Four Quebec by-elections a mid-term test for Couillard and Péladeau

Quebecers in four ridings will be heading to the polls yet again on Monday, as four by-elections are being held in the province to fill vacancies in the National Assembly. And based on the history of these four ridings, the results may provide a telling glimpse of where voters stand in Quebec about 19 months into Philippe Couillard's mandate.

Two of the by-elections are being held in the Greater Montreal region, while the other two are being held in the eastern part of the province. They each have something for the four major parties in Quebec.

In Beauce-Sud, a riding hugging the border with the United States and anchored by the town of St-Georges, the Liberals are hoping Paul Busque can hold the seat after the departure of Robert Dutil, a cabinet minister during Jean Charest's government. They will face their biggest challenge from Tom Redmond, a municipal councilor for St-Georges and the Coalition Avenir Québec's candidate.

At the west end of Laval lies the riding of Fabre, vacated by the Liberals' Gilles Ouimet. Monique Sauvé will be looking to hold it for the party, which should not prove difficult.

At the other end of the province in the Côte-Nord, including the towns of Forestville and Baie-Comeau, is the riding of René-Léveseque. The Parti Québécois's Marjolain Dufour gave up the seat, and the PQ has put up Martin Ouellet to retain it. Though it is unlikely the PQ would lose this riding, the biggest challenge will likely come from Baie-Comeau municipal councilor Karine Otis of the Liberals.

The last riding, the working class Montreal riding of Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne, was left vacant by the departure of former cabinet minister Marguerite Blais of the Liberals. The only real 'star' candidate of these by-elections is Dominique Anglade, former president of the CAQ, who the Liberals are hoping can keep the riding for their party. The PQ's Gabrielle Lemieux will likely put up the biggest fight, though Québec Solidaire is gunning for a strong performance with their candidate Marie-Eve Rancourt, who ran for the party here in 2008.

These four ridings, individually, are not particularly interesting. The smallest margin of victory in these four in 2014 was 12.3 points in Beauce-Sud, while the other three were won by margins of 30 points or more. Only in Beauce-Sud is an upset a serious possibility, as the margin has averaged just 5.4 points in the riding over the last three elections. The average margin has been 15 points or more in the other ridings.

Together, however, these ridings are quite interesting. That is because they have actually managed to be ridings that, combined, matched the province-wide outcomes quite closely.

As you can see in the table above, the average result in these four ridings has never differed very greatly from the overall results in the province. They have been very close for the Parti Québécois in particular, which means these by-elections may serve as a good indication of how Pierre-Karl Péladeau is doing as the PQ's new leader.

The average result across these four ridings may be the most interesting number to look at on Monday night. But let's return to each of the four races.

Though attention has primarily been on the race in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne, the by-election in Beauce-Sud could prove the closest. It was a very tight race between the Liberals and the CAQ (represented here by the ADQ's results in 2008) in 2008 and 2012, and was actually won by the ADQ in 2007. The CAQ's vote here has slipped a little over the last few elections, but it is nevertheless robust. 

The Liberals have dipped in the polls since the 2014 election, which may open up an opportunity for the CAQ here. But the CAQ has also dropped in support, primarily due to the arrival of Péladeau on the scene. That still gives the Liberals the best odds of holding on, but the CAQ's hopes are lying in Beauce-Sud.

There is little doubt that Fabre is a riding the Liberals should have no trouble retaining. They have easily won the riding over the last three elections, and saw their vote increase significantly in Fabre in 2014. The PQ's share has dropped consistently here over the last few campaigns, while the CAQ's strong showing in 2012 was due in part to the candidacy of Anglade, who is no longer available to the party. The ADQ did come relatively close here in 2007, but even that was when the Liberals were in a much poorer state than they are currently.

Polls suggest the Liberals are doing very well in the Montreal region, so this riding should hold firm for them. The question may be to see whether the PQ's Jibril Akaaboune Le-François can make some inroads in order to demonstrate that Péladeau's PQ can woo voters around the island of Montreal.

