Montreal City Weblog

Kate 07:34 on 2024-09-17 Permalink Reply  

• MarcG 07:42 on 2024-09-17 Permalink

  Genuinely shocked but it was a really tight race. 8884 votes BQ. 8636 Liberal. 8262 NDP.

• Kate 08:09 on 2024-09-17 Permalink

  Yes, I didn’t expect the Bloc to have such traction in that part of town. Till now, their only Montreal riding has been Pointe de l’Île at the far eastern tip of the island.

• walkerp 08:14 on 2024-09-17 Permalink

  I am honestly starting to feel like the CBC is in the bag for the Conservatives. Locally, they had an interview with Katy O’Malley who was nuanced in her analysis, recognizing that fatigue with the Liberals was only part of the many factors that led to the outcome of this race. Then the national news comes on calling it a sickening gut punch for Trudeau or something like that. And then check the language in the CBC article “stunning blow”, “devastating”. They just make up a narrative and then reinforce it themselves. For these elections, people vote very locally and David Lametti stepping down opened up the race right from the beginning. There is nothing surprising let alone stunning that this was a close race, nor is it some damning indictment of the Liberals. It was a local byelection with mutliple factors at play.

  Liikewise for the NDP victoria, CBC reporter said something like “The NDP are happy with the result but worried for the seat in a general election against the surging national tide of the conservatives.”

  There are poll numbers, that’s it. There is no surging conservative tide. People are tired of the Liberals, Trudeau has been effectively and erroneously maligned by Conservative (and external propaganda) but this is not some conservative victory wave.

• Kate 08:30 on 2024-09-17 Permalink

  Sage words, walkerp.

• MarcG 09:58 on 2024-09-17 Permalink

  Just saw the winner doing a one-man victory parade down Wellington street in his blue suit. I wonder if he’s just walking back and forth hoping somebody congratulates him?

• nau 10:48 on 2024-09-17 Permalink

  This result isn’t that surprising. The Bloq won the old Verdun riding after the sponsorship scandal tanked the LIberals, splitting the federalist vote. They were then replaced by the NDP when the progressive vote coalesced around Layton. The progressive soft sovereigntist vote could have put the NDP over the top but with Singh as the leader, those people seem to stick with the Bloq as their identity issues trump their progressivism. Which is bad for the NDP in Quebec in the next general election but not exactly new news.

  Whatever other nuance one wishes to put on it, the new riding with the Lasalle portion should be a stronger Liberal riding than the old Verdun one, so this result mostly has to be attributed to the Liberal vote not being willing to show up in a byelection. It’s hard to explain them being this unmotivated unless they’re themselves somewhat tired of Trudeau, probably not helped by his team parachuting in a candidate. In a general election, I think enough Liberal voters would probably show up for them to take this riding back, but if they’re that weak here where the Conservatives aren’t a factor, the results elsewhere could be ugly.

  Sure, there’s no surging conservative tide, but the polling is showing that the people who swing between voting Liberal and Conservative are in a voting Conservative mood and if that holds until election day, the Conservatives will top the Liberals.

• Chris 11:02 on 2024-09-17 Permalink

  It’s not complicated. Everyone is sick of Trudeau.

  We were sick of Harper after a decade and now we’re sick of the current guy after a decade. Barely matters who he is.

  I would also wager that the Palestinian flag could have easily cost Sauve a few hundred votes. The pro-Palestinian side would likely vote NDG anyway, but those not passionate about the cause could be put off by him visibly taking sides like that. Hamas runs Palestine, and, rightly or wrongly, some see that flag as representing that crowd.

• Tim S. 11:23 on 2024-09-17 Permalink

  There’s probably not too many national conclusions that can be drawn from a by-election where it seemed like everyone had their door knocked on multiple times and three parties ran full-scale get-out-the-vote efforts, and there were still only 600 votes separating the three top candidates. Hold the same vote next week and you might get a completely reversed set of results. A few points though:

  I wouldn’t underestimate the Conservatives in the western part of that riding. It won’t be enough to win, but they could pull significant votes from the Liberals.

  It’s a shame for the NDP that Craig Sauvé didn’t get in, because he would have been very hard to dislodge once he’d been able to work with the population on a daily basis as the incumbent.

  The Bloc had a high-floor, low-ceiling opportunity that they made the most of. Like nau said, they aren’t able to win when one of the other parties gets some momentum, but in this case they knew exactly who their voters were and found just enough of them.

