Quebec election: expectations vs. results

Less than a week ago, the results of the Quebec election came as a bit of a surprise to pollsters and pundits. But the surprise was not in the grand strokes of the outcome itself: as expected, the Parti Québécois won with the Liberals forming the Official Opposition, the Coalition Avenir Québec coming third, and Québec Solidaire winning two seats. The surprise instead came in the details.

A minority result for the PQ was always a distinct possibility, but it turned out to be a lot smaller than expected. The Liberals were best positioned to finish second, but they out-performed expectations to a significant degree. And the CAQ, despite a good haul of votes, did not manage to win as many seats as they might have and a few of their star candidates did not win in their ridings.

ThreeHundredEight's projection gave a slight edge to a PQ majority, but this overall result was envisioned. The problem with the projection was that the Liberals were under-estimated in the polls, which meant that the projected results over-estimated both the PQ and the CAQ.

The Quebec election was not a repeat of the Alberta election. Equating the two would be a silly mistake. The polls in Quebec were generally within the margin of error for the PQ, CAQ, and QS and they only under-estimated the Liberals. The polls from the Alberta election gave Wildrose a 10-point lead when the result was a 10-point win for the Progressive Conservatives. Nothing close to that occurred last Tuesday.

In terms of the Alberta election, the question of "what went wrong?" can certainly be asked. The public polls did not capture a swing in the last week that internal polls did manage to identify. The question that should be asked in Quebec is "why were the results different?"

Polls are often erroneously seen as simply a way to predict an outcome. They are, of course, a snapshot and things can change - but voting intentions rarely shift to a significant degree in a matter of days. That is why results usually match the last polls of a campaign. But polls are most useful as a way to understand and contextualize what is going on during an election campaign. After the election is over, they can be a very good tool to understand what happened. And projections based on polling data do the same.

Of course, polls and projections will always have a degree of error and I will take a look at the errors the projection made below. But working from the idea (which has been proven over time, notwithstanding the few exceptions) that in a normal election polls can track the voting intentions of the population accurately and that projections can turn those numbers into accurate seat counts, a comparison of polls/projections to results paints a very good picture, not of how polls and projections failed, but of what worked and what didn't for the parties themselves.

For a full statistical breakdown of the projection's performance, I invite you to take a look at the Electoral Track Record.

How would the seat projection model have worked had the polls been bang-on in each of the model's six regions? Polls for three of them (Montreal island, Montreal suburbs, and Quebec City) were available throughout the campaign while polls for the other three (Eastern, Central, and Western Quebec) were available for some of the polls.

The model would have awarded the Parti Québécois 53 seats, the Liberals 42, the CAQ 28, and two to Québec Solidaire. In other words, a strong result for the PQ and QS and an under-estimation of Liberal strength to the benefit of the CAQ.

The riding accuracy, at 81.6%, would not have changed but the potential winners would have been identified in 94.4% of ridings when using the seat projection ranges.

Those ranges (using the polling volatility in the last week of the campaign as a guide, as the model normally does) would have encompassed the final result: 41-65 for the PQ, 34-55 for the Liberals, 18-38 for the CAQ, and 1-2 for QS. The projection would have called for a PQ minority, a strong Liberal opposition, and a third place finish for the CAQ, while the odds would have been considered very unlikely for a PQ majority or a CAQ second-place finish. This would have been a good call.

So the projection model would have been able to forecast the election properly with accurate polling - but nevertheless the most likely outcome would have still under-estimated the Liberals to a significant degree. Why?

This is where the results of the election and how they differ from polls and projections can tell us something about what went right for the Liberal campaign. In the Alberta election, to take one example, the projection model would have done very well with accurate polls with one exception - the extraordinary resilience of Liberal incumbents in Edmonton and (especially) Calgary. With the Liberal vote dropping so steeply in Alberta as a whole, no projection model that wasn't based on a hunch could have forecast that the Liberal incumbents in these two cities would prove so difficult to topple. While that was an example of the projection model being wrong, it said more about the Liberals in those ridings than it did about the model itself.

Region vote projections vs. results

The chart to the left shows the difference between the projection and the results in each of the six regions. We can see that the Liberals did significantly better than expected in Montreal (though it did them no good in terms of seats), in Quebec City, and central Quebec.

The performance of the Liberals in central Quebec was quite remarkable. Polling data that was available for the region in the mid-point of the campaign, when the Liberals were far from out of the race, showed that central Quebec was not a strong part of the province for the party. It put them at 27%, behind the PQ and the CAQ. As their vote tanked in the polls in the regions of Quebec and among francophones (not to mention the riding polls that showed the Liberals with little support in Nicolet-Bécancour, Saint-François, Saint-Maurice, Sherbrooke, and Trois-Rivières), the projection put the Liberals at between 23% and 29% in the region. They ended up with 32.2% of the vote, beating out the CAQ (30.9%) and the PQ (28.4%).

As a result, this was the region with the most amount of errors and the region that skewed the projection against the Liberals most importantly. Their vote in this highly francophone region turned out in great numbers, voting for their incumbent MNAs in particular. Along with a surprising degree of resilience in the Montreal suburbs, particularly Laval, this was the region of Quebec that 'saved' the Liberals from a far more significant defeat.

Seat projections vs. results

But what happened to the Parti Québécois? They were over-estimated almost across the board, with eastern Quebec being the only region where they out-performed expectations. The seat ranges were only off by three seats for the PQ, however, and that can mostly be attributed to the strong Liberal performance in central Quebec. But it can also be blamed on the PQ's under-achieving results in the suburbs around Montreal.

The PQ was projected to take between 38% and 42% of the vote in this region, but ended up with 35.9%. Neither the Liberals nor the CAQ were outside of their projected ranges in the suburbs, but both were at the higher end of expectations. The 450 was considered the make-or-break region for both the PQ and the CAQ, and in the end this was correct. The PQ won 15 seats instead of the projected 19, putting them at the very bottom of their expected results. They could have won as many as 24 seats in the region, enough alone to have given them a majority government.

For the CAQ, they did as well as expected in and around Montreal and Quebec City. The projection gave them seven seats in Quebec City, which they indeed won, and seven in the suburbs. They took six.

But it was in francophone Quebec outside of the two main centres where the CAQ vote did not materialize. The party won no seats in eastern Quebec instead of the projected one, one seat in western Quebec instead of the projected three, and five seats in central Quebec instead of the projected nine. But, generally speaking, the projection was quite good in estimating the CAQ's vote - and the projection model would have still given them nine more seats than they actually won if the polls had been completely accurate.

Why? The CAQ's under-performance is one case where the error that the projection made tells us something important about the CAQ. The CAQ's vote share aligned quite closely with the polls and the projection, but their seat result did not.

The reason for this is that the CAQ's vote was far more uniform than the ADQ's. If the ADQ had gotten 27.1% of the vote in this election, they very likely would have won around 28 seats. But despite the CAQ having swallowed up the ADQ and its MNAs, the party is not the same. It does use the same populist and vaguely nationalist language of Mario Dumont, but the party and its leader take a more centrist approach. That changed the party's voter profile somewhat, enough to give the CAQ relatively even support - particularly in central and western Quebec. The model expected the CAQ's vote to be more heavily concentrated in central Quebec to the detriment of the western part of the province - instead, the CAQ's vote was more uniform and that meant a lot of second place finishes.

When the next election occurs, which considering the minority government in place could not be very long, the model will undoubtedly perform better because it will be able to use the CAQ's vote as a baseline, rather than the ADQ's.

Another factor which made the projection over-estimate the CAQ was the adjustment made for the floor-crossers in Blainville, Deux-Montagnes, and Sanguinet. While the adjustment would have worked in most elections, for whatever reason it did not work in this one. It over-estimated the support of Daniel Ratthé, Benoit Charette, and François Rebello to a significant degree. Without the adjustment in place, the model would have correctly given Blainville to Ratthé but Deux-Montagnes and Sanguinet to the PQ. The results for each party would have been quite accurate - indicating that the floor-crossers did not personally bring any large number of  votes with them.

