Theory 1: Changing electoral coalitions

The first potential explanation for the volatility in Quebec between the 2008 and 2019 elections is vote switching, driven by changes in the preferences of the electorate. There is an extensive literature on vote choice that provides many explanations for why voters may switch parties. The Columbia school of voter behaviour, highlighted by Berelson et al. (Reference Berelson, Lazarsfeld and McPhee1954), argues that voters who belong to social groups with different partisan tendencies face competing pressures and tend to switch their votes from one party to another. The Michigan school, connected to Campbell et al. (Reference Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes1960), presents a much more complex understanding of voter behaviour. In this model, voter decisions are influenced not just by one's social connections but also by values, views on issues, and evaluations of party leaders. Economic circumstances can also lead voters to switch their support from one party to another, as voters reward incumbents for good economies and punish them for bad ones (Lewis-Beck et al., Reference Lewis-Beck, Nadeau and Ellis2008). These works have provided the foundations for models of vote choice applied to both Canada (Gidengil et al., Reference Gidengil, Nevitte, Blais, Everitt and Fournier2012) and the United States (Miller and Shanks, Reference Miller and Shanks1996) that show all of these factors shape voters’ decisions. As a result, competing social pressures, as well as changes in candidate evaluation, in the issues that are important in an election, and in the views that voters have on issues, can be expected to lead to changes in vote choice.

Rational choice theories of voter behaviour offer another potential explanation for why voters switch parties. Here, Downs's (Reference Downs1957) foundational work argues that voters will vote for the party that offers a policy program closest to their own views. This logic suggests that as parties shift their positions, voters should shift their votes as the party closest to them changes. Blais et al. (Reference Blais, Nadeau, Gidengil and Nevitte2001) demonstrate that this proximity approach to voting is relevant in the Canadian context and that voters tend to prefer parties with positions closer to their preferences.

Complicating all of these voting models is the strategic voting that takes place in Canadian elections (Merolla and Stephenson, Reference Merolla and Stephenson2007). Because voting for a third-place party in Canada's single member plurality electoral system rarely has an impact on the outcome of an election, some voters will vote strategically for one of the two strongest parties in their region or riding (Merolla and Stephenson, Reference Merolla and Stephenson2007). This means that when polls shift to suggest that a party is starting to become stronger, voters may start to switch to that party for strategic reasons.

We take the view that all of these models offer some insight into at least some voters’ decision making. Decision making by voters is often complicated, and we expect that because different voters think about voting differently and are influenced by different factors, different models will apply better to different voters. Rather than trying to present a model of voter decision making in Quebec over this period of time (such models have been offered by Fournier at al. [2013] and Gauvin et al. [2016]), we argue that each of these models gives us some reason to expect substantial amounts of vote switching in Quebec between 2008 and 2019.

The shifting importance of sovereignty and national identity point to reasons why voters would switch parties that line up well with both the Columbia school sociological model of voting and the Michigan school model. Through the 1990s and 2000s, federal elections in Quebec tended to be contests focused on Quebec's place within Canada. These debates were well suited to both the Bloc Québécois and Liberals. In line with Berelson et al.'s (1954) discussion of social groups as influencing vote choice, the Bloc Québécois maintained an advantage among francophones while the Liberals maintained an advantage among anglophones. If one considers the more complex Campbell et al. (Reference Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes1960) model of vote choice, one could look to the Bloc Québécois as maintaining an advantage among separatist voters while the Liberals maintained an advantage with federalists. So long as these issue and identity divides remained central to federal politics in Quebec, it would be difficult for the Conservatives or NDP to gain a foothold in the province. They had neither the ability to appeal to a particular social group nor the ability to speak to national identity questions in a way that differed from the two strongest parties in the province. Indeed, the fundamental disagreements between many Western Canadians and Quebecers over national identity issues made it difficult for the Conservatives or NDP to speak to these debates credibly (Johnston, Reference Johnston2017).

