Yesterday, La Presse published a report on smaller parties. Amin Guidara offered a tour centred on an interview with Hans Mercier, a lawyer from Beauce who is also leader of Party 51, which pushes for Quebec’s annexation as the 51^st state of the United States.¹ The main article is followed by 16 paragraphs introducing the other parties in alphabetical order (except for the Green Party of Quebec, which inexplicably appears second…).

It seemed to me profoundly unjust to jumble together a party that has been fielding candidates for nearly 30 years (the Marxist-Leninist Party of Quebec), parties like the New Democratic Party of Quebec which pollsters name-check in their questionnaires, and others —like the Parti culinaire du Québec— which I had never heard of because I hadn’t read the Canadian Press article on the record number of authorized parties in this election.²

As an organizer for a party that was once small, I’d like to offer a more nuanced picture emphasizing the organizational strengths of those parties that display some.

Fundraising as a measure of organizational strength

Instead of starting with the list of 21 authorized political parties from the Chief Electoral Officer website, I downloaded the publicly available data about 2018 political contributions. I therefore ended up with a list of 18 parties, two of which are no longer authorized (the Parti union nationale and the Parti indépendantiste). Five authorized parties therefore haven’t received any contributions.

Parties	Date of authorization3	20144		2018
		Nb of candidates	Vote share	Contributions5	Voting intentions6
CAQ	14 February 2012	122	23.05%	$528,848	37.2%
Liberals	22 February 19787	125	41.52%	$684,933	30.3%
PQ	22 February 19788	124	25.38%	$964,402	17.9%
QS	1 January 20189	124	7.63%	$406,376	10.2%
NDP Quebec	30 January 2014			$27,260	0.8%
Conservative Party of Québec	25 March 2009	59	0.39%	$20,150	0.9%
Green Party of Quebec	14 November 2001	44	0.55%	$6,390	1.5%
Marxist-Leninist Party of Quebec	5 May 1989	24	0.05%	$5,855
Bloc Pot	18 March 1998	14	0.06%	$5,779
Citoyens au pouvoir du Québec	13 June 2012	5	0.03%	$10,506
Party 51	13 October 2016			$831
Parti libre	2 December 2016			$600
Parti union nationale10		3	0.01%	$500
Équipe autonomiste	21 March 2012	5	0.01%	$460
Québec en marche	29 November 2017			$275
Parti indépendantiste11		1	0.00%	$205
Cosmopolitan Québec	22 June 2018			$100
Parti équitable	20 February 2012	5	0.04%	$5

To gain some historical perspective, I transcribed the dates of authorization found on the Chief Electoral Officer website as well as performances in the last general elections.

A smaller party’s performance can be judged both by its score in the popular vote and by the number of candidates it managed to field. (By the way, if you yourself wish to run, here’s what you need to do: you have until 15 September 2018, 2pm.)

I’ve also added, for the parties for which such data exists, voting intentions according to Too Close To Call’s 27 August 2018 projection.

What I see in the table above are four categories of parties:

the Big Four,

that have seats at the National Assembly (which we’ll ignore in this post);

parties to watch,

that don’t have seats at the National Assembly but appear in pollsters’ scripts;

fixtures of recent Quebec elections,

parties that have existed for over 20 years;

new kids on the block,

parties that haven’t been around for more than six years.

What I mostly see in this last category is a huge surprise.

Parties to watch

I’ll quickly go over the parties that don’t have seats at the National Assembly but that appear in polls. I’ll dig in deeper when we know exactly how many candidates they’re fielding.

Parties	Date of authorization	2014		2018
		Nb of candidates	Vote share	Contributions	Voting intentions
NDP Quebec	30 January 2014			$27,260	0.8%
Conservative Party of Québec	25 March 2009	59	0.39%	$20,150	0.9%
Green Party of Quebec	14 November 2001	44	0.55%	$6,390	1.5%

I’ve ordered them by the funds they’ve managed to raise since the beginning of 2018.

You might notice that this variable seems to run counter to voting intentions. On the one hand, voting intentions change a lot relative to their score from one poll to the next. On the other hand, we see from the 2014 results that the Green Party fared better than the Conservative Party of Quebec with less candidates.