If we look closely at the results, the projection did well on some of the minor details. Québec Solidaire's results were projected very well, with the result of 12% on the island of Montreal (their most important region) being off of the projection by 0.1 point. The model also did quite well with Option Nationale, the Greens, and the other parties.

The projected ranges were correct for every party in some tough-to-call ridings as well: Jean-Lesage (correctly forecasting a close three-way race), Groulx, and Gouin, among others. Generally speaking, the model did quite well on an individual basis for each party in the ridings where the winner was called correctly. The ridings that were not called correctly often had very large errors, suggesting that fiercely local circumstances were at play in many of them.

But the turnout adjustments may not have helped matters. While it did correctly assume that QS would be over-estimated and the PLQ under-estimated, and the adjustment did not effect the projection for the CAQ significantly, it was wrong to consider the PQ under-estimated in the polls. The last surveys by CROP and Léger were excellent for the PQ, and the last surveys by Forum and EKOS over-estimated the PQ greatly.

The model made a bet that, in most elections, would have been correct. Going forward, I am not sure if this is a bet that is worthwhile to make. The adjustment seems to have caused a lot of confusion during the campaign, with readers not understanding why I had the CAQ so low and the PQ and PLQ so high, no matter how many times I explained it. Perhaps it would be best for ThreeHundredEight to limit itself to poll aggregation and what those polls would deliver in terms of seats, with the high and low ranges being used to estimate how the polls are expected to be wrong. I welcome suggestions from readers.

With the surprising performance of Jean Charest's Liberals, the Quebec election threw almost everyone for a loop. But the results might have had more to do with the Liberals' stronger organization and the mythical prime à l'urne playing a role than the errors of polls and projectors. Quebec's distinct society does seem to come with distinct elections - no one will be surprised if next time the result is, well, a surprise.

Quebec election aftermath

Last night's election results in Quebec were surprising, but the event that took place in Montreal after the results were known overshadowed to a great degree what happened in the voting booths. The attack perpetrated by an undoubtedly deranged individual was an assault not only on his victims, but on all Quebecers - and all Canadians - and upon our democratic values. My thoughts are with the families of the two victims. Tragically one has passed away.

This sort of heinous act puts a lot of things in perspective, but it is important not to let the crime of a single man carry more weight than the act that millions of Quebecers took part in yesterday, an act that hundreds of millions of people worldwide are forbidden from doing and for which they have given their lives.

I will have some analyses of last night's results on the websites of The Globe and Mail and The Huffington Post Canada later today and I will update this post with links. UPDATE: The Globe article can be found here. The article for The Huffington Post Canada can be found here.

It will take a little while to pore over how the projection performed, especially as I will have to calculate the regional results of last night's vote in order to see how the model would have done with the correct numbers. That was a big problem last night. No poll was very accurate, especially in terms of the Liberals. The highest number they had in a late-campaign poll was 29%, and that was in Forum's election-eve survey that also had the PQ at 36%. The poll that had the best result for the Liberals also had the worst result for the PQ. In other words, it was not very helpful.

The projection did make a few good bets, forecasting that the polls would under-estimate the Liberals and over-estimate the support of the CAQ (edit: at least in terms of Léger and CROP), Québec Solidaire, Option Nationale, and the Greens. It was wrong to believe that the polls would also under-estimate the Parti Québécois and that was the difference between projecting a bare-minimum majority government and the minority government the party actually won.

A preliminary analysis suggests that the projection made the right call in about 82% of ridings (with the projected ranges, that is bumped up to 86%), a decent performance considering the faulty inputs of the polls. There were a few surprises, and like in the Alberta election the resilience of the Liberal incumbents was extraordinary.

Once I plug the actual regional results of the election into the model, I'm very confident that the projection will provide a close result. But that just proves once again that the challenge is being able to forecast results with the polling data that is available. More and more, that data is looking less and less useful. The two polls conducted on the eve of the vote were both fatally flawed (one suggested a clear PQ majority, the other a Liberal catastrophe). It is unfortunate that Léger and CROP were not in the field later in the campaign, but it is impossible to know if they would have performed any better.

In the end, ThreeHundredEight's vote projection turned out to be closer than any of the polls, with a total error of 8.1 points (compared to 8.4 for Léger and 10.4 for Forum/CROP). That is not quite good enough, and more work will have to be done to determine how to best forecast the difference between voting intentions and voting behaviour. Wider confidence intervals and the recognition that there is only so much that polls can tell us about what will happen tomorrow may be in order.

Final Quebec Projection: Parti Québécois victory

Tomorrow night, ThreeHundredEight.com projects that Pauline Marois and the Parti Québécois will win the Quebec provincial election with a plurality or majority of the National Assembly's 125 seats. Though the projection leans slightly towards a majority government, the margin is too close to definitively project with confidence what form the government will take.

This post was updated on September 4, 2012 - see below.

Similarly, either the Liberals or the Coalition Avenir Québec will emerge as the Official Opposition. It is more likely that the Liberals will be given the job, but the CAQ is also capable of jumping from third to second spot in Quebec City.

With 34.1% support, the Parti Québécois is projected to win 63 seats tomorrow night. That is the bare minimum for a majority government. The Liberals, with 27.9% support, are projected to win 33 seats. That narrowly edges out the CAQ, who are projected to take 26.3% of the vote and 27 seats.

The PQ's wobbly majority (if the Speaker is from the party, the Assembly would be split straight down the middle) is likely to get some support from Québec Solidaire. The party is projected to win 7.1% of the vote and two seats.

Option Nationale is projected to take 2.5% of the vote, while the Green Party of Quebec and other parties are expected to get 1% of the vote each.

This campaign has shown a remarkable amount of stability for all of the noise that has come out of the province. Since the campaign began, neither CROP nor Léger Marketing have pegged PQ support at anything other than 32%, 33%, or 34% support, with no discernible change in support since the beginning of the campaign. The Liberals have dropped from around 30% to around 27%, but aside from the Forum poll the Liberals have been steady since before the series of four debates. The CAQ has also been very steady in the last bit of the campaign. They did experience a bump from the early days, but it was only an increase of a handful of points (Léger had them at 28% in their final poll of the campaign and at 27% in their poll from Aug. 6-8).

This leads me to believe that we should not expect any sort of late swing over the final four unpolled days of the campaign (Sept. 1 to 4). If things weren't moving with a debate and the myriad of rather intense stories over the course of the election, why would they suddenly swing in this last stage?

UPDATE (Sept. 4, 2012): As they did at the end of the Alberta provincial campaign, Forum Research conducted a poll last night. They released it through The National Post. Frank Graves from EKOS Research also published the results of their own polling on his Twitter feed before midnight.

I will not be updating the projection to include this new information (it would be impossible to include EKOS's numbers as they only reported the topline results). Federal electoral law and the law in many provinces prohibits the publishing of new public opinion polls on Election Day. Whether projections would also be prohibited could potentially be up to the interpretation of a judge. But in addition to not wanting to run that risk, I believe ThreeHundredEight should try to follow the spirit of the law and not publish new projections on Election Day.

The Forum poll, in any case, backs up the final projection. Like the projection, Forum says that Léger and CROP have under-estimated the PQ and the Liberals and have over-estimated the CAQ and QS. If Forum has it, then the PQ will win a majority government and almost certainly a number of seats within the projection's upper range for the party. Similarly, the Liberals will become the Official Opposition and the CAQ the third party. I am confident that the projected seat ranges will hold true when the ballots are counted tonight.