The challenges that the Conservatives and NDP faced in Quebec can also be matched with spatial models of voting to explain why the Conservatives and NDP struggled to win support in Quebec in the 1990s and early 2000s. Competition structured around Quebec's place in Canada gave both the Bloc Québécois and Liberals clear bases of support (separatists for the Bloc Québécois and federalists for the Liberals). Both parties were then somewhat free to shift to the centre on national identity issues to compete over soft nationalists. The two parties’ competition over soft nationalists would have left the Conservatives and NDP little room to establish their own bases of support on national identity questions, squeezing them out of competition over one of the most important issues in Quebec during this time period.

The decline of the importance of separatism offered the Conservatives and NDP opportunities to steal votes from both the Bloc Québécois and Liberals. The failure of the 1995 referendum and the decreasing likelihood that Quebec would see another referendum on sovereignty undermined the importance of the central issue that the Bloc Québécois campaigns on. For a time, the party was able to campaign against Liberal corruption, leveraging the particular importance to Quebec voters of the sponsorship scandal (in which the Liberal government came under investigation for giving contracts to Liberal-friendly advertising firms in Quebec in exchange for little work). This allowed the Bloc to cast itself as the defenders of Quebec's interest against a Liberal government perceived as corrupt (Gagnon and Hérivault, Reference Gagnon, Hérivault, Pammett and Dornan2004). The Conservatives and NDP, however, could also present themselves as defenders of Quebec against Liberal corruption in a way that they could not present themselves as defenders of Quebec on questions of national identity. This led to an early, though muted, Conservative breakthrough in the province in 2006. In that election, the Conservatives finished second in vote share in Quebec, with 25 per cent of the vote, and won 10 seats.

The decline of the importance of national identity questions also offered the NDP an opportunity to win support from the Bloc Québécois and Liberals. Since 2004, the NDP had been building its organizational capacity in Quebec with an eye to potential appeal of the NDP's social democratic values to large numbers of Quebec voters (Lavigne, Reference Lavigne2013; McGrane, Reference McGrane2019). The adoption of the Sherbrooke Declaration in 2005, which committed the party to repealing the Clarity ActFootnote ² and to allowing the province to opt out of federal programs with compensation, was part of the party's effort to strengthen their appeal in Quebec (NDP, 2005). In the early 2000s, the NDP made compromises on questions of national identity, hoping that doing so would allow them to win over left-wing Quebecers. As national identity issues declined in their importance between the early 2000s and 2011, this strategy should have become more and more effective in getting left-leaning Bloc Québécois and Liberal voters who had not backed the NDP because they wanted to support a federalist or separatist party to switch to the NDP.

Existing work on the NDP and the 2011 election suggests that the NDP was able to draw voters from the Bloc Québécois by demonstrating shared support for left-wing values and social issues. Fournier et al. (Reference Fournier, Cutler, Soroka, Stolle and Bélanger2013) show that those who were more left-leaning were more likely to support the NDP in 2011. More specifically, Gauvin et al. (Reference Gauvin, Chhim and Medeiros2016) show that the NDP was able to exploit the fact that Bloc Québécois voters held left-leaning economic and social values to get those voters to switch their support to the NDP in 2011.

Changing evaluations of party leaders can also cause voters to switch their support from one party to another. Leadership is identified by Campbell et al. (Reference Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes1960) as an important driver of vote choice, and Bittner (Reference Bittner2011) also demonstrates that leader evaluations matter to decisions voters make over which party to support.

The appeal of NDP leader Jack Layton in 2011 stands out as an explanation of why Quebec voters would switch their support to the Liberal Party. Though Layton made his political career in Toronto municipal politics, he was born and raised in the Montreal area and could present himself as having a personal connection to Quebec. Layton's appearance on the popular Quebec talk show “Tout le monde en parle” was viewed highly favourably (Fournier et al. Reference Fournier, Cutler, Soroka, Stolle and Bélanger2013). By contrast, Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe had been leader of his party since 1997 and struggled to attract attention to his campaign. The Liberal Party also had leadership issues in Quebec going into the 2011 election. Both Michael Ignatieff and previous leader Stéphane Dion had presided over internal conflict within the Quebec wing of the federal Liberal Party, and neither had managed to establish themselves as popular in the province (Jeffrey, Reference Jeffrey2021). Ignatieff also faced questions regarding his prior support for the American invasion of Iraq, accusations that he had supported the use of torture, and a concerted campaign by the Conservatives to label him as “just visiting,” given his long career in academia outside of Canada. All of these things may have damaged his popularity.