  Finally, both in the media and in people I spoke to, there was a real sense among Francophones that it’s harder to live life in French. It’s not just a media/nationalist politician thing.

• walkerp 11:29 on 2024-09-17 Permalink

  Tim S., that final paragraph is very interesting! Could you elaborate on it a bit? Are they feeling like services/commerce/other stuff are becoming more anglicized and they are feeling excluded? Are they seeing it locally or is this across Quebec?

• Tim S. 11:30 on 2024-09-17 Permalink

  PS: from what I understand, there were no all-candidate events in this by-election. I think that’s a big problem, because voters should have the chance to see candidates interact with each other and answer possibly unfriendly questions. It’s also worrying that we’re seeing a complete erosion of the kinds of community groups who would usually organize these events. Who knows, maybe it’s up to the Weblog to become the new Lions Club or something!

• Tim S. 11:36 on 2024-09-17 Permalink

  Walkerp: I can’t give you large sample sizes, and probably there are actual readers here who could comment better than I. But something that came up was French at work – it only takes one English-speaker for a whole meeting to take switch to English. Which, yep, I’ve observed that many times.

• Ramsay 11:41 on 2024-09-17 Permalink

  I strongly second Tim’s comment about debates. There should be an easy way to see the candidates interact outside their party bubble.

• Joey 12:57 on 2024-09-17 Permalink

  It’s obviously unknowable, but I wonder if combination of a ballot with dozens of candidate options + two of three contenders having the same last name cause any kind of meaningful confusion. I know the ballot identifies the party but it’s conceivable that some people got mixed up.

• Mark Côté 14:56 on 2024-09-17 Permalink

  The NDG Community Council organized a debate for the by-election here last year after Garneau stepped down. It was a lively discussion…but the Liberals and Conservatives didn’t even bother showing. :/

• rob 15:58 on 2024-09-17 Permalink

  I’m hoping the Liberals are leaving Trudeau in place as a punching bag and as the federal elections near (and as the conservatives lose steam in their attacks), they`ll swap Trudeay out for a new, more appealing leader. It`s not only the conservativs that can copy the playbook from south of the border.

• Ian 16:04 on 2024-09-17 Permalink

  @Chris
  “Hamas runs Palestine” uh, no. Hamas runs Gaza. The West Bank has an entirely different government. Hamas has only controlled Gaza since 2007. It’s kind of a big deal.

  Even Israel justifies its illegal settlements and recent incursions in the West Bank on Hezbollah (who are not the government anywhere, and based in Lebanon & Iran, but I digress).

  Then again you only have to look as far as the Golan Heights to know Israel’s position on colonial occupation.

  @nau sadly, as long as Singh is in charge of the NDP there’s very little chance of them making any real incursions in Quebec. Let’s not forget that under current QC law a man with a turban wouldn’t be allowed to be a teacher let alone sit at the “National” Assembly.

• Chris 09:15 on 2024-09-18 Permalink

  Ian, yes, slip of the tongue. Hamas runs Gaza. But I think my point stands despite this slip. For many people *today*, that flag is symbol of, shall we say, some not so nice organizations (Hamas, Fatah, PLO, etc.)

  Your points about Israel would be relevant if Sauve had put himself in front of that flag. Many people *today* also associate that flag with, shall we say, some not so nice organizations (Mosad, IDF, extremist settlers, etc.)

  Sauve would have been wiser to leave far away wars far away from his by-election.

• Tim S. 09:24 on 2024-09-18 Permalink

  And yet, foreign affairs is one of the few things that is unambiguously federal jurisdiction and therefore an appropriate topic for a federal campaign.

• MarcG 09:57 on 2024-09-18 Permalink

  “Far away” is meaningless. Gaza may be physically at a distance but if the bombs being dropped say Made in Canada on them…? Or Canada abstains from a UN resolution to include Palestine as a member?

• Ian 21:57 on 2024-09-18 Permalink

  … or even today, abstaining from from a UN motion calling on Israel to end occupation of Gaza & the West Bank. For that matter the Golan Heights occupatiuon has only been recognized as lawful by a small handful (even the US only since Trump) but hey.

  Far away IS irrelevant.

  Canada is a nation of coloniial settlers, refugees, and more recently, international immigrants. People from all over the world live here. I have conservative Jews and Palestinians in my immediate social circle. Regardless of what the CAQ would prefer, ths is not an assimilationist melting pot; what goes on in the rest of the world is of immediate relevance to many of us, especially in the ethnically and culturally diverse setting of cities like Montreal.