I see two possible explanations: the Green Party’s appeal with non francophones and the party name’s obvious brand recognition (of which I have a long-standing jealousy as a progressive). Indeed, most people easily associate voting green with environmental protection without having to go and read the party’s platform. (The ideology of green parties around the world on other issues is wide-ranging.)

We’ll take a closer look at voting intentions in later post.

Fixtures of recent Quebec elections

The Marxist-Leninist Party of Quebec (MLPQ) and the Bloc Pot have been fixtures of Quebec general elections since 1989 and 1998 respectively.

Parties	Date of authorization	2014		2018
		Nb of candidates	Vote share	Contributions	Voting intentions
Green Party of Quebec	14 November 2001	44	0.55%	$6,390	1.5%
Marxist-Leninist Party of Quebec	5 May 1989	24	0.05%	$5,855
Bloc Pot	18 March 1998	14	0.06%	$5,779

With $5,800 in funding each since the beginning of the year, these parties are actually pretty close to the Green Party of Quebec. It however gathered ten times more votes by presenting only two to three times more candidates in 2014.

The MLPQ are currently fielding 25 candidates and the Bloc Pot, 10 (with only one woman). They’re running in Montreal, on the South Shore, in the Laurentians, in and around Quebec City, and in the Outaouais.

New kids on the block

I’ve found in the new smaller parties an important surprise: the amount of fundraising achieved by the Citoyens au pouvoir du Québec party which, with its $10,000 since the beginning of the year, comes in 7^th, in front of the Green Party.

Parties	Date of authorization	2014		2018
		Nb of candidates	Vote share	Contributions
Citoyens au pouvoir du Québec	13 June 2012	5	0.03%	$10,506
Party 51	13 October 2016			$831
Parti libre	2 December 2016			$600
Parti union nationale		3	0.01%	$500
Équipe autonomiste	21 March 2012	5	0.01%	$460
Québec en marche	29 November 2017			$275
Parti indépendantiste		1	0.00%	$205
Cosmopolitan Québec	22 June 2018			$100
Parti équitable	20 February 2012	5	0.04%	$5

Visiting its website, it seems that the former party of controversial union leader Bernard “Rambo” Gauthier’s goal is to run 125 candidates. Indeed, it lists all 125 ridings in alphabetical order with either the name and photograph of the candidate or an image indicating that they’re looking for a candidate.

Advertising 48 candidates, the Citoyens au pouvoir party is already comfortably ahead of the older smaller parties: that number even places it between the number of candidates run by the Green Party and the Conservative Party in 2014.

The Green Party and the Conservative Party are set to perform better this year, having already announced respectively 70 and 90 candidacies. NDP Quebec for its part seems to be having a slow start. Despite having the best fundraising amongst parties that have no seats at the National Assembly, they have only 31 candidates up on their website.

Citoyens au pouvoir, a party to watch?

The Citoyens au pouvoir party’s fundraising is 40% higher than that of the Green Party. It has already announced candidates in nearly 40% of ridings while NDP Quebec only has 25%.

Why then aren’t pollsters including the Citoyens au pouvoir party when measuring voting intentions?

Notes

1. Guidara, Amin. “Voter pour un Québec américain.” La Presse+, 27 August 2018, Actualités section, screen 9.
2. Giguère, Ugo. “Élections 2018: record de partis politiques autorisés en 45 ans.” La Presse. 30 July 2018.
3. Register of parties, authorized independent candidates and others
4. Official results by political party for all electoral divisions: April 7, 2014 General elections
5. Research on contributors on 28 August 2018 at 7:32am.
6. Too Close To Call’s 27 August 2018 projection.
7. Following the 1977 Act to govern the financing of political parties: the QLP was founded on the same day as Canada (1 July 1867).
8. Following the 1977 Act to govern the financing of political parties: the PQ was founded on 11 October 1968.
9. Because it merged with Option nationale: Quebec Solidaire was founded on 4 February 2006.
10. No longer authorized
11. No longer authorized