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ADQ for the NDP!

It’s true. Well, “polling true” anyway, and that sometimes resembles real-life truth: according to today’s big CROP poll, one-quarter of supporters of Mario Dumont’s right-leaning, politically incorrect Action Démocratique party at the provincial level in Quebec would have voted for Jack Layton’s leftie, politically correct NDP at the federal level. Mind you, there are fewer ADQ voters than there were only a few months ago, so Layton needn’t pop any corks/ have a stroke/ what is the proper response to news like this when you’re a social democrat, anyway?

The poll is, in general, more encouraging news for the Harper Conservatives in Quebec (and, in its provincial numbers, confirmation of Jean Charest’s very good year: he is in majority territory now, mostly thanks to the latest ADQ implosion).

But it is now time to start talking about a solid and strong trend of ever-increasing support for the NDP in Quebec, where Layton’s party (Mulcair’s party?) has doubled its support since the 2006 election and is now within two points of the Dion Liberals province-wide. Given the deep, deep basins of Liberal support in west-end Montreal and the West Island, this means the NDP is now solidly ahead of the Liberals outside Montreal (the poll shows NDP support among francophones five points ahead of Liberal support among francophones).

So here’s what it comes down to, 48 weeks after I wrote that Dion’s leadership “will unblock… at home or not at all”: the Liberal Party of Canada is in a knife fight for third place in Quebec. And it is solidly on track to lose that fight.

UPDATE: The NDP website is having fun with all those parliamentary votes Liberals were hoping nobody would notice.

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