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The Parti Québécois Comes to Power: An Analysis of the 1976 Quebec Election*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Maurice Pinard  and
Richard Hamilton
Maurice Pinard
Affiliation:
McGill University
Richard Hamilton
Affiliation:
McGill University
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Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , December 1978 , pp. 739 - 776
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Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1978

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References

1 For a recent statement, see Murray, Vera, Le parti québécois: de la fondation à la prise du pouvoir (Montreal: Editions Hurtubise HMH, 1976).Google Scholar

2 Maurice Pinard and Hamilton, Richard, “The Independence Issue and the Polarization of the Electorate: The 1973 Quebec Election,” this Journal 10 (1977), 215–59.Google Scholar

3 Ibid.

4 For an early, still valid statement of that theory, see Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E. and Stokes, Donald E., The American Voter (New York and London: Wiley, 1960)Google Scholar, chap. 8. Also Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain (New York: St. Martin's Press, College Edition, 1971), chaps. 10 and 11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Nie, Norman H., Verba, Sidney and Petrocik, John R., The Changing American Voter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 157–64.Google Scholar

6 Pinard and Hamilton, “The Independence Issue.”

7 On some of these points see Pinard, Maurice, “Les sondages électoraux et leurs interprétations,” Le Devoir, April 21, 1977, 5.Google Scholar

8 For details, see Appendix.

9 For the sources of these data, see Pinard and Hamilton, “The Independence Issue,” Table 8. Here the undecided have been excluded before computing the percentage “for independence” to make the data comparable to the electoral data for which there are of course no undecided voters.

10 Though we have no precisely comparable data on the PQ, it is clearthat almost all RIN militants were favourable to independence. On this see Pelletier, Réjean, Les militants du R.I.N. (Ottawa: Editions de l'Université d'Ottawa, 1974), 26, 50Google Scholar; also Gingras, François-Pierre, “Contribution à l'étude de l'engagement indépendantiste au Québec” (Ph.D. thesis, Paris: Université René Descartes, 1971), 268.Google Scholar

11 It could be argued that instead of the relationship between party support and attitudes towards independence, we should have been presenting relationships between party support and attitudes toward sovereignty-association, the official platform. There are, however, no indications that support for sovereignty-association increased more rapidly than support for independence; on the contrary. In April 1970, Regenstrief obtained 14 per cent in favour of independence and 35 per cent in favour of sovereignty-association; in March 1977, a SORECOM/CBC study indicated the respective proportions to be 16 and 32 per cent. Hence, it cannot be argued that the one-way depolarization of 1976 could be accounted for by a faster growth of support for the latter option. Indeed support for sovereignty-association does not account more perfectly than support for independence for PQ support in the election of 1976, according to the CBC poll just mentioned. The data from that poll are as follows:

The difference between those for and against is if anything greater when the vote is related to independence (64%) than when it is related to sovereignty-association (56%). Moreover, among those opposed to sovereignty-association, more than a quarter (27%) reported having voted for the PQ. Clearly, other factors than either independence or sovereignty-association were involved.

12 Over the years, the PQ official platform and its leaders’ pronouncements have been far from unambiguous on this issue. In particular, the top PQ leadership freely altered official decisions of PQ conventions. On this, see Murray, Le parti québécois, 70–73, 191–95,234–36. In 1974, the convention opted for a “conditional” referendum, if a PQ government had to proceed unilaterally in its establishment of an independent Quebec. However, during the actual 1976 campaign, the party leaders insisted that nothing would be done before what became a “mandatory” referendum.

13 Pinard and Hamilton, “The Independence Issue,” 249ff.

14 Cited in Murray, Le parti québécois, 72.

15 Note that the only issue to rank behind independence was a related one, constitutional changes.

16 In terms of party shifts from 1973 to 1976 among French Canadians, the analysis reveals that the Liberals kept 64 per cent of their 1973 supporters who were opposed to independence and did not consider the issue important (N=151). If they considered the issue important, that party did not retain many more supporters (74%) (N=19). Conversely among anti-separatists, the PQ was not less successful in converting other voters when the issue was deemed important (18%) than when it was not (20%) (N=28 and 235, respectively).