EKOS's poll is another kettle of fish. While they have identical numbers for the PQ and the CAQ as does Forum Research, they have the Liberals at 23% instead of 29% and QS at 11% instead of 6%. That is a very important difference. Granted, EKOS published these numbers as part of a longer poll and as a means of calibrating their surveying model. But the firm can't put money in the pile and expect to get it back if their bet loses. Forum and EKOS are going for the glory, while Léger and CROP are safely ensconced in virtually identical numbers a few days back from the vote. It will be interesting to see who will turn out to be right. And in the post-mortem, I will post what the projection would have shown had I included the numbers from Forum and EKOS.

Perhaps the long weekend, one of those mythical opportunities for families and friends to discuss politics and make a collective decision, will play a role in tomorrow night's vote. But there is nothing to suggest that we should expect a wholesale swing from one party to another. The number of undecideds is not unusually high and though the CAQ's supporters seem the softest, this comes as no surprise considering they are a 'new' party.

Because of this lack of volatility in the last stage of the campaign, the projected seat ranges are relatively tight.

The PQ is projected to win between 57 and 75 seats, straddling the line of a majority government but not overlapping with any of the other parties: the Liberals are projected to win between 25 and 39 seats and the CAQ between 20 and 31 seats. The fight, then, is between these two parties for the role of the Official Opposition. As most of the battles are not between the Liberals and the CAQ, however, if the CAQ over-achieves and manages to place second there is a greater chance that the PQ will be reduced to a minority. On the other hand, if Liberal support tanks the PQ is most likely to take advantage and form a majority government.

The question of how voting intentions will differ from actual votes has been an important one for this campaign, as the projection model bets that the PQ and PLQ will be under-estimated and the CAQ and QS over-estimated.

But if that does not occur, and if the polls are bang-on, it would not change much. Removing the turnout adjustment from the projection and instead using only the poll average, the PQ would still win with 61 seats - just below a majority government. The Liberals would still form the Official Opposition with 33 seats and the CAQ would win 29 seats.

The ranges would put the PQ at between 53 and 75 seats, the Liberals at between 24 and 38 seats, the CAQ between 21 and 36 seats, and Québec Solidaire between one and three seats. In other words, the projection would move from leaning towards a PQ majority to leaning towards a PQ minority, while the Liberals and CAQ would have almost even odds at forming the Official Opposition. Hardly paradigm-shifting.

Now that we have gone over the general outline of the projection, let's look at it in further detail by going through it party-by-party.

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Though the Parti Québécois is almost certain to finish on the top of the pile tomorrow night, the campaign will not have been one of their shining moments. A win is a win, of course, but the PQ is likely to emerge victorious with less of the vote than they earned in their 2008 defeat (35.2%), not to mention their defeats of 1985 and 1989.

The big unknown is whether the PQ will be able to win a majority government. They are on the cusp of one, meaning that a handful of votes in a handful of ridings could make the difference. Will supporters of Option Nationale and Québec Solidaire swing over to the PQ to give them a majority? Or will the PQ slip through on their own?

The PQ is projected to win between 32.8% and 35.5% of the vote, which runs the gamut of a middling minority to a strong majority government. They appear to have the support of 37.3% of francophones, precariously close to minority territory, while they also have the support of 9.2% of non-francophones.

Their best regions are in eastern Quebec and the Montreal suburbs, where the party is expected to win half of their seats. Eastern Quebec is particularly strong for the PQ, as they should sweep the Gaspésie, the Saguenay, and the Côte-Nord with 43.4% of the vote. They are also looking good in the Montreal suburbs with 39.5% support, but with between 15 and 24 seats it is the region where their majority government will likely be won or lost. They are fighting the CAQ north of the city and the Liberals in Laval, primarily.

On the island of Montreal, however, the PQ is likely to re-elect all of their incumbents except Nicolas Girard in Gouin, though the projection does consider a Girard victory possible. How the QS vote will turnout could determine whether the PQ is able to win any new seats on the island. The PQ should do well in the Mauricie region of central Quebec, while they should win two seats in Quebec City (but could win between one and three).

With the lone possibility of a single seat in Quebec City, if the PQ wins a majority government they should be well-represented in every part of the province. If they are given a minority, it will likely be because the Quebecers who live in the suburbs of Montreal defect to the CAQ, like they did in 2007 when they swung to the ADQ. That will be the region to watch.

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Jean Charest's Liberals started the campaign in a surprisingly good position, considering the problems the party and government has had in its third mandate. The Liberals were within a couple of points of the PQ and with a good campaign could have managed to be re-elected to a minority government. François Legault got off to a running start with the candidacy of Jacques Duchesneau, which brought the corruption issue to the forefront, and from that point the Liberals saw their re-election chances drop to nil.

But they still have some solid bases of support. The projection gives them between 26.9% and 28.9% of the vote, enough to keep them in the running for the job of the Official Opposition. They have the support of 61.4% of non-francophones, which gives them a good chunk of seats automatically, but only 19.6% support among francophones. That means a lot of defeated incumbents off the island of Montreal.

That is their best region, where 20 of their 33 seats are likely to come from. They lead with 36.8% but are in danger of being reduced to as few as 16 seats on the island, depending on how the PQ vote turns out.

Elsewhere, the party is in dire straits. After leading at the outset, the Liberals have dropped precipitously in Quebec City. They are projected to win 27.1% of the vote but only between zero and four seats. In the suburbs around Montreal they could win three or six, thanks in large part to residual support in Laval.

In eastern and central Quebec, the party might only win three seats. The four seats in the Outaouais projected to go Liberal, meanwhile, is the only pocket of concentrated Liberal support outside the West Island.

But I think the Liberals should not be under-estimated. The possibility exists where support for the Liberals will simply tank as voters decide that they can't support this nine-year-old government and will cast their ballot for a party that can win. However, the Liberals have a good organization and are the go-to option for convinced federalists, so I would not be surprised to see the Liberals over-achieve expectations. That could, for example, play out in Sherbrooke. Jean Charest is projected to lose, but it is always risky to bet against Charest. If one Liberal riding is going to be missed by the projection, I expect it to be this one. On the other hand, a gap of 12 or so points like the one recorded in the last Segma poll is also easy to imagine. The survivability of Liberal incumbents could be one major factor tomorrow night that prevents the CAQ from finishing second.

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The projection believes the CAQ will finish third, however. The CAQ has decent support but it lacks efficiency and concentration. They are lagging behind the PQ among francophones by seven points, and are likely to finish a strong second in a lot more ridings than the Liberals will. But the CAQ is the big unknown of tomorrow night - will they over-achieve or under-achieve? If anyone has momentum, it is the CAQ - and they also have the 'change' card in their deck. But they lack an organization and the kind of enthusiasm needed to make-up for that deficient ground game. And will their support emerge in unexpected places?

With between 24.8% and 27.8% projected support, the CAQ does have a chance of finishing second in the popular vote. Even so, the odds are against them finishing second in the seat count, due to the Liberal advantage in Montreal. They have the support of 30.3% of francophones and 18.1% of non-francophones, a very respectable score for François Legault. But neither of those numbers are high enough to put the CAQ over the top.

Their two strongest regions are Quebec City and central Quebec. The CAQ is projected to win seven of 11 seats in the capital, and lead with 37.4%. In central Quebec, particularly in Chaudière-Appalaches and parts of Estrie and the Centre-du-Québec, the CAQ is well placed to win a swathe of seats as well.

Whether they form the Official Opposition could be decided in the Montreal suburbs, where they are projected to win seven seats (including those of Legault, Duchesneau, and Gaétan Barrette). They could bump that up to nine, but the polls have not moved in their favour in this region enough to give them many more seats.

The party is weaker in eastern and western Quebec, where only a handful of seats might go their way. They are expected to be shut out from the island of Montreal, though with 17.1% support they have done much better than the ADQ.