If Fabre is safe territory for the Liberals, then René-Lévesque is a stronghold for the PQ. With the brief exception of an ADQ by-election victory in 2002, the PQ has held this riding without interruption since 1994. In the 1995 sovereignty referendum, almost three out of every four voters in the riding opted for independence.

Support for the PQ has been over 50% in each of the last four elections, including the 2007 and 2014 campaigns when the party had the worst provincial performances in its history. Even in 2014, Dufour won the riding by just over 33 points. Considering that the Liberals are not in a better position in the polls today than they were a year ago, it is extremely unlikely that they can overcome that gap. In fact, it will be a disappointment for the PQ and Péladeau if they do not improve upon the 55% that Dufour managed in 2014.

Since its creation in 1994, the riding of Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne has only ever voted for the Quebec Liberals. Any change from that would be a tremendous upset.

The Liberals won this riding by just over 30 points in 2014, and still managed to win it by just over six points in 2012. Even under the best of circumstances, it is a stretch to imagine the PQ being able to wrest this riding away from the Liberals — particularly with Anglade on the ballot. 

But the riding does serve as a bit of a test for the PQ and QS. For the results to be good news for the Parti Québécois, they would like to see their numbers be back over 30%. More interesting might be the numbers for Québec Solidaire, which has managed double-digits in this riding over the last two elections. The party is also doing quite well in the polls, registering as high as 13% province-wide and nearly 20% in the Montreal region. A strong sign that QS is heading in the right direction would see its results top 20% in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne, though that might be a high bar to meet.

The safe money in these four by-elections would be on the four incumbent parties holding on. The CAQ could potentially pull off a victory in Beauce-Sud, while if things go well for the PQ they could get the Liberals nervous in Fabre and Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne. On the whole, however, the defeat of any incumbent party would be big news.

So instead the interest in these four by-elections will be on the overall performance of the parties, and whether they can out-perform expectations. They will primarily serve as tests to Couillard and Péladeau. Is the Liberal government in trouble or on the right track? Has Péladeau's leadership of the PQ led to any real gains for the party? Real ballots, and not just polls, will give us a clue on Monday night.

A different approach to seat projections

One lesson learned from the 2015 federal election is in the difficulty in projecting outcomes when the voting base of a party has dramatically shifted from one election to the next. In this case, it was the Liberal Party that attracted new and lapsed voters to the polls. Many of these voters appeared in unexpected numbers and in unexpected places, which is why virtually all seat projectors estimated that the Liberals were on track to win only a minority government, with a majority government being possible but unlikely.

Turnout in most elections does not dramatically shift from one campaign to the next, making it much easier to project outcomes at the seat level based on regional or provincial changes in support. It is no accident that the model has performed best when changes in turnout were lowest, while it has struggled more in elections with big changes in turnout.

But this is not all about new voters. More people voted in 2006 than in 2008 or 2011, meaning that a lot of people who voted in the 2006 election stayed home in the next two elections as the Liberals plummeted in public support. The Liberals did attract a lot of first-time voters in this campaign, but they were also successful in bringing back a lot of voters that just stayed home in 2008 and 2011.

Though there were a few surprises, the vast majority of the ridings the Liberals won in this campaign were ridings they had held in the past. Many of their pick-ups in Quebec, for instance, were won by the Liberals in 2000.

Taken together, this suggests that looking further back into a riding's history than just the most recent election can tell us a lot about how likely a riding is to go one way or another in the next election. If the basic principles of the swing model can work when looking at just one election, then they should be able to work when applied to elections further back in time, swinging the results from two or three elections ago according to where the polls are today.

This is what I tested with the 2015 results, swinging the results in each riding over the last three elections. I tried various weightings (looking at just the last two elections, giving all three elections equal weighting, trying proportions of 4/2/1, etc.), but the one that worked best was also the one that was most intuitive. It weighted the three elections with a proportion of 3/2/1, or 50% for 2011, 33.3% for 2008, and 16.7% for 2006.

As shown below, the results were very positive.

