the former stronghold, it will be attributable to the far more likely PQ-QS-Ouellet split, and overall PQ decline, than any anticipated CAQ-Conservateur vote split.