The CAQ is the hardest party to project in this election because of its status as a "new" party. The polls indicate that the CAQ is following in the footsteps of the ADQ, but there is a strong possibility that their support could be higher or lower than expected in certain ridings. The three ridings occupied by the floor-crossers (Blainville, Deux-Montagnes, and Sanguinet) are particularly mysterious. The model awards bonuses to floor-crossers as they take their old votes with them, but it is hard to say if that will happen with these three CAQ incumbents. These are three seats that I suspect could go a different way tomorrow night than expected, particularly Blainville where the PQ has a strong candidate. If that occurs, though, the odds of a CAQ Official Opposition diminish considerably.

If any party is going to cause a surprise in the polls, it is the CAQ. How their vote turns out will likely decide the result of the election.

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How the votes of Québec Solidaire will turnout will also be very important. From less than 4% in 2008, QS has done fairly well in this election. They are projected to almost double their support, and if things go very well for them they could more than double their vote haul.

The party has 7.6% support among francophones and 4.7% support among non-francophones, a decent split for a party that has their best shot in some of the most multi-cultural parts of Montreal.

That is where their election will play out, as the projection gives them 12.1% on the island. They could also take as much as 16.1%, but the projection does not award QS the possibility of more than two seats.

Personally, I would not be shocked to see QS win three or four. They have a good shot in Laurier-Dorion and Sainte-Marie-Saint-Jacques, two ridings where Québec Solidaire's maximum result is three points or less from being within range of making the ridings potential pick-ups. Amir Khadir was not expected to win in Mercier in 2008, so we should not be surprised if QS is able to over-achieve in these two ridings.

Outside of Montreal, QS is not in the running for any other seats. They are not expected to get more than 6% support in any other region of the province. They could put up some good scores in Hull and Taschereau, but in neither of those ridings is the expected winner low enough to put QS within range.

If QS manages to get both Khadir and Françoise David elected, they should consider the election a success. Having their two strongest personalities in the National Assembly will make it much easier for them to win three or four seats in the next election. If they manage to pull that off this time, the election will be a smashing success.

Meanwhile, the survival of Option Nationale depends on whether their leader is re-elected in Nicolet-Bécancour. The projection does not expect that to happen, but it also does not rule it out. It is very difficult to estimate what will happen in this riding. The polls have shown that either Jean-Martin Aussant or the CAQ's candidate could win, but the samples have been so small that the riding can be considered a four-way race. If Aussant is not elected, ON will not survive as a viable party. If he is re-elected, it has a shot.

But its support is very small and the party is unlikely to hit double-digits in any riding aside from Aussant's. That they managed to put 121 candidates on the ballot is remarkable for such a young party, but while its youth gives it some of the most enthusiastic support it also provides a handicap. Young people don't vote in the same numbers as older people.

People who support Option Nationale would likely vote PQ or QS if the party was not on the ballot. Aside from seeing whether Aussant gets re-elected, it will be interesting to see whether ON will end up costing either PQ or QS any seats.

This was a horrible campaign for the Green Party. Their leader, Claude Sabourin, was unable to get himself in the news aside from a story in which a reporter from La Presse was able to get himself nominated as a Green candidate without any sort of background check.

With little more than half of a full slate, this is the worst performance for the Greens since 2003. They are not expected to take more than 2% of the vote, and are more likely to get 1%. Sabourin might manage double-digits in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, but any shot the Greens had at strong performances were lost when the CAQ emerged as the alternative choice of anglophones.

One long night, many questions to answer

Let's be honest - no one will look at polls and projections the same again after the Alberta campaign. Never mind that it was an extraordinarily exceptional event, there will always be some (including Jean Charest) who will point to that result as a reason to never believe polls ever again. Tomorrow will determine whether he has a point. If something like that happens, the race is close enough that any of the three main parties could win. I really don't think something like that will happen, but let's take the opportunity to recognize that no one can ever be 100% certain of anything when it comes to democracy.

Putting that aside, Quebec appears to be almost certainly headed towards a PQ government. The question that will be answered tomorrow night is whether they will be awarded a minority or majority government. If the PQ does not get a majority, their minority is likely to be so large that a scenario where Jean Charest remains in power is unimaginable. So that is really what is at stake, and it will be up to those swing voters hesitating between QS/ON and the PQ, the CAQ and the PQ, and the Liberals and the CAQ to decide.

Then there is the question of who will form the Official Opposition. If the Liberal vote turns out, their vote efficiency virtually assures they will finish second. If it doesn't, or if the CAQ gets a boost in support in the last days of the campaign, then François Legault will become the Leader of the Official Opposition. If Jean Charest is not elected in his riding of Sherbrooke, Legault will likely become the de facto head of the opposition either way.

In addition to those two big questions, there are many small ones to answer. Will Françoise David be elected? Can QS win a third or fourth seat? Will Jean-Martin Aussant return to the National Assembly? Will voters be scared off from the PQ because of the threat of a referendum? Will Jacques Duchesneau, Gaétan Barrette, Léo Bureau-Blouin, the CAQ transfuges, and even François Legault win in their ridings?

It will be a long and fascinating night.

PQ on verge of losing majority

Polls from Forum Research for The National Post and CROP for La Presse have been added to the projection. Together, they suggest that the Parti Québécois's quest for a majority is on a knife's edge, and that the role of the Official Opposition is still very much up for grabs.

The projection awards the Parti Québécois 33.7% support, compared to 28.1% for the Liberals and 26% for the Coalition Avenir Québec. In fourth is Québec Solidaire, at their highest point in the campaign with 7.8% support.

This would deliver 64 seats to the PQ, 33 to the Liberals, 26 to the CAQ, and two to Québec Solidaire. As 63 seats are needed for a majority government, the PQ is really on the edge. If the projection is off by two seats, which would be a great result, it would mean the difference between minority and majority.

The ranges show, however, that the PQ is the only party in the running for government. They could win between 54 and 73 seats, straddling the majority line almost exactly. The Liberals, with between 27 and 43 seats, are well placed to form the Official Opposition (and they can thank Montreal for that), but the CAQ could also take on the job with between 19 and 32 seats.

Québec Solidaire, with between one and two seats, and Option Nationale, with potentially one seat, could hold the balance of power.

The CAQ has been making gains in central Quebec and the suburbs around Montreal, putting a lot of pressure on the Parti Québécois. They are doing very well in Quebec City but are not strong enough in other parts of the province to have a shot at forming government. The Liberals, with their solid base of support in Montreal and the Outaouais (22 of their 33 seats), have a head-start on the CAQ.

The turnout adjustment benefits the PQ and the Liberals only slightly in terms of seats. Without the adjustment, the poll averages alone would still deliver 32 seats to the Liberals and 61 to the Parti Québécois. That means a minority, but with the two seats from Québec Solidaire the PQ could make it work. The CAQ, with 30 seats, still ends up in third place even with a second place finish in the popular vote.

The unexpected CROP poll of this morning shows very little change from their last poll of Aug. 24-26. The PQ is down one point to 32% while the CAQ and PLQ are steady at 28% and 26%, respectively. With a two point gain, Québec Solidaire is now at 9%.

All of these shifts are within the margin of error, however, suggesting that things are now solidifying. The CAQ needs to continue its momentum in order to have a shot, but that does not seem to be in the cards for them.

But it is worth noting that while the shifts in support are statistically insignificant, the lead the PQ holds over the CAQ is as well (just). We also can't say with absolute certainty that the CAQ is ahead of the Liberals (though we can say that the PQ is). It makes for a potentially interesting finish on Tuesday night.

Forum fell into line with everyone else after their stand-out poll from last week, but the firm still seems to be showing better numbers for the Liberals. Perhaps the IVR method overcomes a "shy Tory" factor for the PLQ. We will find out on election night.

