Slowly but surely, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party is making further inroads into Quebec, where an increasingly heated three-way battle is emerging between the Bloc Québécois and Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party.
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Yves-François Blanchet’s bloc remains at the top with 31% of voting intentions, closely followed by the Liberals, who received 28% of support. In both cases, this is an increase of one point compared to the last Léger survey at the end of October.
Poilievre never stops growing
With an increase of 3 points, the clearest advance is that of Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, who, with 25% support, continue to win a preferred place in Quebec, the country’s “last bastion” resistant to his charms, according to Jean-Marc Léger .
“Pierre Poilievre started in the West, now he is performing in Ontario, he is performing more and more in the Atlantic provinces. Quebec is the last bastion of resistance, but that is where it begins to take effect [ici aussi]“, he explained.
“If Poilievre manages to have a lieutenant and a strong team in Quebec to translate his message into French, it could have an impact. That’s all that’s missing,” he said.
The War of the Regions
As the pollster points out, the Bloc Québécois and the Liberal Party are neck-and-neck in the Greater Montreal area, with the Bloc (33%) taking mostly the crown and the Liberal Party (33%) taking the island.
The Conservatives, on the other hand, now have a comfortable lead in the Quebec metropolitan region, with 40% of voting intentions.
The real fight in Quebec will be mainly in the regions between two main players: the Conservative Party and the Bloc Québécois. Yves-François Blanchet’s bloc members have a four-point lead (32%) over the Conservatives (28%), whose progress is faster.
Times are more difficult for Jagmeet Singh’s NDP, which is losing ground in the province after almost coming to power 11 years ago. Down three points since the end of October, Quebec’s New Democrats are down to just 13% of voting intentions.
Trudeau likes Legault
The pollster managed to find an extremely rare similarity between François Legault and Justin Trudeau: the two politicians are equally dissatisfied among Quebecers.
Of all respondents, only 32% said they were “satisfied” (27%) and “very satisfied” (5%) with the Trudeau government, a result exactly in line with Mr. Legault’s.
On the other hand, respondents who are “somewhat dissatisfied” (32%) and “very dissatisfied” (28%) with Justin Trudeau rise to 60%, almost double.
The only positive point for Justin Trudeau: For 23% of Quebecers, he still remains the frontrunner to make the best prime minister, three points ahead of Pierre Poilievre (20%) and 13 points ahead of Jagmeet Singh (10%). Yves-François Blanchet did not appear in the answers.
For Jean-Marc Léger, there is no doubt that the cost of living and inflation play a major role, a situation that is by no means unique to Quebec and Canada.
“All Western governments in the world have suffered,” says the pollster.
Both the Greens (4%) and the People’s Party (3%) have seen slight declines since October.