PQ chief Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has accomplished a rare feat in contemporary Quebec politics.
Get a grip on a party “at the bottom” and manage to root them out to become #2 in the polls. Whether we like PSPP or not, we have to admit it.
Messiah
We have already seen “savior” type leaders come to the head of a party and immediately take it to the top of the polls. This is the scenario that Jean Charest experienced in 1998.
St-Pierre Plamondon, he was far from a messiah when he topped the PQ with just 56% of the vote on October 9, 2020, in the third round of the fifth PQ lead race in 14 years. In the midst of a pandemic.
Initially, there were obviously no changes to the survey values. Paul “St-Chose-Plamondon,” as Infoman baptizes him, or “Pierre St-Paul-Plamondon,” as François Legault calls him (probably on purpose), is not only unknown but also unelected.
The situation of the opposition parties in the midst of a pandemic does not help: they are forgotten. Somehow, the PSPP sits on the lecterns of press conferences in the National Assembly as “guests” of the elected members of their faction.
A year ago, in June 2022, the PQ was 9% in the polls. In June 2023 it will be 23%.
At the end of December 2021, in his analysis of the barometer of political figures, colleague Rémi Nadeau notes the absence of St-Pierre Plamondon: “By the Parti Québécois, yellow light! The new chairman, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, is not mentioned, unlike his deputies, Véronique Hivon and Pascal Bérubé. He’ll have to find a way to make himself known. The October elections will come quickly. »
A year later, in December 2022, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon was in fifth place in the barometer. Certainly his rise in notoriety depends in part on his election at Bourget, where he gambled (a Qsist opponent was disqualified for stealing leaflets). But his campaign was well-received by voters.
Then there were the oaths in which he stood his ground and a session where, despite the three deputies and limited funds, the PSPP – and the PQ – managed to pull out of the game and retain fifth place in the results Our barometer published this morning.
challenges
If he wants to continue this momentum and grow, the game doesn’t look easy. How to bring back the young people who the polls show have left the PQ? And how to repatriate the sovereignists who would make up 37% of the electorate?
In it we find 39% “soft” refugees at the CAQ; but also left separatists (35%), at QS. The latter hate the identity accents of the PQ. And the former are not enthusiastic about the referendum that the PSPP promises in a (theoretical) first term. Will PSPP be tempted to promise good government if it wants to move forward? Or a postponement of the referendum when the “victory conditions” are in place? Getting rid of basic PQ dilemmas is not easy.