Using the actual provincial and regional vote shares (which is the real test of the projection model), the old model would have delivered the Liberals 154 seats, the Conservatives 120 seats, and the NDP 56 seats. The actual results for the Liberals and Conservatives would have fallen outside of the likely ranges, and into the maximum and minimum ranges.

But with the new model, the Liberals would have been projected to take 166 seats, the Conservatives 116, and the New Democrats 45. It would have been almost right on the mark for the NDP, and exactly on the mark for the Bloc Québécois. Most importantly, the Conservatives and Liberal results would have fallen within the likely ranges — the Liberal result falling well within that mark.

The regional projections would have been improved significantly, particularly in Quebec. The actual result there was 40 seats for the Liberals, 16 for the NDP, 12 for the Conservatives, and 10 for the Bloc. With the new model, it would have given 38 seats to the Liberals in Quebec, with 18 going to the NDP and 12 to the Tories. Only in Atlantic Canada would the results have not fallen within the maximum and minimum ranges, with the Liberals topping out at 30 seats and the NDP bottoming out at two. Peter Stoffer and Jack Harris would have still been projected to survive.

Even considering where the vote projection model stood on the eve of the election, this new seat projection model would have given the Liberals a range of between 128 and 177 seats — meaning their final tally of 184 seats would have fallen outside the likely range, but the potential for a Liberal majority victory would have been a big part of the final analysis (rather than the marginal part it was actually given).

Accuracy would have been higher at the riding level, increasing from 81.4% to 82.5%. But most significantly, the potential winners would have been identified in the high-low ranges in 91.4% of cases, meaning in only 29 ridings would the potential winner have been missed, compared to 43 with the old model.

This new model requires a few other changes, including some judgement calls in terms of how to handle special cases. This involves ignoring the results of some past elections, such as the 2006 and 2008 elections in Saanich–Gulf Islands, where Elizabeth May did not run, or cases where an independent took an out-sized portion of the vote (as in 2006 in Portneuf–Jacques-Cartier, when the Conservatives ran a candidate against independent André Arthur, or in 2008 when Bill Casey ran as an independent in what is now Cumberland–Colchester).

In addition, the incumbency effect built into the model is now a redundancy, as the results of the previous elections already take into account an incumbent's ability to withstand wider trends. Losing an incumbent, however, is still applicable.

Note that I do intend to run this new model through more tests as time permits to ensure that its improved performance isn't due to a fluke related just to the 2015 federal election. But time is an issue, because the next provincial election is just weeks away.

The next test: Newfoundland and Labrador

This new model may never be tested for real at the federal level, as the next election may not be decided according to the first-past-the-post system. Elements of it could be part of a model designed to project the outcome of a ranked ballot election, however.

The real tests will come in the provincial elections that will still use the first-past-the-post electoral system. And the next one is coming very soon: Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are heading to the polls on November 30.

How would the new model have performed had it been used back in 2011? Again, it would have done a better job.

The actual results of that election delivered 37 seats to the Progressive Conservatives, six seats to the Liberals, and five to the New Democrats. This despite the NDP finishing ahead of the Liberals in the popular vote by over five percentage points.

With the actual results plugged into the 2011 model, it awarded 41 seats to the PCs, four to the Liberals, and three to the NDP. Not a bad showing, considering it still would have given the Official Opposition nod to the Liberals. But the riding-level accuracy of just 75%, or 36 out of 48 ridings, left a lot to be desired.

The new model would not have improved upon the 2011 performance, at least in the top-line numbers: it still would have been 41 Tories, four Liberals, and three New Democrats. But the riding-level accuracy would have increased to 81.3%, with correct calls in 39 out of 48 ridings.

The election in Newfoundland and Labrador will pose a few problems, in that the number of seats has been reduced from 48 to 40. There have also been a large number of floor-crossings and by-elections since 2011, further complicating matters. These are the sorts of things that can throw any seat projection model for a loop.

But I will put the new model to the test nevertheless and see how it does. The same principles behind what has been, I believe, a very effective model (which has been used in 17 provincial and federal elections) are still in place, so I consider this a refinement rather than a wholesale change. We'll see how it does soon.