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From left, Quebec Solidaire Leader Francoise David, Coalition Avenir du Quebec Leader Francois Legault, Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois, and Liberal leader Philippe Couillard pose for a photograph prior to the leaders' debate Thursday, Thursday, March 20, 2014 in Montreal.Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press

As the election campaign in Quebec becomes polarized between the Parti Québécois and the Liberal Party, both Pauline Marois and Philippe Couillard are looking to poach the supporters of their two smaller rivals, the Coalition Avenir Québec and Québec Solidaire.

Much was made in the aftermath of the 2012 election about the division of the left-of-centre, sovereigntist vote between the PQ and QS (in addition to Option Nationale, another sovereigntist party that is less of a factor in this campaign). It may have very well cost the PQ a majority victory in 2012, the objective that Ms. Marois set for herself when she launched the current election campaign.

Similarly, the vote to the right of the PQ was also 'divided' in 2012, between the Liberals and the CAQ. Jean Charest's party shed almost 11 percentage points between the 2008 and 2012 elections, virtually all of it going to François Legault's CAQ. With Mr. Legault's party now polling in the mid-to-low teens, that does not seem to be a risk any longer.

But a division between the two sovereigntist parties is still a reality. The latest survey from Léger gave the two parties 42 per cent of the vote, more than the 38 per cent the two parties combined for in 2012, yet the PQ is on track to win just about as many seats as it had at dissolution.

Using the current seat projections from ThreeHundredEight.com, however, we can see that there are seven seats projected to be won by the Liberals with less support than the combined vote of the PQ and Québec Solidaire. That would be enough to give the PQ 62 seats, just shy of the 63 needed to win a majority – a margin that could easily be overcome elsewhere or made good by the two seats slated to be won by QS.

While two of those seven seats are on the island of Montreal, where QS is strongest, the rest are elsewhere in the province and primarily in the more rural regions of Quebec where QS has virtually no chance of winning a seat.

But if the PQ can complain about a division of their vote, the Liberals can equally object that the CAQ is splitting the federalist (or at least non-sovereigntist) vote and making possible a PQ victory. There are 29 seats in which the PQ is projected to win with less vote than the combined tallies of the Liberals and CAQ, enough to give the Liberals more than 90 seats.

Of course, the electoral calculations used to make these estimates work better in theory than in reality. Some supporters of QS would prefer to vote for the Liberals than the PQ, while some supporters of the CAQ would sooner vote PQ than Liberal. And many others are quite happy to stick with either QS or the CAQ, no matter which other party forms government.

The Léger poll from this week made this clear. When asked whether Quebeckers preferred a PQ or Liberal government, opinion was divided at 48 per cent for the Liberals and 41 per cent for the PQ. Among CAQ voters, 51 per cent preferred a Liberal victory while 34 per cent preferred a PQ win. Among QS supporters, the PQ was favoured by 62 per cent while just 21 per cent preferred the Liberals.

In other words, if the election becomes even more polarized and CAQ and QS supporters decide they must vote for either the PQ or Liberals, voters will drift in both directions.

Nevertheless, getting them to drift over to their side is still essential for both Mr. Couillard and Ms. Marois. Capturing each other's vote is virtually out of the question. A poll earlier in the campaign by Léger found that just 5 per cent of PQ and Liberal supporters chose the other party as their second choice, whereas 48 and 60 per cent of QS and CAQ supporters, respectively, said that either the PQ or the Liberals were their second choices.

Thursday night's debate, the second and last one of the campaign, will provide an opportunity to attract those voters. But if Ms. Marois expects to make any gains tonight, she will have to do much better than she did in the first debate. The Léger poll found that just 2 per cent of CAQ supporters, and 1 per cent of QS voters, thought that Ms. Marois had won that debate. This compares very poorly to the 9 per cent of QS supporters who thought Mr. Couillard had won, or the 20 per cent of caquistes who thought the same. If there was a silver lining for the PQ leader, though, it was that she did best among undecided voters, though almost three-quarters of them said they either did not know who won the debate or felt that none of the leaders had.

The campaign is drawing to a close but is far from over. In addition to tonight's debate, both major party leaders will be appearing on Radio-Canada's popular talk-show, Tout le monde en parle, on Sunday. Jack Layton's appearance on the show was a turning point in the 2011 federal election in Quebec. This campaign has already seen a few changes of fortune. The last might not have yet occurred.

Éric Grenier writes about politics and polls at ThreeHundredEight.com.

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