Québec, ville non surprenante

Paul Wells comments on the latest CROP sub-provincial Quebec City subsample on the federal vote-intention question:

In the Quebec City region, meanwhile, I'm not sure you'd believe me if I told you. OK, I'll tell you. BQ 31%, Liberals 13%, Conservatives 39%. With those numbers, they at least hold their current numbers in Quebec City and bid fair to pick up seats. Didn't see that coming, did you.

Polls, as a poli-sci prof at a particular Maritime university is very fond of saying are a snapshot in time.

To say "they at least hold their current numbers in Quebec City and bid fair to pick up seats", is to describe a present-perfect or future trend. For that you need at least two measurements. Measure twice or more, describe trend once.

In the five close-in urban or predominantly suburban Quebec City area ridings of Beauport, Charlesbourg, Portneuf, Louis-Saint-Laurent, Louis-Hébert, and Québec, the Tories took 37% of the vote in 2006, as compared to 34% for the BQ, 12% for Others, mainly personified in Independent MP André Arthur,'s successful bid, and 10% for the Liberals.

Expanding the defintion of "Quebec City region" to include Montmorency, Lévis—Bellechasse, and Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, which include suburban populations as well as exurban and rural ones, the 2006 Tory vote increases to 39% (they did very well on the south shore), the BQ is unchanged at 34%, Other, again mainly André Arthur, is at 11%, and 9% voted PLC.

All of which is to say, that over a year of Tory attempts to build on their Quebec beachhead, which is concentrated in Quebec City region, a series of supposedly "devastating" attack French-language attack ads, a federal Liberal leadership, and the renewed rumours of the BQ's impending demise... the federal vote intention in the metro Quebec City area, at CROP's moment in time, is, statistically speaking, unchanged from the 2006 election result.

Of the nine ridings listed above, there are Conservatives representing six of them. Three of them — Charlesbourg, Beauport, and Louis-Hébert — they won by a margin of 3% or less.

Two are held by the BQ; Québec, where Christiane Gagnon scored a 12%-margin over the Tories, and Montmorency, where Michel Guimond polled 17% ahead.

The CROP poll, if it were an election result, would mean the Tories opened up at most another 3% to 5% over the BQ, which might make Gagnon and Guimond break a sweat... but they'd also break the tape.

Assuming that the CROP results were an accurate reflection of an actual late-campaign insider poll, the Tories would be playing defence, not offence, in every one of these nine ridings. With the possible exception of André Arthur's Portneuf, depending on whether he runs again, or who for, there are no Quebec City area "pickups", on that kind of a popular vote, for Harper's Quebec branch-plant.

Wells' political assessments are usually pretty astute and insightful... but, well, insert the usual caveat about +/- 3.5%, 19 times out of 20.