i think this is a kind of a misunderstood dynamic that i've been trying to draw attention to a little bit. thanks for the article.

i don't know how competitive the conservatives are going to be much of anywhere in quebec (and the few seats they manage to win will likely be very close), but the liberals are clearly up over the 2011 election in every single poll - often by more than twice and sometimes pushing three times where they were. and, a couple of polls seems to indicate that it's mostly coming from the ndp. this is being masked by the fact that the bloc are running at half what they were, on the back of further bleeding from the ndp. and, it's about the only thing that makes sense. i mean, the naive, literal view of the polling is that the liberals have picked up 10-15 points from the bloc, but that doesn't make sense; more likely is that the ndp have picked up that 10-15 points, and the liberals have picked up 10-15 points from the ndp. and these would be traditionally liberal voters in the first place.

whatever the factors that drove bloc voters to the ndp in the last election, there were also clearly factors that drove liberal voters to the ndp, as well. not only have these maybe receded, but there's a new dynamic at play. in 2011, the ndp were clearly a federalist party. that's not as clear anymore. i suppose, in theory, a liberal voting for the ndp could have sat down and carefully analyzed the candidates over the whole province and come to the obvious conclusion, but who would have really done that? today, it's a lot more obvious.

that puts a lot more ridings in play than the models are suggesting. in races that have been between the bloc and the liberals over the last several elections, that actually puts the ndp at a disadvantage because now they're actually splitting the vote.

consider a riding that was 40% bloc, 35% liberal, 20% conservative and 5% ndp in 2008. you have to remember that the ndp came out of nowhere in a lot of places. that could end up 35% ndp, 35% liberal, 20% conservative, 10% bloc. rough numbers out of my posterior, but you get the point.

of course, the ndp are still eating a little into the liberal vote, too.

but, that puts almost all of montreal in play, and all of the west in play, too.

i think what we're going to see at the conclusion of this election is that the ndp is the dominant party in *rural* quebec, and a lot of unpredictable splits in the urban areas.

this also depends on the polling you believe, too. the liberals need to be running at at least 20%, and pushing closer to 25%, for what i'm saying to make sense. some of the polls have them at 17 or 18, and if that pans out then i'm wrong. but, if they are really running in the mid to high 20s then the high ndp numbers province wide are likely very much an illusion.

(that is, an illusion as to potential seat counts. it would likely suggest they're going to win a lot of rural areas in landslides, and lose a lot of close races in the cities)

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/conservatives-and-liberals-hope-to-beat-orange-wave-in-west-quebec-1.3227976