New Poll: Léger Marketing

Léger Marketing released a Quebec-only poll today, taken between May 13 and May 17 and involving 1,053 interviews. The results:

Liberals - 37%
Bloc Quebecois - 33%
New Democrats - 14%
Conservatives - 13%
Greens - 3%

This is an important poll, as Léger Marketing is pretty reliable and it is a large sample size. This is a good demonstration of a recent trend, that the Liberals are quickly becoming a serious challenger to the Bloc's leading position in Quebec. A few more polls like this will confirm that the Bloc has indeed dropped to second place.

As Le Devoir points out, 80% of the ridings in Quebec are decided by the francophone vote. Here is the francophone support totals:

Bloc Quebecois - 40%
Liberals - 32%
New Democrats - 14%
Conservatives - 11%

This means that the Bloc is relatively safe in most of its ridings, though the Liberals have strong support as well. They will be able to challenge the Bloc in some of the ridings outside of the Outaouais and Montreal, but within those fortresses the Liberals will be safe. This also shows that the Conservatives aren't as strong as they have been in the Quebec City region, which is a francophone region.

This poll would result in the following seat holdings in Quebec:

Bloc Quebecois - 45
Liberals - 25
Conservatives - 3
New Democrats - 2

The short-term projection hasn't changed as a result of this poll. The long-term projection has, however. The Conservatives have dropped to four seats in Quebec and 126 in total, while the Liberals have risen to 20 seats in Quebec and 111 in total. The popular vote in Quebec has changed as follows:

Liberals +1.0
New Democrats +0.6
Conservatives -0.3
Greens -0.3
Bloc Quebecois -0.8

CentVingtCinq, the part of this site which makes Quebec provincial projections, will be updated within the next few days as Léger Marketing also released provincial polling results. They have the Liberals and Parti Quebecois tied at 40%, with the ADQ far behind at 8%.