Since that last poll of Aug. 20, the PQ has gained four points and leads with 33%, followed by the Liberals at 28% (-7), the CAQ at 27% (+3), and Québec Solidaire at 8% (-1).

Together, these two polls tell a similar story of a close three-way race. The PQ has the advantage but neither the CAQ nor the PLQ are taking on runner-up status. The CAQ is ahead in Quebec City and the PQ elsewhere, while QS is doing better than they were before the debates.

We will have to wait and see what Léger Marketing says with their final poll, expected this weekend.

Riding polls

A large amount of riding polls were released in the last few days, and all have been added to the projection. Let's go through them quickly.

A poll for Le Soleil by Segma in Taschereau found Agnès Maltais of the PQ well ahead of Clément Gignac of the Liberals, with 41% to 19%. QS and the CAQ tied for third with 16% apiece. The projection also showed Maltais as the likely winner.

Another Segma poll for Le Voix de l'Est in Brome-Missisquoi found a close three-way race. Benoit Legault of the CAQ came out ahead with 32% to Richard Leclerc's 31%. The incumbent Liberal, Pierre Paradis, was in third with 27%. The projection also shows a close three-way race, but gives Paradis the advantage.

A poll in Papineau by Segma for Le Droit put Jean-François Primeau of the PQ ahead with 36%, followed at length by Alexandre Iraca of the Liberals with 27%. It confirmed the projection's prediction that Papineau would go PQ, but it did not give Primeau such a large lead in the formally safe Liberal riding.

Three polls by Forum Research for the Stantead Journal showed close races in Estrie: 36% for the Liberals to 35% for the PQ in Orford, 39% for the PQ to 37% for the Liberals in Saint-François, and 41% for Serge Cardin of the PQ to 39% for Jean Charest in Sherbrooke. That last one is of some interest, considering the leads that Segma has given Cardin in two polls.

Moving on to the Gaspésie, two polls by Segma agreed with 308 that the PQ could win Bonaventure and Gaspé, but the poll for Graffici put the Liberals much further behind in the latter: 57% for Gaétan Lelièvre in Gaspé to 20% for the incumbent Georges Mamelonet. It showed a closer race in Bonaventure, with 41% for Sylvain Roy of the PQ to 34% for Damien Arsenault of the PLQ.

Another poll in Saint-François, this time by Segma for La Tribune, gave the PQ's Réjean Hébert a 20 point lead over Nathalie Goguen, with 46% to 26%. That is much more in line with what the projection had.

And finally, five polls this morning by Segma for Le Quotidien in Dubuc, Chicoutimi, Jonquière, Roberval, and Lac-Saint-Jean confirmed that the PQ is poised to sweep the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean. Interestingly, however, in all of the ridings except Roberval the CAQ has moved into second, ahead of the Liberals. On average, the CAQ gained six points in these ridings since Segma's last poll of the region between Aug. 11-16. Both the PQ and the Liberals have lost three points. This is a strong indication of how the Liberals are suffering in francophone Quebec, but also how the PQ is relatively stagnant. Remember that the PQ is likely to win the election on Tuesday with less of the vote than they took in their 2008 defeat.

PQ still in majority territory, but less secure

A new poll by CROP for La Presse confirmed the results of the weekend's Léger Marketing poll to within a percentage point, giving the Parti Québécois a five-point lead over the (now) second place Coalition Avenir Québec. Though CROP believes the numbers would deliver the PQ a minority government, ThreeHundredEight still has Pauline Marois on track for a majority.

The changes from the last projection have been minimal, with the PQ and Liberals dropping one seat each to the benefit of the CAQ and Québec Solidaire. The Parti Québécois leads with a projected 34.1% support, followed by the Liberals at 28.5% and the CAQ at 25.8%.

Québec Solidaire (6.7%), Option Nationale (2.1%), and the Greens (1.8%) round-out the top six.

It is worth noting that though the projection gives the Liberals a second place finish, the unadjusted poll average now puts the CAQ narrowly ahead with 27.6% to 27.3% in voting intentions.

In terms of seats, the projection now awards the PQ 66, three more than is needed for a majority government. The Liberals take 32 and the CAQ take 25, with two seats going to Québec Solidaire.

The ranges have widened somewhat, however. The PQ could win between 48 and 79 seats, suggesting that a minority government is still very much a possibility. The Liberals could win between 24 and 52 seats, theoretically making a PLQ minority possible. But that is an extraordinarily unlikely scenario of Albertan proportions.

They should be more concerned with the CAQ, who has a range of between 13 and 34 seats. Their upper range is above the forecasted result for the Liberals. Considering the way the campaign is going (Liberals sliding, CAQ gaining), the race is truly on for the role of the Official Opposition.

Québec Solidaire should win one or two seats, while Jean-Martin Aussant can still hope to win his seat of Nicolet-Bécancour.

There have not been any major shifts in support as the CROP poll was very similar to the recent numbers by Léger and Segma Recherche. The Liberals did slip slightly on the island of Montreal and among non-francophones, but it did not cost them a seat. Their loss was in Quebec City, where they were down slightly and the PQ was up by even less. The CAQ made gains in the suburbs of Montreal, however, and are poised to start picking off PQ seats if things continue in this fashion.

CROP was last in the field Aug. 12-14, and since then there have been no statistically significant shifts in support. That does not mean that nothing has happened, as the confirmation of a third place finish for the Liberals does tell us something. 

The PQ was down one point to 33% while the CAQ was up three to 28%. The Liberals were down one to 26%, while Québec Solidaire was unchanged at 7%.

The lead the PQ holds is statistically significant (though just barely), while they also hold a noteworthy lead among francophones. Their support has dropped, however, by three points to 36%. The CAQ is up four to 30% among francophones, while the Liberals are down two to 19%.

The Liberals continue to lead among non-francophones with 57%, unchanged from CROP's last poll. The CAQ, at 20%, is also steady.

The PQ has the edge in the Montreal suburbs and in the regions of Quebec, while the CAQ is ahead in Quebec City. The Liberals are in front on the island of Montreal. The PQ saw negligible growth in the two regions where they have the advantage, but took losses in Quebec City and the island of Montreal. The CAQ was up across the board (except in Montreal), while the Liberals were down across the board (again, except in Montreal). The polls are unanimous on this question - despite their sagging support, Jean Charest's Liberals are still doing well on the island.

Riding polls

Two riding polls were also added to the projection. A poll by Cible Recherche for TVA in Trois-Rivières suggests that Djemila Benhabib of the PQ is in a strong position with 38%. Danielle St-Amand, the incumbent Liberal MNA, trails with 29%. The CAQ is further behind with 21% support. This poll echoes the one done by Segma early in the campaign, and is in opposition to the small-sample poll by Baromètre that gave the Liberals a wide lead. The projection has had the PQ in front for some time.

The other poll was in Hull. Conducted for Le Droit, the Segma poll found the Liberal incumbent Maryse Gaudreault leading with 39%. The PQ's Gilles Aubé trails with 30%, while Québec Solidaire placed third with 14%. The CAQ was in fourth with 12%. Though the projection had a slightly closer race, this is generally in line with what the model had. It also seems to contradict some of what Jean-Marc Léger has said about the Outaouais region, which he has called a three-way race. The ADQ has never been a factor in the Outaouais, and it does not seem like the CAQ is making inroads either.

A bevy of riding polls were released this morning for Taschereau, Brome-Missisquoi, Papineau, Orford, Saint-François, and Sherbrooke but they have yet to be added to the model. I will take a look at them in detail in the next update.

PQ in precarious majority position as CAQ moves up

On Saturday, Le Journal de Montréal released the latest set of numbers from Léger Marketing suggesting that the Parti Québécois was still comfortably in the lead. More significantly, however, the poll indicated that the Coalition Avenier Québec has moved into second, ahead of the governing Liberals. A poll this morning for Le Soleil by Segma Recherche also points to Liberal woes, in this case in Quebec City. But a few riding polls released over the last three days suggest that the Liberals do still have some staying power.

