Tuesday, April 08, 2014

A look at Quebec Politics

My friend, Mat Vaillancourt, asked me to post his reflections on my blog, so I did.

Check it out:

Five Lessons from the Quebec provincial election

1) Campaigns matters
Pauline Marois did badly in places where she did not campaign like the Îles-de-la-Madeleine and the Abitibi region.

Otherwise, the CAQ leader won seats where he met people: shopping malls, at sugar shacks, at community centres. The CAQ seemed to have done well with people who voted the same day.


2)Trying to win everyone at the same time means pleasing no one at the end
The PQ is traditionally a centre-left nationalist party changed course in 2013 and started pushing a more ethnic nationalist platform, even more so than during earlier PQ stints in government.

The strategy behind this change was probably to win some regions in Quebec which are quite conservative.

Then came the billionaire Pierre-Karl Péladeau who is not seen as a big friend of the labour unions which were traditionally close to the PQ. Many labour unions were not keen on supporting the PQ this time because of Péladeau constituency and the charter of values.

At the end, this strategy backfired completely as the PQ lost on both sides. They did badly among what they already had and they did not win anything else even in areas where the PQ invested a lot of money in pork barreling projects. The party also had their worse score ever in Montreal being close to be a third party there.

3)The cool factor:
If you want to be PM or premier and you have a good lead at the polls, being cool, calm and seeming to be in charge of the situation could be a good strategy to win.

Philippe Couillard and Stephen Harper had the same strategy especially in debates. In both cases, it worked.


4)You have nothing to lose? Go for it.
If you are third and have nothing to lose, being on the attack could be a good strategy. Being low in the polls at the start of the campaign and having nothing to lose, François Legault had this strategy and it worked out really well for him to win more seats.

Even if he lost some seats in the Quebec City area to the Liberals perhaps because of anti-PQ tactical voting, he was able to win quite a few seats in the Montreal suburban areas because of the fall of the PQ and because he was able to be seen as the alternative to both the Liberals and the PQ especially in suburban and exurban areas.

5)Being seen as the anti-development party could hurt you.
The PQ had some major losses in Northern Quebec, especially in areas where mining is a major part of the economy.

Like for the BCNDP in the last provincial BC election, the PQ being seen as the anti-development party and the mine closings did not help at all to keep these seats. The PQ had a unpredictable policy on mines, which made Quebec a place which scared the mining companies to invest.

Ungava, the nothermost seat in the Quebec National Assembly was won for the Liberal for the first time ever since its creation in 1981.

The PQ also finished third in Nicolet-Bécancour, where closing the single biggest employer in the region (the nuclear power plant) the first day in power did not helpl the PQ in a riding which is traditionally péquiste and very rural.

Are these five rules only applicable in Quebec? Perhaps. But there is no doubt that some of these rules are also applying to other places in Canada and elsewhere in the western world.



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