Quebec, The Majority, And Stepping In Front Of The Bus

On Leger, Selzer, And Learning From The Past

“I'm going to step in front of the bus … Selzer's wrong.”

The Saturday night before the 2020 US election, Ann Selzer released an Iowa poll that was wildly divergent from the polling both in Iowa and across the swing states, showing a 7% lead for Donald Trump and signalling that the rest of the midwest would not be nearly as favourable for Joe Biden than expected. It was an outlier, and all the data after that confirmed the notion of Joe Biden as a sizable, big favourite, and so I went into election day having the distinction of doubting America’s best pollster.

I don’t have to explain how badly that went for me, do I?

It was pure, uncut arrogance on my part, and a sign that I wasn’t looking at the data for an answer, but looking for the answer I already had, which was a Biden blowout. I didn’t consciously know this, and I genuinely believed that Saturday night that I was writing what I wrote because I was, actually, correct. The problem was, I had convinced myself of what was essentially a lie, an untruth. I wanted desperately Biden to win, and it coloured the way I saw that race, and it terrifies me that it did. I got caught, I stepped in front of the bus, and it ran me the fuck over.

Why am I bringing this up again? Well, we don’t have a pollster as universally revered as Selzer is in the US, but I would say the closest we have is Jean-Marc Leger, whose eponymous polling firm has been rated the best in Canada by 338 - an assessment that I think it would be hard to find an argument against. Leger has a very good record nationally, and an even better one in its native Quebec, which is where all the drama remaining in this campaign exists. He is the closest thing to a sure thing in the Wild West that is La Belle Province, and he’s released a poll today - Liberals 33, Bloc 32. In other words, the Liberals aren’t making gains and Quebec will be a status quo result - if he’s right. If he’s right.

…

My parents were both born in Montreal, and if you’ve ever heard me talk about the city, my face lights up at the prospect. It is wonderful, majestic, and thoroughly perfect. It is my favourite place on earth for a reason - it is the best this world has to offer. And in so being, I understand the city, and the province attached, better than the average suburban-Ottawa born Anglo who never spoke French at home. I get Montreal, and I get Quebec, at least a little. Or, at least, I thought I did, because I can usually do a decent job at reading what I call my second home province, and this campaign, I can’t. I am still flabbergasted that the moronic English debate question has someone changed the course of the race, especially since Trudeau agreed it was wrong! I thought the idea that some pollster from Angus Reid asking a stupid question could upend the race nonsensical - and then it happened. I say this to admit my read is off, which makes the question before me, and all of us, even harder.

If Leger is right, definitionally, Nanos is wrong, showing a sizable Liberal lead as they currently do, unless they suddenly converge tomorrow night to a near tie. Mainstreet (and also Abacus), which shows a lead in between Leger and Nanos, would be able to fudge their numbers and claim that their Quebec results were within the margin of error, and given the fact that their seat projection shows a minimally changing picture, that argument would be of some merit. But none of the other pollsters except Frank Graves and the crew at EKOS could claim to have been right, again if Leger is right.

What would the map look like if there was a high single digits Liberal lead in Quebec, as an average of just Abacus, Mainstreet, and Nanos would posit? The answer is something that Liberals would be very happy with - they would be flipping seats like La Prairie, Riviere-des-Mille-Iles, Shefford, the other Longueuil, amongst others, on route to between 6-10 gains in Quebec, depending on how close the lead got to 10%. The map would be full of Bloc-held marginals, including potential Liberal gains in three-way marginals with the CPC in Trois Rivieres and Beauport. Every Liberal incumbent would be in a fairly safe run, and the results would just be about the size of the margins and how many gains could be racked up.

If Leger is right? The map is a retrenchment map, with the Liberals unlikely to make any gains (although potentially still winning Shefford), but now their members might be at some risk in a way they wouldn’t have been if not for the Bloc surge. You can forget La Prairie flipping, and preventing slippage in Argenteuil--La Petite-Nation and other defensive targets becomes the priority. It changes the entirety of the map, and the entirety of the campaign math changes as well.

Right now, I’ve got the Liberals on 161 seats, which will change between now and Sunday night as everyone’s final polls come out, and I have them making no net gains in Quebec. If you were rigorously analytical and taking a strict average of the polls, there would be a small pro-LPC swing in Quebec from all the day’s polls, but I don’t care. I’m not stepping in front of this bus, under no circumstances am I risking this again. The Liberals are likely stuck in minority government because the Bloc rise in Quebec chokes off a source of gains from them. If Leger is wrong, and Nanos right, then the chances of a majority spike, and we could be having a very different conversation in 48 hours. But betting on one of the best pollsters to be wrong is a bet I’ve made and lost before, so I won’t do it here. If Leger’s right, the door is nearly closed shut on a Liberal majority. If they want a path to 170, they’ll be praying he’s wrong.

Good luck with that bet, because you’ll need it.