CAQ Support Continues to Dwindle, Poll Finds

Photo: Jacques Boissinot The Canadian Press If a general election were held today, the CAQ would only get 21% of the vote.

Caroline Plante – The Canadian Press in Quebec City

Published at 12:13 PM Updated at 1:16 PM

• Quebec City

The Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) continues to lose support among the population, to the point where François Legault's party is now at its lowest level in eight years.

If a general election were held today, the CAQ would only obtain 21% of the vote, compared to 35% for the Parti québécois (PQ), according to a new Léger/Le Journal/TVA poll.

The Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) would garner 17% of voting intentions, Quebec solidaire (QS), 13% and the Quebec Conservative Party (PCQ), 11%.

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The slight rise experienced by the CAQ last summer will ultimately have been short-lived, if we are to believe the polls. It must be said that the fall was particularly difficult for the CAQ.

They lost, at the beginning of September, a heavyweight from their team: superminister Pierre Fitzgibbon, who was responsible for files related to the economy and energy, left politics.

Then, frustrated among other things by the record deficit of $11 billion, the MNA for Saint-Jérôme, Youri Chassin, slammed the door on the CAQ caucus to sit as an independent.

The CAQ MNA for Chauveau, Sylvain Lévesque, was subsequently reprimanded by the Ethics Commissioner and resigned from his prestigious position as second vice-president of the National Assembly.

The sex scandals at the Youth Protection Department (DPJ), and the discovery of a toxic climate at Bedford School in Montreal, also weighed down the Legault government this fall.

Furthermore, improvements in the health network are slow to be felt. Minister Christian Dubé recently announced that he would again miss his target for catching up on surgeries in December.

Paul St-Pierre Plamondon’s PQ is the one that would benefit from the CAQ’s setbacks, suggests the Léger poll.

The only downside for the PQ: 37% of respondents support sovereignty, and a quarter of PQ voters are against Quebec independence.

The Léger poll was conducted among 1,010 adult Quebecers between November 8 and 11.

It is impossible to calculate a margin of error on a sample drawn from a panel, but for comparison purposes, the maximum margin of error for a sample of 1,010 respondents is plus or minus 3.08%, 19 times out of 20.

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