Daniel Béland

September 4, 2022

When Quebeckers go to the polls on October 3, it is very likely they will give the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) of François Legault a majority of seats, keeping them in power for another four years. Despite some fluctuations in popularity during the pandemic, the CAQ is a strong favorite to win because the party has been ahead in the polls non-stop since it formed government in late 2018. At the beginning of the campaign in late August, the CAQ dominated the other parties in the polls with more than 40 percent of popular support.

This was more than double the support for the Liberal Party of Quebec (LPQ), led by Montreal MNA Dominique Anglade, which ranked second, with only 17 percent, just ahead of the left-wing Québec Solidaire (QS), led by former student activist Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, and the right-wing Conservative Party of Quebec (CPQ), led by radio host Éric Duhaime, with 15 and 14 points, respectively. Finally, the Parti Québécois (PQ), led by human rights lawyer and Oxford MBA Paul St. Pierre Plamondon, was in fifth place with only 9 percent. Considering how well the CAQ is doing and how fragmented the opposition is, it would be a stunning development if Legault does not remain premier after the votes are counted.

Yet, this is a very consequential election for the future of Quebec’s party system, which is in transition. Already in 2018, the victory of the CAQ was a major political shift in Quebec, coinciding with a sharp decline of support for both the LPQ and the PQ, which lost 35 and 18 seats, respectively—large losses considering that the National Assembly only has 125 seats. This decline of the LPQ and the PQ has become a symbol of the demise of the federalist-sovereigntist dichotomy as Quebec’s most defining political cleavage, which crystalized in the early-mid 1970s with the rise of the PQ, which formed government for the first time in 1976 under its founding leader, René Lévesque.

This demise is also strongly associated with the rise of the CAQ, whose agenda is explicitly about bringing together federalists and former sovereigntists in the name of an autonomist form of nationalism that rejects the idea of a new referendum of sovereignty while pushing for a strong autonomist agenda. Some commentators have compared Premier Legault to the conservative nationalism of the Union Nationale of Maurice Duplessis, who was premier from 1936 to 1939, and from 1944 to 1959.

While the federalist-sovereigntist dyad has become less central in Quebec politics, the traditional right-left ideological and partisan divide is increasingly prominent. The rise of QS is a key factor in the reconfiguration of Quebec’s party system. Founded in 2006, QS is a social-democratic party that emphasizes economic redistribution and social justice. And it is currently the most popular party in the province among younger voters. In the 2008, 2012, and 2014 provincial elections, QS respectively won one, two, and three seats while gradually increasing its share of the popular vote from 3.8 to 7.6 percent between 2008 and 2014. Yet, the biggest leap forward for QS came in 2018, when the party won 10 seats and 16 percent of the votes, a major shift that also saw it winning seats in ridings located outside of Montreal for the first time.

Considering these trends, Legault will likely keep his job after October 3, but the results will also be revelatory about the re-composition of party politics in La Belle Province.

Much more recently, the sudden rise of the CPQ in the polls has further deepened the left-right cleavage. While the CAQ and the LPQ are centre-right parties and QS is a left-wing party, the CPQ is a right-wing party that surged in the polls in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Éric Duhaime, who became CPQ leader in April 2021, dramatically increased the public profile of this previously marginal party (which received less than 1.5 percent of the popular votes in 2018) through his criticism of public health measures and his calls to shrink the size of the provincial state while protecting personal freedom in the province. Although they have different styles, Duhaime and federal Conservative hopeful Pierre Poilievre have a lot in common ideologically, and they have also collaborated in the past, a situation that could prove meaningful for federal politics, especially if the CPQ finds a way to win several seats come October 3.

In this context of partisan fragmentation and a growing left-right cleavage in Quebec politics, the CAQ appears as an economically moderate nationalist party that is especially popular among older francophone voters. While younger francophones are keener to support QS on average, anglophones remain more likely to support the LPQ, a party they have long voted for en masse. The CAQ is generally unpopular among anglophones, but the LPQ is not currently benefiting from this trend, as many anglophones are unhappy about how the Liberals have handled the debate over Bill 96 on the protection of French language. This is partly why two anti-Bill 96 fringe parties have recently been created in Quebec: Bloc Montréal and the Canadian Party of Quebec. Although these two small parties might struggle to win seats, they could weaken anglophone support for the LPQ, which would be very bad news for a party that is now doing very poorly among francophone voters.

The hope for the LPQ to keep enough seats to remain relevant is to make sure most anglophone voters keep supporting them and show up to vote, which would help the party keep many of their traditional strongholds on the island of Montreal. As for the PQ, its support is not as concentrated geographically as the LPQ’s, which could mean that the party founded by Lévesque faces the real possibly of being nearly wiped off the electoral map next month — a consequence of lower support for sovereignty among younger francophones and the fact many sovereigntists prefer to vote for other parties such as QS.

Considering these trends, Legault will likely keep his job after October 3, but the results will also be revelatory about the re-composition of party politics in La Belle Province. This re-composition concerns the left-right cleavage as well as the debate over the management of diversity, in which the CAQ and the PQ have much in common in their embrace of ethnic nationalism, while the LPQ and QS each adopt a pluralist position that stresses the importance of minority rights and freedoms. This is why the CAQ and the PQ voted in favour of Bill 21 on secularism, and the LPQ and QS voted against it.

Political scientists Éric Bélanger and Jean-François Godbout talk about the crystallization of a partisan cleavage over diversity that interacts with the increasingly central left-right ideological cleavage and the declining federalist-sovereigntist cleavage. Even if it is very likely that the CAQ and Legault will remain in power after, this campaign and the outcome should be most helpful to assess the evolution of the province’s ever-changing party system.

Policy Contributor Daniel Béland is Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada and James McGill Professor in the Department of Political Science at McGill University.