the Quebec Conservative Party (PCQ) will be the big loser of election bias if trend continues.
According to the statistical model of the Qc125 choice projection site, the formation ofEric Duhaime could well win more than 15% of the vote in the Oct. 3 general election… but only one seat in the National Assembly. And again the game is not won.
In fact, the first-past-the-post system could, according to polls, prevent the Conservative leader from bringing “dissatisfaction” – and his “strong ideas” – into Parliament. The electoral reform could then suddenly “interest” more than the “few intellectuals” who waved posters on Thursday evening “Electoral reform, we want! in front of the new Radio Canada building, the scene of the second debate of the heads of state and government.
Mr Duhaime finds that “the math is hard to follow” to predict the number of trips that will fall into the hands of the PCQ on Election Day. “Look how strange it is: the Leger prevails with 16%; at 19.6%, Mainstreet puts zero seats,” he noted on the sidelines of an announcement in Saint-Georges on Tuesday.
However, the leader of the PCQ remains withdrawn from the movement for reform of the electoral system. “I won’t promise because I saw it Justin Trudeau Promise and he won’t. I saw Francois Legault Promise and he won’t. I don’t want to be the third party,” he said at the end of the debate on Thursday evening. Mr. Duhaime is content to invite his supporters to encourage a “good drain of votes”, beginning with the Chauveau, Beauce-Nord and Beauce-Sud riders.
The problem is that some PCQ sympathizers are a lot less Zen than their leader on this issue.
” I will give [aux élections] One last chance, and then it’s revolution,” Alain (who declined to give his last name) threw into the CBC microphone on the sidelines of a Victoriaville rally on August 29. What revolution? asked the journalist from the public broadcaster. “Take up arms, armed revolution”, replied the conservative sympathizer.
The world turned upside down
The Oct. 3 election could be marked by the largest gap in Quebec’s electoral history between the distribution of votes and the distribution of seats in the National Assembly. And the CAQ would be a big winner.
In fact, according to Qc125, François Legault’s team would get 39% of the vote but 76% of the seats (95 out of 125). Prime Minister François Legault would thus have a parliamentary supermajority, even if 61% of the electorate had voted for another party.
Mr Legault reiterated this week that reforming the electoral system was “not a priority for Quebecers”. Moreover, it could weaken the government of America’s only French-speaking nation, the Caquistes argue.
The head of Quebec Liberal Party, Dominic AngladeShe was ready to start a “conversation” on the subject. “It’s not in our program. The day it’s in our program, we’re going to do it,” she said Thursday.
The media release from Mme Anglade had reason to be surprised, as the Liberals had worked to ridicule Sonia LeBel’s bill introducing a mixed, regionally balanced voting system before it was shelved under pressure from his Caquistes colleagues.
Basically, Bill 39 proposed creating two categories of MPs: 80 constituency MPs and 45 regional MPs. The constituency MPs would have been elected in the traditional way, while the regional MPs would have been appointed based on the votes of their political party in the county where they are seeking election. This mechanism would have made it possible to partially correct the distortion between the percentage of votes and the percentage of seats obtained by each of the political parties. “A cat would lose her young there! “I felt sorry for Liberal MP Marc Tanguay at the time.
PQ leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondonand united, Gabriel Nadeau-Duboisreaffirmed their political party’s support for reform of the electoral system.
“We didn’t complain about the electoral system back then when it was the Quebec Liberal Party against them Parti Quebecois. The difference there is that the opposition is divided into four parties. It is too much. It doesn’t work There is a mechanism for counting pluralities, which means certain parties benefit,” notes Jean-François Godbout, professor of political science at the University of Montreal.
“But there is also a psychological effect that plays out over the long term. If we are in the same situation after three, four, five such elections, the voters will at least try to coordinate. The elites too,” he adds, recalling the merger of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and Stephen Harper’s Canadian Alliance in 2003.
Professor Godbout also wonders “why these four parties [PLQ, QS, PQ et PCQ] unable to find common ground to form coalitions”.
modulate efforts
Pending a possible reform of our current electoral system—or a reconfiguration of political forces—campaign teams must adopt strategies to maximize their chances of getting candidates elected.
For example, the “Change address” campaign launched by QS enables the votes of young people to vote in solidarity in the constituency in which they are studying – and in which the party candidate has a good chance of winning, such as in Saint-François, Sherbrooke, Rimouski, to be counted or even Rouyn-Noranda – Témiscamingue – and not where their parents live, where “they go out for lasagna twice a year”, according to Mr Nadeau-Dubois.
New calls for separatist forces scattered to the left and right to converge were heard this week, including in the basement of the Saint-Édouard church in La Petite-Patrie. Solidarity, PQ, Liberal and Culinary candidates answered questions from Gouin voters last Tuesday. PQ candidate Vincent Delorme took the opportunity to invite his supporting opponent, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, to break the “political impasse” by once again supporting the idea of forging strategic alliances within the independence movement.
The combined co-spokesman declined any discussion of it. He also dismissed Dominique Anglade’s calls for a strategic vote to block the CAQ out of hand, believing them to be premature.
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