The idea that NDP gains in 2011 were a result of vote switching fits a number of theories of vote choice. The declining importance of national identity issues made it more likely that left- wing groups would share values and issue positions with the NDP. This fits with both the Michigan school and rational choice approached to vote choice. The appeal of leader Jack Layton in Quebec would have also increased the likelihood that voters who care most about party leaders would switch over to the NDP. This leads to the following hypothesis.

Models of vote choice also provide reasons to believe that the resurgence of the Liberals in 2015 and then the Bloc Québécois in 2019 resulted from vote switching. The return to importance of issues related to national identity may have reversed many of the gains that NDP made by connecting to voters in Quebec that were left-leaning on social and economic issues. In 2015 a mid-election court ruling reversing the Conservative government's decision to ban niqabs from citizenship ceremonies made secularism and religious accommodation an issue for voters in Quebec (Bridgman et al., Reference Bridgman, Ciobanu, Erlich, Bohonos and Ross2021). The issue remained important in Quebec in 2019 as federal parties were forced to consider whether they should intervene in court challenges to provincial legislation banning government employees and those receiving provincial government services from wearing religious symbols. These issues put the NDP in an awkward position. While voters with left-wing views on economic and social issues outside of Quebec tend to favour religious accommodation and oppose Quebec's secularism legislation, the opposite is true for voters with left-wing economic and social views inside of Quebec (Turgeon et al., Reference Turgeon, Bilodeau, White and Henderson2019). Debates over religious accommodation and secularism force the NDP to choose between supporting the views of their supporters in Quebec and their supporters outside of Quebec. To a large degree, the NDP has taken pro-multicultural and religious accommodation positions, aligning themselves with the views of their voters outside of Quebec and against those of many of the Québécois nationalist voters the party won over from the Bloc Québécois in 2011.

Analyses of the 2015 election suggests that the NDP lost votes as a result of their opposition to banning niqabs at citizenship ceremonies (Bridgman et al., Reference Bridgman, Ciobanu, Erlich, Bohonos and Ross2021; Stephenson et al., Reference Stephenson, Lawlor, Cross, Blais and Gidengil2019). Stephenson et al. (Reference Stephenson, Lawlor, Cross, Blais and Gidengil2019) show that the 2015 collapse in NDP support was followed by a rise in support for the Liberals only once the Liberals had become the strongest alternative to the Conservatives. Strategic voting considerations may have thus interacted with the decline of the NDP to push anti-Conservative Québécois nationalists from the NDP to the Liberals. This was the case even though the Liberals are also a pro-multicultural party. In 2019, the resurgence of the Bloc Québécois suggests competition that is much closer to what was seen prior to the rise of the NDP in 2011, with the Bloc Québécois winning the support of Québécois nationalists. In 2019, the Bloc would have been winning nationalist support because of their support for secularism and not their support for separatism. In contrast, the Liberals would have been the pro-multicultural option in Quebec, as well as the federalist option.

As with the rise of the NDP, leadership likely played a role in the resurgence of both the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois. The Liberals likely benefited from the selection of Justin Trudeau as leader. In contrast to the turmoil under Dion and Ignatieff, Trudeau was able to present himself as a charismatic leader and appeal to Canadians across the country (Jeffrey, Reference Jeffrey2021). This may have contributed to Liberal gains both inside of and outside of Quebec (Clarke at al., Reference Clarke, Gravelle, Scotto, Stewart and Reifler2017). Trudeau also likely benefited from a native-son effect, as Johnston (Reference Johnston2019) shows that leaders from Quebec tend to do better in the province. NDP leader Thomas Mulcair may have benefited from the same effect in 2015, given that he is also a Quebecer.

