From: brewnoser2@gmail.com   
      
   National Post / Postmedia News | August 20, 2015   
      
   NDP's 'Orange Wave' in Quebec could become a tsunami as poll puts party's   
   support at 47 per cent   
      
   Analysis   
      
   In the wake of Quebec's provincial election in 2014, a bitter contest that saw   
   the Liberals win a convincing majority and the Parti Québécois suffer its   
   worst defeat in 40 years, newly minted premier Philippe Couillard spoke of a   
   "tectonic shift" in    
   Quebec's political landscape.   
      
   But I would argue that the result we saw in this province a year ago was an   
   aftershock of larger, even more unexpected political earthquake that occurred   
   here in 2011 -- the NDP's "Orange Wave" breakthrough in Quebec.   
      
   Let's be clear -- four years ago, nobody foresaw that Canada's perennial   
   third-place federal party would score 59 seats in a province that was presumed   
   to be real estate dominated by the federal Liberals and the Bloc Québécois   
   (the NDP sure didn't).     
      
   And in the aftermath of that detonation, there was plenty of speculation from   
   pundits and political operators whose orthodoxies had been shattered into a   
   zillion tiny pieces that the NDP win had been a fluke -- the result of a   
   convergence of factors that    
   were unlikely to recur in 2015.   
      
   But Thursday morning, a CROP survey conducted for La Presse suggests that the   
   NDP wave in Quebec is taking on the dimensions of tsunami, and anyone else   
   hoping to make gains in this province is in danger of getting swamped.   
      
   The survey suggests the NDP enjoys 47 per cent support in Quebec -- a   
   staggering 27 percentage points ahead of the federal Liberals and, relatively   
   speaking, light-years ahead of the Bloc Québécois (16 per cent) and   
   Conservatives (13 per cent).   
      
   When asked who they thought best suited to be prime minister, 41 per cent of   
   respondents gave the nod to NDP leader Thomas Mulcair while just 15 per cent   
   believed Liberal leader Justin Trudeau should be sent to 24 Sussex.    
   Conservative leader Stephen    
   Harper, the guy who actually has the job, polled at just 13 per cent.   
      
   Given that the poll suggests the NDP is nearly five points ahead of where they   
   were when they broke through in Quebec in 2011, its clear that the   
   French-language leaders' debates starting next month will take on even greater   
   importance for the other    
   parties hoping to make gains in Quebec. . . .   
   (particularly for Gilles Duceppe, head of the newly re-leadered Bloc Québécois   
   which, despite assurances of full-fledged support from PQ leader Pierre Karl   
   Péladeau, has seen its support in Quebec drop nine points since June).   
      
   Of course we have another eight weeks until voting day, and there's plenty of   
   time for the game plan of any federal party -- the NDP included -- to be   
   blindsided in a campaign that's already revealed a tremendous potential for   
   nastiness.  But in the end,    
   I suspect that at bottom, there's not a lot of difference separating a Quebec   
   voter from a Quebec sports fan.     
      
   We love to back a winner -- real or perceived -- and right now that perception   
   is coloured orange.   
      
   http://i.cbc.ca/1.2901859.1434540949!/cpImage/httpImage/image.jp   
   _gen/derivatives/16x9_620/ndp-tom-mulcair-speech.jpg   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)