Welcome to the 38th official Quebec provincial elections. The polsters suggest that the three front runners are neck and neck but any Quebecois will tell you that that's crap....why? Because pollsters ask you on the phone how you'll vote and they have your name in front of them on a monitor and so if your name is Tremblay or Dupuis or some such you'll say "Parti Quebecois tabarnak" and on voting day vote Liberal or green or whatever. Polls mean nothing. They call 1ooo random people and ask them loaded questions. Of course people feel intimidated. As I right this early Monday here's what was in Saturday's Gazette.
A Leger Marketing poll of 1,000 people published in the Montreal Gazette Saturday showed Liberal support at 35 per cent, the Parti Quebecois at 29 per cent and the ADQ at 26 per cent. The poll is considered accurate to within plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times in 20. Where they get their accuracy data has always made me wonder (900 guys outside 900 houses whispering if you don't vote what you said on the phone we will break your legs). In any event Mario Dumont will probably come out the best loser of the bunch while Andre Boisclair will probably be turfed from the PQ following what might be the end of the separatists party anyway and Jean Charest will continue leading the province with the least amount of visibility but arguably the best vision. On a sidenote, it will be interesting to see how many, if any, votes the green and the Quebec solidaire get; just because they do have some interesting if untenable ideas that are interesting on paper and they have almost as many candidates as the front runners with the greens at
108 and the QS at
123 ( according to their websites ). We'll see later today.