The Bloc Québécois may have benefited in 2019 from the stabilization of their leadership, with Yves-François Blanchet providing effective and charismatic leadership after the party cycled through several leaders in the period between the 2011 and 2019 elections. In contrast, leadership likely hurt the NDP in 2019. The selection of Jagmeet Singh, a Sikh who wears a turban, would have highlighted the gap between the NDP and a large number of Quebec voters on questions of religious accommodation and secularism. Indeed, Bouchard (Reference Bouchard2022) shows that Quebecers had particularly low approval ratings of Singh.

If the declining importance of national identity questions and the weakness of the Liberal leadership led voters to switch from the Bloc Québécois and Liberals to the NDP in the 2011 election, the growing importance of identity questions and the strengthening of the Bloc Québécois and Liberal leadership in 2015 and 2019 should have had the opposite effect. Quebec voters who moved to the NDP because it offered them a left-wing option on economic and social policy should have switched back to either the Bloc Québécois or the Liberals, depending on where they stood on questions of national identity. Similarly, voters who became disillusioned with the NDP because the party did not reflect their views on national identity questions should have switched to another party, likely the Bloc Québécois, instead of staying home. As with the rise of the NDP in 2011, the way the 2015 and 2019 elections played out in Quebec can be connected to different theories of vote choice to generate the following hypotheses that volatility in Quebec was driven by vote switching.

Theory 2: voter mobilization and demobilization

An alternative explanation for the volatility in parties’ success in Quebec lies in changes to voter turnout. While parties can gain and lose support when voters switch from one party to another, their success is also affected by voters’ decisions to either turn out to vote or stay home. Even partisans do not always vote, and Hill (Reference Hill2014) shows that variations in partisan turnout can make a difference in close elections. Looking at American elections, Hill (Reference Hill2017) finds that changes in who votes can have as much as twice as large an effect on election results as voters switching between parties. As polarization in the United States increases, the extent to which voters switch parties may be declining (Smidt, Reference Smidt2017). As a result, voter mobilization may be becoming more and more important (though the multidimensionality of Quebec politics likely means polarization plays out differently in Quebec than in the United States). Parties’ ability to identify and motivate their voters to go to the polls on election day can be as important to their success as their ability to win over voters from other parties.

There is a complicated literature grappling with the different factors that affect voter turnout. The Downsian rational choice approach to voter behaviour suggests that voters’ decisions to vote depend on whether they have a strong enough preference between two candidates running to make it worth taking the time to vote. This rational choice logic also suggests that voters will be more likely to vote if they believe their vote will affect the outcome of an election, though the low likelihood that any one vote will be the difference in an election suggests that voter turnout should be very low if this model is correct (Downs, Reference Downs1957).

Blais and Daoust (Reference Blais and Daoust2020) present four explanations for why individuals vote, suggesting that the decision to vote depends on the degree to which the individual likes politics, whether they feel they have a duty to vote, whether they care about the outcome, and whether voting is easy. Three of these four explanations are unlikely to change from election to election and thus cannot be used to explain changes in election results. Whether a voter cares about the outcome, however, may change with the issues that are important in an election and which parties are competitive. A Quebec voter with strong opinions about economic redistribution may care little about an election where the main issue is national identity and the main competitors are the Bloc Québécois and Liberals. Such a voter may care a great deal about an election where economic redistribution is being debated and the NDP appears to have a chance at winning substantial numbers of seats.

Parties’ actions may also affect voter turnout. Candidates’ positions can matter, as Hall and Thompson (Reference Hall and Thompson2018) show that extreme candidates motivate both their supporters and opponents to vote (with the opponents motivated outnumbering supporters). How aggressive parties are in their get-out-the-vote efforts also matter to turnout. Green and Gerber (Reference Green and Gerber2004) show that canvassing can increase voter turnout but that effective efforts to increase turnout require extensive resources. The degree to which a party is well organized and has resources to commit to mobilizing its supporters is thus likely to matter to its ability to mobilize supporters who are on the fence about whether to vote or stay home. Finally, voters may drop out of the electorate if they become dissatisfied with their preferred party (Adams et al., Reference Adams, Dow and Merrill2006). Voters may become disaffected by a party's poor performance in office, by problems in party leadership, or by party positions that are out of step with supporters. Such voters, however, may be too closely aligned with their party to vote for a competitor or may simply also dislike the alternatives they are presented with and choose to stay home rather than switch to another party.