17 The proportion was the same among French Canadians opposed to separation.

18 Consider all this from the angle of individual stability or shifting in party support between 1973 and 1976. Among French Canadians, our data indicate that while the PQ kept almost all its 1973 independentist supporters (98%) and converted two-thirds or more of the other 1973 voters who were in favour of independence a situation similar to what had happened in the 1973 election the Liberals could not keep more than three-fifths of their 1973 anti-separatist supporters (61%) and were able to convert only about one in ten of the otherparties’ supporters who opposed independence—a situation quite different from that of 1973. Among anti-independentists, the parties other than the Liberals were doing better than in 1973 in keeping their supporters or in gaining converts; but the PQ was on the whole more successful in this regard than any of the others taken separately. (To save space, turnover tabulations will not be presented, but will be available from the first author upon request.) French Canadians only are considered in this paragraph in order to compare these data to similar ones in the authors’ “The Independence Issue,” Table 2.

19 See Lipset, S. M., Agrarian Socialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950)Google Scholar; Vera Murray, Le parti québécois, 200ff. Strictly speaking, the CCF was really making its platform more moderate; the PQ, while not altering its goal of independence, was at least postponing its consideration.

20 It was believed that in the long run this would also prove a successful strategy in terms of converting the electorate to the independence option. While the latter point remains to be seen, the data indicate that in the short run, the election-referendum dissociation may have had a contrary effect; while in the two previous elections there were peaks in the proportion of independentists, this last campaign saw the proportion increase by only 1 per cent over 1973, to 18 per cent; there was even a temporary setback immediately after the election, when in our post-election survey, we found only 12 per cent of the same respondents in favour of independence. Polls taken since indicate no great surge of support; on the contrary.

21 Carlos, Serge, Cloutier, Edouard and Latouche, Daniel, “Le choix des électeurs en 1973: caractéristiques sociales et orientation nationale,” in Latouche, D., Lord, G. and Vaillancourt, J.-G. (eds.), Le processus électoral au Québec: les élections provinciates de 1970 et 1973 (Montreal: HMH, 1976), 233, Table IX.Google Scholar

22 The average percentage difference in the first case is 54 per cent, while it is 34 percent in the second one. For a comparison with 1973, see the authors’ “The Independence Issue,” 240 and n. 52.

23 Considering together the proportions mentioning an issue as “the most important” or as the “next most important” one, we get the following percentage results among French Canadians: economic management, 71; honesty, 54; strikes in the public sector, 33; independence, 15; attendance of English schools, 13; constitutional changes, 9. Among all other Quebeckers, the proportions are: the economy, 64; English schools, 49; honesty, 41; right to strike, 18; independence, 12; constitutional changes, 9.

24 Another 44 per cent said they had no such doubts. La Presse, November 13, 1974.Google Scholar

25 See Bernard, André, Québec: Elections 1976 (Montréal: Editions Hurtubise HMH, 1976), 73–74.Google Scholar

26 This static analysis is supported by the analysis of individual voting shifts between 1973 and 1976: among the same respondents, the 1973 Liberal voters were more likely to desert their party if they thought that there was a lot of truth in the accusations (67 per cent then deserted) than if they thought there was only some or a little truth in them (40 per cent deserted) or no truth in them (17 per cent deserted) (N=9, 135 and 23, respectively).

27 The proportions mentioning “big business” were, in 1975 and 1976, at 20 and 18 per cent, respectively, in the country as a whole, and 21 and 15 per cent, in Quebec. For “big government,” the figures were at 29 and 33 per cent for the country, and 23 per cent each time in Quebec. See The Gallup Report, Canadian Institute of Public Opinion, December 8, 1976.