The projection currently awards the Parti Québécois 34% support, with the Liberals trailing at 29.4% and the CAQ at 25.6%. Québec Solidaire, with 6.8% support, is well behind the three frontrunners.

The PQ is projected to win 67 seats, giving them four more than the bare minimum needed for a majority government. With 33 seats, the Liberals would form the Official Opposition while the CAQ would claim 24 seats and QS one.

But this order of finish is far from certain. If an election were held today, the PQ could emerge with a minority or a majority, as the range puts them between 52 and 78 seats. Though the PQ's minimum ties with the Liberals' maximum, it is extremely unlikely that the two parties would end up equal in seats.

The Liberals should be more concerned with not finishing third, as the range puts them between 26 and 52 seats. That means they overlap with the CAQ's 12-32 seat range, and with François Legault claiming a tiny bit of positive momentum to Jean Charest's negative trendlines, the odds are good that the CAQ could be in second place by the time the election rolls around.

Regionally, the Parti Québécois is leading in the Montreal suburbs (39.8% to the CAQ's 28.7% and the Liberals' 20.9%) and in the eastern (43.9% to 25.7% for the PLQ) and western (38.8% to 25.8% for the Liberals and 24.2% for the CAQ) parts of the province.

The Liberals only lead on the island of Montreal, though it is the widest lead in any region in Quebec. The Liberals have 46.2% support in the projection on the island, compared to 26.1% for the PQ and 13.6% for the CAQ.

Legault's party, on the other hand, claims two leads. He is ahead in Quebec City with 36.5% support, trailed at length by the Liberals at 28.4% and the PQ at 25.1%. And in central Quebec, the CAQ is narrowly ahead with 33.2% to the PQ's 31% and the PLQ's 26.1%. It is a close three-way race, but the Liberals get the worst of it: the PQ is projected to win 10 seats in the region, with the CAQ winning nine and the Liberals only one.

The Léger poll from Saturday was eagerly awaited, as the only available set of numbers came in the form of the widely lampooned Forum Research poll.

Rather than a big swing in favour of one party or another, Léger found things to be relatively stable since their poll of Aug. 13-16: the PQ unchanged at 33%, the CAQ up one to 28%, and the Liberals down one to 27%.

Though the gap between the Liberals and the CAQ is well within the margin of error, making it impossible to claim with any certainty that the Liberals are in fact in third place, the psychological effect of that positioning could be catastrophic. If Legault and the CAQ appear to be the only real bulwark to the Parti Québécois, the Liberals could shed federalist support over the next few days.

While the gap between second and third was statistically insignificant, that between the PQ and the CAQ was not. The PQ also holds a significant lead among francophones with 38% (-2) to 31% (+2). The Liberals' dominance among non-francophones remains unchallenged, however, with 67% support. The CAQ is down five points to 15% among this electorate.

Though most movement was within the margin of error, some was noteworthy. Québec Solidaire was up three points in the Montreal region to 9%, suggesting the performance of Françoise David in last Sunday's debate helped her party's fortunes. The CAQ was up eight big points in Quebec City to 46%, while the Liberals were up 11 on the island of Montreal to 45%. They were down considerably in the suburbs of Montreal, however, particularly north of the city.

Segma's poll of Quebec City provides a little bit of contrast with Léger's numbers, though the two were taken over slightly different days (Aug. 23-24 for Léger, Aug. 22-25 for Segma).

While Léger found the CAQ with 46% support and a lead of 22 points, Segma pegged the party at 34%, five points up on the Liberals.

They both show a statistically significant CAQ lead in the Capitale-Nationale, and the results for the PLQ and PQ are within the margin of error of each poll. But it is impossible to reconcile the two results for the CAQ. The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle, but one or both of these polls is likely a little off.

Segma broke the results into the Rive-Nord (generally Quebec City itself) and the Rive-Sud (Lévis and surroundings), finding the CAQ in the lead in both areas. The area around Lévis was the last stronghold of the federal Conservatives in the last federal election, likely explaining the better CAQ results there. The PQ is much more competitive in Quebec City itself (and the projection accordingly has them in the running for four seats in the region, though one is more likely) but generally the race in and around the capital is between the CAQ and the PLQ.

Riding polls

There are pockets of stronger support for each party. Segma released two riding polls, taken Aug. 21-25 and using a hybrid IVR/live-caller method. In Lévis, Christian Dubé of the CAQ (future Finance Minister of a CAQ government, apparently) is in strong position with 41%, compared to 27% for the Liberal incumbent Gilles Lehouillier. The PQ trails with 18% and Québec Solidaire with 10% (a good result).

In Louis-Hébert, Sam Hamad of the Liberals has a statistically insignificant lead over the CAQ's Michel Hamel with 35% support to 30%, with the PQ's Rosette Côté not far behind at 26%.

The projection was very close for these two ridings, with Lévis projected at 42% CAQ to 27% for the Liberals and 21% for the PQ, before adding Segma's numbers to the model. In Louis-Hébert, the projection had 35% PLQ, 32% CAQ, and 26% PQ.

Two riding polls were also released over the weekend in smaller local newspapers. A poll by Cara-Télécom for La Nouvelle Union taken Aug. 21 found Claude Bachand of the Liberals to have 39.8% support in Arthabaska, compared to 32.6% for the CAQ's Sylvie Roy and 18.1% for the PQ candidate. With a large margin of error, Bachand is not out of the woods.

And a poll by Baromètre of Trois-Rivières put Danielle St-Amand back in front with 37.7% compared to 29.8% for the PQ's Djemila Benhabib and 26% for the CAQ. This is in contrast to a Segma poll from earlier in the campaign that gave the PQ a six-point lead and put the CAQ well out of the race. Again, the sample is small here so the lead St-Amand holds is not important.

Nevertheless, these two polls show that the Liberals do have the ability to hold on to ridings where they are the incumbent. Whether these numbers will hold is another thing entirely, and in consideration of the small sample sizes we can only say that the Liberals are not out of the running in these two ridings. That this is good news for the Liberals speaks to the predicament they are in.

Charest continues to trail in Sherbrooke

Over the last few years, elections in Quebec have featured riding-level polling to a degree that is rarely seen in any other jurisdiction in Canada. About one-third of ridings in Quebec were individually polled in the 2011 federal election, compared to a handful in the rest of the country. Riding polls in the 2008 provincial election were also common. Ten ridings have been polled so far in this campaign.

The riding poll in Sherbrooke released in the second week of the campaign captured the most attention, as it put Jean Charest behind the PQ's Serge Cardin by 15 points. It certainly put a damper on the Liberal campaign, and is likely one of the reasons why Charest has visited his riding several times over the last few weeks. Those visits do not seem to have helped, as Segma Recherche was back in the field this week and found that Charest still trails by double-digits.

Segma was last in the field in Sherbrooke on August 6-8, and since then there has been very little change in the voting intentions of people in the riding.

Cardin is down one point to 45% while Charest is up two to 33%, insignificant amounts of change in a poll with a margin of error of +/- 4.3%. Despite the relatively high margin of error, however, Serge Cardin's lead is statistically significant.

The CAQ is down one point to 10% in the riding, while Québec Solidaire is up one point to 7%. Option Nationale is up one to 3% and the Greens are unchanged at 2%, while the Parti indépendantiste's candidate sits at 1% support.

Riding polls have been off before, but this is a rather considerable gap between Serge Cardin and Jean Charest. The premier's chances are worsened by the fact that Segma has demonstrated consistent results over two polls. It could very well be that voters in Sherbrooke fully intend to oust Charest from office themselves, regardless of what happens in the rest of the province.

