If you live where I do, which is small French (QUE) town with a short name, you would be hard pressed to know there was an election. Nobody in the town has yard signs and as near as I can tell none of the candidates except the Duplessis epoch conservative seem to want you to have a lawn sign. I tried and neither the Bloc (for my partner) nor the NDP (for nostalgia) have a phone number listed for their candidate. I would even pay for the cost of the signs by making an equivalent donation but sadly in my riding apparently both the Bloc and NDP have written it off. Funny that I should move 5000 miles from home, learn a new language and be stuck with the Randy White of Quebec. Alas so much for new beginnings and hope–next stop Wisconsin.
What is odd though is that this riding was not so long ago solidly Bloc and over the last two elections the NDP has doubled its vote to 10%. Now if you are a party that has historically been denied any chance of forming the government because you have been shut out of Quebec and you have gone from nothing to 10 percent in three election cycles it stands to reason that you might want to take such a riding seriously. But sadly no, the resources are going to attempts to defeat liberals so the conservatives can pull up the middle in Ontario, BC and the Isle de Montreal. Whatever.
The Bloc for its part is no better. It use to own this riding but alas I have yet to see the campaign bus make even a cursory tour of Rue Principale. But it is not just a deadly combination of rural and urban idiocy driving the election that never happened; I have not heard one comment about the election from my university colleagues.
My prediction: Quebec has the lowest voter turnout on record.
Relentlessly Progressive Political Economy 