28 The other areas, and the proportions satisfied vs. dissatisfied, were: language at work, 47 vs. 41 percent; language of instruction, 33 vs. 54 percent; relations with the federal government, 28 vs. 48 per cent; creation of jobs, 26 vs. 58 per cent; inflation, 22 vs. 66 per cent. See CROP's poll in Montréal-Matin, November 5, 1976, and Claude Gauthier, “Sondage pré-électoral: les élections du 15 novembre 1976,” CROP, November 1976 (mimeographed), 14–16.

29 From the CROP data of Table 5, when percentaged in the other direction.

30 In terms of voting shifts between 1973 and 1976, this issue had, on the whole, less effect on Liberal desertion or conversion than most others.

31 The percentage point differences between those for repeal and those for retention are then 16 for the Liberals and 26 for the PQ.

32 Except that in this case, the strongest relationship is with the Liberal vote, while in the independence-vote relationship, the correlation is stronger with the PQ vote. But the overall effect is stronger in the former than in the latter case.

33 The turnover effects are also the strongest observed for any of the issues considered. Among the French rejecting independence, the Liberals succeeded in keeping 80 per cent of their 1973 supporters if they rated their management of the economy as very good or good, but only 48 per cent if their rating was only fair, bad or very bad (N=79 and 110, respectively). And while in the former case, they could recruit 48 per cent of those who did not report a Liberal vote in 1973, in the latter case, they gained only 13 per cent of these voters (N=29 and 126, respectively).

34 See the advertisement reproduced in Bernard, Québec, 7.

35 See Stein, Michael, “Le Bill 22 et la population non-francophone au Québec: une étude de cas sur les attitudes du groupe minoritaire face à la législation de la langue,” in Le Nationalisme québécois à la croisée des chemins (Quebec: Collection Choix, Centre québécois de relations intemationales, 1975), 127–59.Google Scholar

36 See Pinard and Hamilton, “The Independence Issue,” 226.

37 Stein, “Le Bill 22,” 144.

38 See polls by IQOP and by CROP published, in the first case, by Le Devoir, Le Soleil and The Gazette, June 9, 1974, and in the second case, by La Presse, June 8 and 10, 1974. Stein (“Le Bill 22,” 145–46) gives a brief résumé of the first poll.

39 This may partly reflect the mid-campaign statement by the Liberals that if elected, they would revise Bill 22, particularly its language tests, to make it more acceptable to the non-French. (This declaration occurred on November 2, in the middle of our field work.)

40 For the data of the last paragraph, only vote intentions given in pre-election interviews are considered, contrary to the note of Table 3A and B.

41 The differences are even smaller when, instead of the salience of the issue, positions on the issue itself are considered. Note, however, that the latter relationship and that of Table 6 are slightly stronger when among the non-French only the English Canadians are considered-excluding the other Canadians. The small percentage differences may be due to the fact that many of those who did not mention the English school attendance issue as the first or next most important issue were nevertheless dissatisfied with policy in that area, as the CROP data reported above suggest.

42 The turnover analysis indicates that the 1973 non-French Liberals for whom the school issue was salient were more likely to shift to other third parties than their counterparts.

43 Our post-election soundings indicate a net shift among the non-French of 4 per cent from the Union nationale to the Liberals, who were then at 36 and 34 per cent respectively, but given our overall underestimation of the Liberal vote (see Appendix), this is probably also an understatement. This understatement in turn may have been due to the reticence of many non-French voters to reveal their vote, given their dissatisfaction with the Liberals, and at the same time their unwillingness to abandon a party which appeared as the only sure bulwark against the PQ.

44 Among the non-French, 9 per cent favoured independence, 79 per cent were opposed to it, and only 12 percent were undecided. (Among the French, the figures were 20, 55, and 25 per cent, respectively.)

45 Notice that while the proportion answering “a lot” is slightly higher for Lévesque than for Bourassa, the proportion answering “little” or “none” is very high for both. It would therefore be difficult to make a strong case that it was Lévesque's strength rather than Bourassa's weakness which made the difference.