Segma Recherche also polled the riding of Saint-Maurice for Le Nouvelliste, a riding somewhat up for grabs due to the retirement of the incumbent PQ MNA. Nevertheless, Luc Trudel of the Parti Québécois is holding firm with 42%, virtually unchanged from the 43% the PQ took in 2008.

The Liberal candidate, Robert Pilotte, has 26% support (down 12 points from the last election) while Pierre Giguère of the CAQ is at 22% (the ADQ took 15% in 2008).

They are followed at length by Québec Solidaire (5%), and Option Nationale (2%). An independent candidate and the Parti unité nationale share 3% support.

The poll in Saint-Maurice is not surprising, as the PQ is the incumbent party and they are doing much better than the Liberals among francophones. 

But do these two polls suggest that the Forum poll from earlier this week might have been wrong-headed?

The current projection, which incorporates the results of the Forum poll, gives the PQ 38% in Sherbrooke with the Liberals trailing at 35%. It places Québec Solidaire at 12% and the CAQ at 10%. The current projection in Saint-Maurice is 39% for the PQ, 33% for the PLQ, and 19% for the CAQ.

The projection, then, over-estimates Liberal support and under-estimates support for the PQ. If we remove Forum's poll from the equation entirely, the projection turns out to be much closer for both ridings. In Sherbrooke, it would instead be 43% PQ, 30% PLQ, 10% CAQ, and 7% QS. In Saint-Maurice, it would be 43% PQ, 28% PLQ, and 19% CAQ.

In other words, these two Segma riding polls seem to suggest that the surge in Liberal support recorded by Forum Research did not take place - or that it dissipated over the course of the three one-on-one debates. The projection for individual ridings has matched up to the results of Segma's polling quite well so far in this campaign. It could be coincidental that they do not match up so closely this time around, or it could be that the Forum poll was indeed off the mark. Undoubtedly, Léger Marketing and CROP will report in the next few days and clear the matter up. 

Rogue poll or a turning of the tide for PLQ?

So you might have heard that a new poll came out today. A collective scoff emerged from Quebec when The National Post released the details of the newest Forum Research poll. The survey puts the Liberals ahead of the Parti Québécois by six points, after having the PLQ trail by four only a week ago. Is it a rogue poll? A 19 out of 20 result? Just a badly done bit of public opinion polling? Or the first sign that things are turning around for Jean Charest? We'll find out soon enough.

I wrote about the poll for The Globe and Mail this morning, so I invite you to read the article for more detail on how it stands up to other surveys in the province.

The projection has swung hard because of this poll, with the Liberals up 4.3 points to 34.2% and the Parti Québécois down 3.5 points to 31.5%. The CAQ, with 23%, is down 1.6 points. Québec Solidare picked up 1.8 points to hit 7.5%.

With the Liberals now in front in the vote projection, they also move ahead in the seat projection. They picked up 20 seats to surge to 58, five short of a majority, while the PQ dropped 16 seats to 49. The CAQ dropped five seats to 16 and Québec Solidaire increased their share from one to two.

It goes without saying that the poll has injected a great deal of uncertainty into the projection, which now gives the Liberals and the PQ the possibility of forming a majority government or winning as few as 35 seats. In other words, because of this poll the projection model has no idea what would happen if an election took place today. This was the same sort of thing that occurred when Forum released their eleventh hour poll on the eve of the Alberta election, suggesting that a swing from Wildrose to the Progressive Conservatives was taking place. That a swing was underway turned out to be right, but it was the kind of swing that people were expecting to happen in Alberta but never seemed to (at least in the last week of polls). This swing from the PQ to the Liberals is completely unexpected.

For that reason, I don't want to get too much into the details of the new projection. If this is a rogue poll, it will swing back hard when Léger Marketing and CROP release their new numbers. If it isn't, and the two Quebec-based firms show the same Liberal surge in support, then we will know something is really going on. We should probably give Forum the benefit of the doubt for now and consider them innocent until proven guilty. Few believed the first poll that showed the New Democrats surging in Quebec in the 2011 federal election, after all.

After watching the three debates that have taken place so far, it does not seem unlikely that Jean Charest has indeed stopped the bleeding. I'm not convinced, however, that he did enough to cause such a huge shift in voting intentions. The final debate between Pauline Marois and François Legault, which takes place tonight, will be very important in deciding how the anti-Charest francophone vote will go. Marois has the advantage (even in Forum's poll), so the onus is on the CAQ leader to perform.

Forum was last in the field on August 13, and since then the Liberals increased their support by four points to lead with 35%. The PQ dropped six points to 29%. The CAQ was down one point to 24%.

Likely due to Françoise David's good performance in the debate, QS increased their support by three points. At 9%, the party is at their high watermark of the campaign so far. But Forum also added Option Nationale to their polling. At 1% they are not a big factor, but combined with the three points that QS gained we start to see where the PQ lost their six points.

But the Parti Québécois does still have an ace up their sleeve, as Forum found that 82% of their voters are very or somewhat enthusiastic about voting for the party. By contrast, enthusiasm sits at 72% among Liberals and 70% among CAQ voters. If that's a proxy for turnout, that transforms a six-point Liberal lead into a neck-and-neck race with the PQ.

On the other hand, 48% of PQ supporters felt that Françoise David won the Sunday debate, compared to 23% who said Marois won it. CAQ voters were more split between David and Legault, while PLQ voters felt Charest won. This indicates a less than strong attachment to Marois from PQ supporters.

Riding polls

Another riding poll for Nicolet-Bécancour has emerged. The riding is looking like one of the most interesting in Quebec, as a poll by Cara-Telecom for Le Courrier Sud and CKBN Radio sees a four-way race. With only 223 surveyed the margin of error is quite high (+/- 6.6%), but the poll gives Jean-Martin Aussant 29.7% support to 26.2% for the CAQ's Donald Martel. The Liberals are not far behind at 24.1% while the PQ brings up the rear at 20%.

The results are not very different to Cible Recherche's poll taken over some of the same days, which also put the race as one between Aussant and Martel. The only difference is in Liberal and PQ support, but the margin of error takes care of that. Nicolet-Bécancour will certainly be a riding to watch on Sept. 4, and if the result of the election is a minority government that one seat could be extremely important.

Charest's Liberals in the lead?

As I work to include the latest poll by Forum Research for The National Post into the projection, I invite you to read my take on the surprising results in my article for The Globe and Mail.

The reaction to the poll has been pretty skeptical in the Twittersphere. I have to admit that such a dramatic and unexpected turn of events leads me to raise an eyebrow as well, but we should wait and see what the other active firms in Quebec have to say before passing complete judgement on the poll. Then again, as I mention in the article, the three one-on-one debates could change things on their own and thereby prevent us from knowing whether Forum was capturing a real surge in support for the Liberals or just a statistical wobble.

Practically speaking, the projection will swing pretty wildly due to this poll. The most recent survey before Forum's is older by five days (in terms of the median date used for weighting), meaning Forum's poll will take up a lot of space in the projection. It will be more interesting to see where everything stands after CROP and Léger have reported, as it will give us a chance to 'triangulate' things, but if Forum is indeed capturing a shifting tide then the projection will have swung in the right direction. We shall see.

Tight race in Nicolet-Bécancour and Trois-Rivières

The debates are in full swing and the effects won't be reflected in polls until a couple of days after tomorrow night's final contest between Pauline Marois and François Legault, but a few riding polls have been released over the last few days for two interesting ridings and the region of Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean.

Trois-Rivières is a particularly notable riding because of the recent controversy over the PQ's policy on the crucifix in the National Assembly and Saguenay mayor Jean Tremblay's comments about the Parti Québécois candidate. Djemila Benhabib, an author who lived in the Outaouais region and the target of Tremblay's comments, was also parachuted into the riding.

