PLQ UP – ADQ DOWN

June 20
ADQ’s decline is good news for the Liberals
Charest can thank his bounce in polls on his two Bourassa-era advisers
JOSEE LEGAULT, The Gazette

If John Parisella and Michel Bissonnette were to team up for good, create their own strategic counselling firm and register it on the stock exchange, its shares would be going through the roof.
When Jean Charest brought back these two experienced advisers from the Bourassa era, it was one of his savviest moves since he became premier in 2003. The proof is in the pudding. Yesterday’s Le Devoir/Léger Marketing poll confirmed a recent CROP poll: Charest’s Liberals have stepped into majority territory. More important, their resurgence since the end of last fall has been slow, but constant. This makes the Liberals’ growing support appear to be less volatile than previously thought.
The Liberals have risen from the dead. Now at 42 per cent, their support stood at 24 per cent across Quebec last September. They then had a dismal 15-per- cent support among francophones while the Action démocratique reigned at 37 per cent.
Yesterday, Léger Marketing confirmed that it’s now the ADQ that stands at a humiliating 17 per cent among francophone voters. But the cruellest data is the one that puts the Liberals at 47 per cent in the Quebec City region, the former ADQ stronghold.
On his way to his 50th birthday on June 24, Charest will probably also reflect on that staggering 57-per-cent rate of satisfaction and the 36 per cent of Quebecers who see him as making the best premier when compared with Mario Dumont and Pauline Marois.