46 The study was for Radio-Canada; data recomputed from Claude Gauthier, “Actualité politique,” CROP, 15 avril 1976(mimeographed), Tables 19 and 22.Google Scholar

47 Parties can vary in their orientation either to personal interests or to group interests and abstract principles. The PQ, like many new movements, approached the latter orientation. See Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1947), 407.Google Scholar

48 See Hamilton, Richard and Pinard, Maurice, “The Bases of Parti Québécois Support in Recent Quebec Elections,” this Journal 9 (1976), 3–26Google Scholar. We say only some segments of the middle class, because within that class, there are sharp occupational differences (ibid., 15ff.).

49 Murray, Le parti québécois, 27ff.; Lemieux, Vincent, “A travers un résultat ‘national’ plus net qu'en 1973, il y a eu le jeu des tendances, des régions et des homines,” Le Devoir, November 18, 1976, 5.Google Scholar

50 See “The Independence Issue,” 250–51, 253–54.

51 By contrast, these controls among the pro-independence and the undecided do not alter the positive relationships observed.

52 See “The Independence Issue,” 237–38, 254–55, for analogous results.

53 The proportions supporting the other parties (other than the PQ and the Liberals) are then 57,48 and 30 per cent, for the low, medium and high-income groups, respectively (N=37, 29, and 50).

54 Ibid., 253.

55 See “The Independence Issue,” 224, on variations through time of the impact of nationalism on the vote. The effects observed here hold even when satisfaction towards the Liberal government is controlled.

56 The turnover effects found with the issues considered in this section are in line with the above analysis.

57 For the 1973 study, see the authors’ “The Bases of Parti Québécois Support,” 21 ff., and “The Independence Issue,” 257. For the 1971 study, see Blais, André, Gilbert, Marcel and Lemieux, Vincent, “The Emergence of New Forces in Quebec Electoral Politics,” in Mann, W. E. (ed.), Canada: A Sociological Profile (Toronto: Copp Clark Publishing, 1968), 541.Google Scholar

58 Lemieux, “A travers un résultat ‘national’,” 5.

59 Champagne, Pierre, “Un résultat qui était dans l'ordre des choses si on examine les données du scrutin par région,” Le Devoir, November 20, 1976, 14.Google Scholar

60 Recomputed from ibid.

61 Based on pre-election vote intentions only.

62 It had already run first or second in 86 of the 110 seats in 1973. The créditistes, with 10 per cent of the overall vote in 1973 and the UN, with 5 per cent, were indeed from the start very weak contenders.

63 Once before (in 1944), the strongest party (the Liberals) had obtained less votes (39.5 percent) than the PQ did in 1976; but it lost the election (to the UN which had 35.8 per cent of the votes, but gained 48 of the 91 seats). And twice before the winning party in terms of seats (the UN each time) had obtained fewer votes than the PQ did in 1976; but each time it was weaker than the Liberals. (This was in 1944, as just seen, and in 1966, with the UN and the Liberals receiving 40.9 and 47.2 per cent of the votes, respectively.) For election results since Confederation, see the Quebec Yearbook (1971), 89.

64 For the content of these fears, see Maurice Pinard, “La dualité des loyautés et les options constitutionnelles des Québécois francophones,” in Le nationalisme québécois à la croisée des chemins (Quebec: Collection Choix, Centre québécois des relations internationales, Université Laval, 1973), 87ff., and Maurice Pinard, “Loyalties, Incentives, and Constitutional Options among French Canadians in Quebec,” in Paul Lamy and Danielle Lee (eds.), French-English Relations in Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, forthcoming).

65 The only other noteworthy result here is the low level of party or leadership attraction among these late Liberal supporters: only 13 per cent mentioned a satisfaction with, or a liking for, the Liberals, Bournssa or the party platform (N=68).

66 Here 38 per cent mentioned an attraction to the party chosen, its leader, its platform (N=52).

67 In the case of the PQ, the main reasons given were: dissatisfaction with the Liberals (46 percent); satisfaction with or liking of the PQ, its leadership, its programme (22%) (N=85).

68 Smelser, Neil J., The Theory of Collective Behavior (New Yoric: The Free Press, 1963), 299–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar