Leger Quebec: Game On?

On Quebec’s Gold Standard Shocker

Leger just released a Quebec-only poll in the Journal de Montreal, which says that Mark Carney would get 38% of the vote if he was the Liberal leader and that even naming Justin Trudeau as Leader gets the Liberals 29% of the vote and a share of first in Quebec. This is a remarkable achievement for a party that I have been screaming about needing a Quebec message and a Quebec strategy for months now, and the gold standard of Quebec polling now has an essentially 2021 result in the province. (Yes, the Conservatives are up significantly, but the honest truth is that Conservatives don’t really win many more seats in Quebec at 24% than they do at 17%.)

The honest truth is that this poll is shocking, and it could be nothing - but the last time Leger showed a remarkable tie when others had a less close race was in the runup to the 2021 election, when others had sizable Liberal leads and Leger had a statistical tie. In the end, trusting Leger’s full sample Quebec-only poll and not the amalgamated crosstabs was the correct poll, especially given Leger’s ability to correctly poll their home province better than outsiders managed.

If you want to overdose on Liberal hopium, if you put the Mainstreet Ontario poll from the weekend and this Leger poll into my model and kept the other 8 provinces the same you’d get 129 Liberal seats and the Cons four seats away from majority government. Now, that’s a flawed analysis for many reasons - if Ontario is really red then BC probably swings left too! Cherry-picking polls is bad! There is a whole election to go! Mainstreet is prompting for ”Liberals, New Leader” which could be inflating their Liberal numbers! - but it’s another data point that is suggesting that Poilievre isn’t inevitable. And honestly, I don’t even know what to think.

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The other point making me wonder if there’s something happening in Quebec, hilariously, is Nanos. Now, Nanos has been fundamentally unable to poll Quebec in recent years, but they’re running in a lag because of their ridiculous 4 week rolling sample and they have the Liberals at 28% and within 2% of the Bloc. Whether Nanos is a usable pollster in such times is debating given the lag but it’s notable that for the first time in a while a Canadian pollster has had the Liberal vote in Quebec in that range. It’s one other pollster, I know, but it’s something.

Quebec is one of the skeleton keys to a big recovery both because of the raw math, but also the psychological impact of winning in Quebec. Campaigns and candidates that can break into Quebec generally do well elsewhere, because the act of breaking into Quebec generally shows a campaign and a party’s ability to do tough things well. Carney’s media appearances in Quebec seem to be playing well - including a rather odd Rebel News interaction in Shawinigan where Carnegie kept his head, kept speaking French, and even made the Rebel antagonist’s use of English a joke. It seems like there’s something there.

It’s also important because the Liberals will now easily put a lot of distance between them and the Bloc in every seat projection model moving forward. If the narrative stops being that the Liberals are in a fight for Official Opposition and they get a media narrative of momentum behind them, it could be important in reframing the race. Instead of editors commissioning “could the Liberals finish third?” pieces based on flimsy data, that intellectual space is likely to be filled with “could Carney actually make this a real race?” pieces. And to whatever extent media coverage can induce results, that would be quite helpful.

The French press seems to be less mad about Carney’s French, which is a bullish sign for the Liberals, and it doesn’t seem like Carney’s done anything particularly pro-Quebec yet (I still think you should go to Dorchester Square, Mark!) to create this momentum. It seems plausible that some combination of anti-Trump tariff patriotism and the fact Trudeau’s gone has really helped the party in Quebec, which is the lens I’m trying to keep looking at these polls through.

(For what it’s worth, it seems even more obvious that I was right about the need for Trudeau to resign. I don’t know how many more polls we need, even if we are doubtful of the size of the polling movements, before we all collectively take a moment to admit that Justin Trudeau’s leadership was a fucking disaster and that my basic premise - that he was an anchor on the party that was dragging down a party that was otherwise viable for a good result, even if not a win - was entirely correct. Those that met my persistent calls for a change with vitriol and accusations of latent conservatism and/or acceptance of foreign money would do well to acknowledge this reality.)

The problems with believing this polling are obvious - a lot of good pollsters with incentives to get this right aren’t seeing what Leger is seeing in Quebec. The other notable part of this is that this is the first truly great poll from the Liberals from a traditional panel pollster, which represents a bit of a watershed in the post-Freeland resignation era. Based solely on usual patterns, next week should see an Abacus poll which could confirm the drift or cement their status as an outlier. (Coletto is also in the field with an Ontario provincial poll for this weekend’s Star - I’m assuming he’ll do a Federal vote intention question at the same time, which could be interesting to compare to Mainstreet.)

The thing that makes me feel confident that this movement is real - and more real than the 5% swing left that Abacus showed - is that there’s every reason to believe it. I definitely think EKOS and Mainstreet are picking up too much of a trend too quick, but I fundamentally don’t think we’re in the same race we were in in October or whatever. I think the Conservatives now genuinely face a crisis. I’d rather be ahead than behind, and I do think they’re still in majority territory despite all of this. But I don’t think it’s certain at all anymore.

The Liberals have a chance. They didn’t a month ago when Trudeau resigned. And Leger just tossed gas on the fire.

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