EVEN IN 2011 - AS QUEBEC VOTES, SO VOTES CANADA

AS QUEBEC VOTES, SO VOTES CANADA!

Surely that can't still be true, right? Of course it is, always has been, always will be.
"But," you say, "The last twenties years Quebec has voted for the Bloq while the rest of Canada hasn't!"
Put that way your confusion is well founded, but lets put it this way. In 1992 the Reform party was nothing. They had barely won 1 seat in the House and their membership was lackluster at best. But then Lucien Bouchard led the entire Quebec wing of the Progressive Conservatives away from Mulroney and formed their own party, the Bloq Quebecois. Almost overnight membership in the Reform party soared.
Quebec went regional so Alberta went regional. As Quebec voted, so voted Canada.

THE 1993 ELECTION
The election that saw the implosion of the PC Party also resulted in something outstanding, and a complete landscape shift in politics occurred but at each stage it conformed to the age old maxim: "As Quebec Votes, So Votes Canada."

As the separatists grew more powerful, becoming in fact the official opposition, membership in the Reform party throughout BC and Saskatchewan climbed through the roof. Long before the west shouted anything about wanting in they were clamoring to make sure the Separtists weren't the official opposition.

1997 - EACH REGION A PARTY
In the 1997 election the Reform party, still in the grips of the grassroots, became the official opposition, vaulting past both the NDP and Bloq in number of seats. But this was in reaction to Quebec voting for the Bloq and because the Bloq was basically a regional party the rest of Canada started to vote regionally.

The maritimes were dominated by what had become a regional party (the PC Party), and western Canada was firmly in the grip of a regional party (Reform), while the Liberals and NDP remained as the only parties still represented federally even if most of their power ended up becoming the regional party of Ontario.

UNITING THE RIGHT
Following the 2000 election the PC Party had finally regained its footing and was successfully muscling in on the Reform party's hold in Ontario. If the trend had been allowed to continue the PC Party was expected to win more than 30 seats in the next election, largely in Ontario and the Maritimes.
This would've been the signal to federalists Quebecois that they could abandon the Liberals without benefiting the Bloq or risking the Reform party but the hostile takeover of the PC Party by the Reformers (renamed the Canadian Alliance by this point) scared off support in the Quebec wing and left the Liberals in charge until 2006 when Stephen Harper was able to first topple the Martin government and then replace it with his first minority.

WITHOUT A FEDERALIST OPTION QUEBEC VOTED REGIONAL & SO DID CANADA
In both the 2006 and 2008 election federalist Quebecois hesitantly leaned towards Harper's Conservatives, but each time scared off at the last minute when the ultra right intentions of Harper leaked out just ahead of the polls. And both times the Conservatives were held to a minority while Quebecois largely stuck to the familiar Liberals or Bloq.

THE ORANGE DOOR
Throughout 2010 and up to the 2011 election social media began an exhaustive campaign against Harper by promoting strategic voting. It went largely unnoticed by mainstream media because there really isn't a very good system for tracking such fluid communications. But for those inside the loop the word was quickly spreading and strategies were being developed on how to work the vote in the next election so we could get rid of Stephen Harper.
But Quebec remained a problem. The Liberals still carried a fair amount of baggage there because of Adscam and the Bloq was increasingly being seen as ineffective, if not an actual impediment, to getting rid of Harper. That left the NDP.
But how could Quebec suddenly shift that direction so quickly? Well the answer lies with two major issues. The first is oil wars. Harper was quick to put Canadian troops in Libya and even faster to increase our combat roll in Afghanistan, but the NDP have always been against promoting more military actions and increasingly so have Quebecois.
The second issue has to do with opinions about labour and big business. Most Quebecois favour unions and do not trust large corporations. In this regard Harper is the most out of touch with the average Quebecois while Layton found the connect easily during the latest french language debate.

YOUTH REVOLUTION
To really understand the dynamic shift you need to step back from mainstream media and the EKOS/NANOS polling systems. For one they can only report the people who pick up the phone and answer their questions, more and more Canadians have been using call display to avoid them and their accuracy has been plummeting like a stone.
The second is that social media route is a tool of the young voters, voters who do not speak with pollsters because those archaic agencies can't figure out how to get a hold of them. Voters who are now turning out in droves, encouraged by the democratic revolutions around the world, motivated by strategic voting to cut Harper off at the path.

LAYTON FOR PM?
Before anyone gets into a tither lets now look at skewed averages. For example, most Canadians do not believe the recession is over because the job market is so bad and they all know far too many people still looking for work. But the Canadian Government keeps reporting the recession has been over for a year. Why the disconnect?
Easy, there are three industries that remain robust. Oil, banks and housing. With gas prices pushing above $1.25/litre and the price of a barrel of oil well above $100 the oil industry is artificially pulling up both the employment as well as the GDP numbers.
Add to that the banking sector which, by not loaning money to small businesses unless forced too, have been racking up record profits; and then add the still over-inflated housing market and you'll quickly see how three large balloons can make an empty bed seem like someone is in it.
This also applies to the polling numbers. If you poll only a small pool of say, 3000 people nationally it may look as though the entire country is shifting toward Jack Layton but when you get past the regional outlook and go riding by riding then you see the NDP surge is largely in areas where they were the best party to take seats. That being Quebec, BC and central Ontario.
And to make sure they take every seat possible they're polling into very high numbers in ridings that either the Conservatives narrowly took from them in the last election or Quebec ridings that were deadheats between Conservatives and the Bloq.
In fact, on a riding by riding basis nearly all gains for the NDP have been at the cost of the Bloq and Conservative party in parts of the country the Liberals simply weren't competitive in.
And while there are a few tight contests in Ontario between the NDP and Liberals, in nearly all cases they're in ridings that the Conservatives came in a distant 3rd in during the last election.

THE FINAL TALLY - MORE JACK, NEARLY THE SAME IGGY, BUT MUCH LESS HARPER
So the Liberals will not surge the way they hoped and in fact may end up nearly at the same seat count they have now, but provided one looks riding by riding, rather than region by region, they will not be supplanted as Official Opposition by Jack Layton. However, both parties numbers are expected to be higher than the total Harper gets, and possibly well into majority territory, which means another Harper fear mongering probably won't be true - the next Government of Canada won't be propped up by Separatists because they won't need the Bloq votes to command a majority.

And that's great news for Canada and fans of social media!