CROP

A new poll reveals evidence of a population applying consistent values in a difficult situation

Despite assorted travails, Charest may have had a shot at winning another term. No longer.

A cautionary tale about polling. La Presse is on fire this morning with news of horrible performance by the NDP in Quebec. A CROP poll has the party down to 29% in Quebec, its lead over the second-place party diminished from 14 points to 5 since December. This would seem to make my blog post from December germane again. The one about how the NDP, which has more than half of its caucus in Quebec, now has to pick a leader to “consolidate” a “hold” on Quebec that is becoming less and less of a hold.

Why success in Quebec is the product of carefully laid foundations, not some quirk of this particular race

Liberals down 9 points in Quebec since June. Conservatives up 8 points in Quebec since June. NDP down 5 points in Quebec since August. Michael Ignatieff’s best-prime-minister score down 17 points since April. All sampling concluded before Denis Coderre turned extra-picturesque on Monday. Further entrails here.

The last time the Liberal Party of Canada was more popular than the Bloc Québécois in Quebec, the Liberal leader looked like this:

Since June, the Conservatives have gained five points in the CROP poll of federal party support in Quebec, to 31%. The Liberals have green-shifted down a point to 20%. This is a little below the 20.7% Paul Martin won in 2006, the party’s worst showing in Quebec since Confederation, up to that point.

Stéphane Dion’s popularity is soaring in Quebec!!!! Here I use “soaring” in its Globe and Mail election-time headline meaning, which is to say, it is not soaring. The monthly CROP is out, providing an excellent opportunity for our LIberal-leaning readers from Toronto and points west to complain that, since they’ve never heard of CROP, it must be a bogus poll.