PQ Leads For First Time In Two Years: Poll

Pauline Marois's Parti Québécois holds a four-percentage-point lead over Jean Charest's Liberals in a Léger Marketing poll released Monday. Photograph by: Kim Chute, The Gazette

From The Montreal Gazette:

Reluctance to launch construction probe damages Jean Charest's Liberals.

MONTREAL – For the first time in two years, the Parti Québécois is leading in a public opinion poll. The PQ got 41 per cent of support in a poll out Monday, with Liberals nabbing 37 per cent.

Quebecers' dissatisfaction with the governing Liberals has grown by 10 percentage points since June, to 60 per cent, according to the poll.

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Update: PQ leads in new poll -- CTV News

My Comment: This poll means nothing. The poll that counts was the last election .... and we know who won that one. If polls are to be taken seriously, it will be the polls that are take 3 years from now when Quebec's political parties are getting ready for another election .... until then these polls are just a snapshot of what people feel.

Transit, Not Scandal, Tops Montrealers List: Poll

An STM bus sits amongst rows of cars in Montreal.
Photograph by: Allen McInnis, The Gazette

From The Montreal Gazette:

Public transit tops the list of priorities for Montrealers as they head into municipal elections being Nov. 1, according to a new poll.

The Journal de Montréal survey found that 37 per cent of those surveyed ranked public transit and transportation issues as the most important issue in the upcoming vote. Sixteen per cent put economic recovery from the recession as their top priority, while only 10 per cent put inquiries into scandals affecting the current municipal administration at the top.

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My Comment: I would put high property taxes at teh top of this poll, but since most Montrealers do not pay any taxes .....

Pollsters' Corner

From The Globe And Mail:

In the new battleground ridings poll, the Conservatives seem to be making major gains in Ontario, Quebec and B.C. In which province(s) are those gains likeliest to hold?

Peter Donolo, Strategic Counsel: It's pretty early to tell just how solid these gains are. Indeed, four in ten voters in the Ontario battleground ridings and just under a third of the voters in the Quebec and B.C. battlegrounds have said they were likely to change their votes — and the data shows that those currently leaning Tory are more likely to switch.

Pay particular attention to Quebec. There may well be something major afoot there regarding the Bloc vote. In fact, after a high water mark in their first election in 1993, the Bloc went into steady decline in 1997 and 2000, with the Liberals actually beating them in popular vote in that last election. The sponsorship scandal gave the Bloc a new lease on life in the quick succession elections of 2004 and 2006, but that likely masked a longer term reconsideration that started in 1997 among Quebec voters about the continued relevance of the Bloc in Parliament.

With the sponsorship scandal now fading, that reconsideration has picked up steam. The chief beneficiaries of any re-examination at this stage are the Conservatives - outside the island of Montreal.

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