Nevertheless, 36% of voters in the riding say they will support her (80% saying that Tremblay's comments have no influence on their vote). That gives her a six-point lead over Danielle St-Amand, the incumbent Liberal MNA. The CAQ trails with 18% while Québec Solidaire is further behind with 8%.

The projection currently has the PQ with 38% of the vote in the riding to 30% for the Liberals and 22% for the CAQ. While this shows the model is working well, it is also interesting that despite all of the local issues and controversies the riding is behaving generally as expected.

Nicolet-Bécancour was a bit of a mystery, though. The riding is where Jean-Martin Aussant, leader of Option Nationale and former PQ MNA, is running. The presence of an incumbent MNA from a new fringe party makes the riding very difficult to predict. How much of the PQ's vote would swing over to ON?

The result is a lead for the CAQ's Donald Martel with 30.6% of the vote, narrowly edging out Aussant's 27.7%. The PQ trails in third with 25.4% while the Liberals are well behind with 16.3%.

The projection currently has the CAQ at 34%, the Liberals at 25%, the PQ at 22%, and ON at 18%, within the margin of error of the poll for the CAQ and PQ, while the ranges were wide enough to envision the poll's result for Aussant. That it pegged the CAQ as leading in the riding is a good sign, but figuring out the proportion of the vote that Aussant would be able to hold on to was always going to be difficult, as the model can only base itself on previous cases in other elections. The poll will be incorporated into the projection with the next update and will put Aussant within range of winning.

A huge proportion of respondents (42%) were undecided, so the race in Nicolet-Bécancour could go any which way. But it is interesting that Aussant, first elected under the PQ banner in 2008, has been able to hold on to so much of his vote. It puts him in a very good position - unless François Legault manages to increase his party's support significantly province-wide.

Lastly, we have (another) series of riding polls for the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, this time by Trigone. I am not familiar with this firm.

Trigone was in the field on most of the days that Segma was and the results match up very closely, particularly considering the margins of error applicable to sample sizes of between 176 and 215 people per riding (Segma polled about 600 people per riding).

The poll shows the PQ with a very wide lead across the board, including Dubuc where the Liberals are the incumbent, and 60% support in the region as a whole. This backs up the results of Segma and suggests that Léger's small-sample regional result (which showed a much closer race, though still a PQ lead) was the odd-man out.

All of these polls are pre-debate, so things could change dramatically over the next few days. But these results certainly don't bode well for the Liberals' chances in francophone Quebec.

CAQ gains put PQ majority in question

Le Journal de Montréal released the details of a monster Léger Marketing survey at midnight to great anticipation, though the results were less shocking than they were in-depth. But they do show that the Coalition Avenir Québec is continuing to make modest, but steady, gains. Now that they are pushing the Liberals for second place, they are also starting to push the Parti Québécois out of some seats.

But the PQ is still in the lead, though the party slipped one point to 35% in the projection. They are also down five seats to 65, putting them just over the bar of the 63 seats needed to form a majority government.

The Liberal slide continues, as they have dropped 1.2 points to 29.9%. Because of better numbers in and around Montreal, however, the party has managed to increase its seat haul by one to 38.

The CAQ is up 1.4 points to 24.6% and five seats to 21, while Québec Solidaire is down 0.2 points and one seat to 5.7% and Amir Khadir.

Option Nationale is up 1.2 points to 2.1%, putting them ahead of the Greens. They are down 0.2 points to 1.6%.

The seat ranges have moved significantly, with the Parti Québécois capable of winning between 53 and 79 seats. As the Liberal range has dropped to between 24 and 51 seats, a Liberal plurality is no longer considered possible. Instead, they are now threatened by the CAQ for the role of Official Opposition, as the party could win between 14 and 32 seats. That is a bit of an overlap, and with the CAQ having the momentum and running much closer in the straight poll average, the odds are turning against the Liberals.

Québec Solidaire dropped significantly on the island of Montreal, falling 3.9 points to only 8.1%. That puts them only a few ticks above their 2008 performance, and that is why the party is only projected to win one seat, and as few as none. The Liberals dropped 2.1 points to 36.4% and the PQ two points to 29.1%, while the CAQ made a big five point gain. They now sit at 18.7% and actually have three seats in range. That is primarily due to the divergent poll results increasing the volatility on the island, but it is something to keep an eye on.

In the suburbs around Montreal, the PQ dropped two points to 36.4% and six seats. The lion's share of the gains went to the Liberals, up 1.3 points to 28.7% and four seats. The CAQ was also up, gaining a point to reach 26.6%.

Quebec City saw a fair amount of change, as the Léger poll gave the CAQ a wide lead, rather than the Liberal lead that CROP identified. As a result, the CAQ picked up 3.6 points to reach 34.1%, and is up three seats to six. The Liberals dropped 5.6 points to 29.6% and five seats to only three, opening an opportunity for the PQ. The party only increased its support by 0.4 points to 26.4%, but gained a seat in the process.

In central Quebec, the PQ continues to lead with 33.6% (-0.3) but the Liberals fell 0.3 points to 28.4%, costing them one seat. The CAQ won it despite dropping 1.7 points to 27.5%. Notable is the 3.3-point gain by Option Nationale in the region. They currently have 4% support, just behind Québec Solidaire. It is no coincidence that their best region of the province is also where Jean-Martin Aussant is running.

And in western Quebec, the CAQ picked up 3.6 points and one seat. They are still in third at 25.2%, but the gap has narrowed with the Liberals as they were down 2.8 points to 26.4%. The PQ, at 38.3%, still leads in the region.

Note that the projection model gives the Liberals (and the PQ) an organisational/turnout bonus, and this is why the party is still in second place in the Montreal suburbs and in eastern, central, and western Quebec. If we go just by the polls, however, the Liberals are in third in those regions.

Léger was last in the field on Aug. 6-8, and since then the PQ has gained one point and has extended its lead over the Liberals. The PQ sits at 33%, while the PLQ has dropped three points to only 28%. At 27%, the CAQ is steady.

Québec Solidaire is also unchanged at 6%, while Option Nationale is up one point to 3%, their best polling result on record. The Greens were unchanged at 2%.

Only the Liberals' three-point drop appears to be statistically significant. Their drop of 19 points among non-francophones is also notable, as they are now at 62%. The CAQ made a big 11-point gain to 20%, the second consecutive poll to give the party this level of support among these voters. It could be a coincidence, or it could be that the CAQ's attempts to woo the anglophone electorate are paying off.

The CAQ's increase on the island of Montreal (from 14% to 22%) is accordingly outside the margin of error, while Québec Solidaire's drop of five points to only 7% is also more than a wobble. It is quite unusual for QS to be polling so low in Montreal, their one region of concentrated support. 

Riding polls

Segma Recherche completed its tour of the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region for Le Quotidien today. In Roberval, Segma gives the PQ a wide lead with 53% to 26% for the Liberals. The CAQ, at 14%, trail in third by some distance. In Jonquière, the PQ is also very secure with 51% support to 20% for the Liberals and 17% for the CAQ. Both of these results were very close to what the projection had, but again we're seeing the Liberals being slightly over-estimated at the expense of the CAQ. 

But there is a bit of a variation between the results from Léger's poll (in the field Aug. 13-16) for the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean and the combined results of Segma's polling (the five surveys spanned Aug. 11-16 altogether). Léger gives the PQ the lead with 38%, but puts the CAQ at 26% and the Liberals at 22%. By contrast, the average of Segma's five riding polls gives the PQ 52% to 23% for the Liberals and only 17% for the CAQ.

Granted, Léger polled only 262 people in the region while Segma's five polls surveyed almost 3,000, so the margin of error can account for much of the discrepancy. Segma's more in-depth polling also has to be given the benefit of the doubt. But it does suggest that the PQ's lead in the area might not be as solid as Segma has found it to be. And if that is the case in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, could it be the case elsewhere?