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2008 Quebec general election

Canadian provincial election From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2008 Quebec general election
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The 2008 Quebec general election was held in the Canadian province of Quebec on December 8, 2008. The Quebec Liberal Party, under incumbent Premier Jean Charest, was re-elected with a majority government, marking the first time since the 1950s (when the Union Nationale of Maurice Duplessis won four consecutive elections) that a party or leader was elected to a third consecutive mandate, and the first time for the Liberals since the 1930s, when Louis-Alexandre Taschereau was Premier.

Quick Facts 125 seats in the National Assembly of Quebec 63 seats needed for a majority, Turnout ...
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Seating plan following the election.

The 2008 election also marked the first time that Québec solidaire won a seat.

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Issues

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Charest called the election on November 5, saying he needed a "clear mandate" and a majority to handle the economic storm. He was criticized, however, by the Parti Québécois and the Action démocratique du Québec for calling a snap election to get a majority when they were willing to work with him to fix the economy.[1]

Most notably, the election was marked by a significant collapse in support for the ADQ. Formerly a relatively minor party, the ADQ had attracted significant protest support in the 2007 election, beating the Parti Québécois to Official Opposition status. In 2008, however, the party's support dropped back to approximately 15 per cent of the popular vote, roughly the same range of support the party attracted before 2007. As a result of this loss of support, Mario Dumont announced in his concession speech that he would step down as party leader.[2]

In the final days of the election campaign, the concurrent parliamentary confidence dispute became an issue, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper attacking the credibility of a potential Liberal-New Democratic Party coalition government because the Bloc Québécois had pledged to support the coalition on motions of confidence. Both Marois and Dumont called upon Charest, a former leader of the federal Progressive Conservatives, to clarify where he stood on the coalition and on Harper's use of anti-sovereigntist rhetoric in the dispute.[3] Charest emphasized that the Bloc MPs had been legitimately elected by Quebecers, and stated that "I live in a society in which people can be sovereigntists or federalists, but they respect each other. The same thing should prevail in the federal parliament."[4]

Media analysts noted that while Charest's Liberals won a majority, the final result was much narrower in both the popular vote and the seat total than polls even just a few days before the election had predicted, because the Liberals only won an eight-seat majority, a result which was widely credited to a late voter swing toward the PQ as a result of Harper's comments.[5]

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Timeline

2007

2008

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Opinion polls

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Evolution of voting intentions for the 2008 Quebec general election. Dots are individual poll results and trend lines are local regressions with 95% confidence interval.
More information Polling firm, Last date of polling ...
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Voting intentions among French speakers
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Voting intentions among non-French speakers
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Campaign slogans

  • Action démocratique du Québec: Donnez-vous le pouvoir ("Give yourselves the power")
  • Parti libéral du Québec: L'économie d'abord OUI ("The economy first YES")
  • Parti québécois: Québec gagnant avec Pauline ("Quebec is a winner with Pauline")
  • Parti vert du Québec : Votons pour l'avenir ("Let's vote for the future")
  • Québec solidaire : Pour un système de santé public / Pour des salaires décents / Pour une souveraineté solidaire / Pour une économie verte et locale / Pour Éole Québec ("For a public health system" / "For decent incomes" / "For an independence in solidarity" / "For a green and local economy" / "For Wind Québec" [Éole Québec is a play on the state-run Hydro-Québec power utility, and refers to the nationalization of the wind energy industry])
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Incumbent MNAs not running for re-election

Liberals

Péquistes

Results

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The overall results were:[6]

More information Party, Party leader ...
More information Vote share ...
More information Seats ...

Synopsis of results

More information Riding, Winning party ...
  1. including spoilt ballots
  2. All parties with more than 1% of the vote are shown individually. Independent candidates and other minor parties are aggregated separately. Parties are presented in the order shown on EQ data.
  = open seat
  = turnout is above provincial average
  = winning candidate was in previous Legislature
  = incumbent had switched allegiance
  = previously incumbent in another riding
  = not incumbent; was previously elected to the Legislature
  = incumbency arose from byelection gain
  = other incumbents renominated
  = previously an MP in the House of Commons of Canada
  = multiple candidates

Comparative analysis for ridings (2008 vs 2007)

More information Riding and winning party, Turnout ...

Seats that changed hands

More information Party, Gain from (loss to) ...

Summary analysis

More information Party in 1st place, Party in 2nd place ...
More information Parties, 1st ...


More information Source, Party ...
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See also

References

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