There are good reasons to believe that these explanations of voter turnout would apply to turnout in Quebec between 2008 and 2019. The multidimensionality of Quebec's politics may make it more likely that different voters will see different elections as important to them. Individuals who care a great deal about national identity questions may be eager to vote when Quebec's place in Canada or identity and religious accommodation are central election themes. Such voters may be less likely to vote if those issues are not debated and instead economic or social issues are the focus of elections. The reverse may be true for voters who care less about national questions and more about economic or social issues. If changes in issue importance affect turnout, they should also affect support for parties. When individuals who care about national identity vote, support for the Bloc Québécois and Liberals should go up, as those parties are well positioned to speak to those issues (the Bloc Québécois to separatist voters, and the Liberals to federalists). When voters who care about economic or social issues and take left-leaning position on those issues turn out, support for the NDP should go up, as it is generally seen as a left-leaning party on these issues.

Voter mobilization efforts may have also affected turnout in ways that benefited some parties and hurt others. The speed and unexpectedness of the NDP's rise make it less likely that the party was able to make gains in 2011 by more effectively mobilizing voters. The comparative weakness of the NDP's local organizations in Quebec in 2011 meant that their local get-out-the- vote efforts were likely weaker than their competitors’, though the other factors discussed in this section may have helped the NDP mobilize new voters. However, the NDP may have benefited from organization problems that the Liberals had in the 2008 and 2011 elections. Both Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff had problems developing strong relationships with members of the Quebec party. Both had Quebec lieutenants resign due to the neglect of local Liberal organizations in Quebec and conflicts between themselves and the party leadership (Jeffrey, Reference Jeffrey2021). These weaknesses may not have benefited the NDP directly, but lower levels of Liberal voter turnout would have reduced Liberal vote shares and made it easier for the NDP to win seats. In 2015, the Liberals made substantial improvements to their local organizations both in and outside of Quebec in the lead up to the 2015 election (Cross, Reference Cross2016; Jeffrey, Reference Jeffrey2021). Revitalized Liberal local organizations could have been more effective at identifying Liberal supporters and ensuring that they got to the polls.

Changing perceptions of the parties may have finally affected whether voters were willing to turn out for the party that they normally supported. In the 2008 to 2011 period, the lingering effects of the sponsorship scandal may have depressed Liberal voter turnout. Voters frustrated by Liberal corruption who did not like the other parties running may have dropped out of the electorate during this time period. By 2015, the fading of the memory of the sponsorship scandal coupled with the revitalization of the Liberal Party may have caused these voters to turn out to vote Liberal once again.

Perceptions of the competitiveness of the Bloc Québécois and NDP at different times may have caused their voters to either stay home or enter the electorate depending on the election. Prior to 2011, Quebec voters sympathetic to the NDP may have reasonably believed that the party had such a small chance of winning seats in the province that it was not worth taking the time to vote. The sudden surge in NDP poll numbers in the middle of the 2011 election campaign may have convinced these voters that a vote for the NDP could now make a difference and that showing up on election day was worth their time. By contrast, the collapse of the Bloc Québécois and the leadership troubles the party experienced between 2011 and 2015 may have led many Bloc Québécois supporters to believe that the party was not competitive enough to make turning out to vote worth their time. Yves-François Blanchet's takeover of the party in 2019 and its perceived return to competitiveness may have led those voters to re-enter the electorate.

As with vote switching, we do not take a position on which of these explanations of changes in voter turnout are most plausible. Rather, we test changes in voter turnout as a broad explanation for volatility in Quebec against the vote switching explanations in the previous subsection of the article. We expect that the Liberals suffered from demobilization between 2008 and 2011, that the NDP made some gains as a result of mobilization in 2011, and that the increases in Liberal and Bloc Québécois support in 2015 and 2019 respectively came about as those parties were able to remobilize their supporters. These four hypotheses are expressed below.