Why was the Quebec election called so quickly?

Not even 10 minutes after the polls closed, Quebecers were told they had elected a majority CAQ government.

"This is the fastest result I have ever seen. I've been involved in election nights for 30 years. I've been in charge of them for 10 years, and in the memory of a journalist, yes, it's the fastest," said Frédéric Vanasse, senior director of strategic management and special projects at Radio-Canada's news department.

But by what magic was it possible to know which votes were in the ballot boxes that certainly could not have been opened and counted in sufficient numbers within 10 minutes of the polls closing?

Two factors led to this speed: the volume of advance voting and the high percentage of votes for the CAQ.

HIGH ADVANCED VOTING NUMBERS

At the Chief Electoral Officer's last count, no less than 24.5 per cent of the 6.3 million registered electors had voted at the advance polls, that is, more than 1.5 million electors.

However, since last December, the Election Act means that these ballot boxes can be opened to be counted as early as 6 p.m., with the result being kept confidential until 8 p.m.

"As advance polling becomes more popular with each election, the volume of ballots increases. A special decision was therefore made in 2018 to allow election officers to begin counting the advance polls earlier," said Julie St-Arnaud-Drolet, a spokesperson for Elections Quebec. "This year, there have been changes to the law and from now on, we can take for granted that the counting of advance votes can begin as of 6 p.m."

"And so, by 8 p.m., the avalanche of already counted votes was arriving in the newsrooms. It wasn't all the advance votes that were counted, but we still had a good mass of them," added St-Arnaud-Drolet.

NEWSROOMS READY

By 8 p.m., the newsrooms had long been ready.

"At Radio-Canada, an important meeting held last Thursday had the effect of analyzing the electoral territory, county by county. All efforts are put into this analysis, which is carried out with the help of polls, discussions with the parties and the field expertise of nearly thirty journalists who have a detailed knowledge of the ridings in the regions where they work," said Vanasse.

"We give each of the 125 ridings a rating, either an 'assured' rating, if we are convinced that a favourite candidate is certain to win, or a 'close' or 'dicey' rating. After the meeting, we realized that there were over 90 ridings where, in our assessment, there was little doubt that the favoured candidate was certain to win."

So, with tens of thousands of votes from all regions coming in at once, and the CAQ scoring over 50 per cent in the early stages, and none of the other parties exceeding 15 per cent, the trend was not only heavy, but irreversible, even if the CAQ's support was to drop to 41 per cent in the end.

FOUR PARTIES KNOTTED TOGETHER

For sociologist Claire Durand, a polling expert at the Université de Montréal, "10 minutes is rare, but it's not surprising," since the gap between the CAQ and the others had already widened.

"When did you see a party that was 25 points ahead of the next one? It's a rare situation. You have four parties in a handkerchief, and you have one that is at 41 per cent. That's what makes it happen. It's the first time, to my knowledge, that we've had a situation like this, and that's why the decision was made quickly," she said.

For The Canadian Press, whose data is compiled at its Toronto headquarters, Canadian Press editor Andrea Baillie said that "despite polls that suggested the CAQ would be back in power, we have to respect the voters' choice. However, our knowledge of the terrain, the electoral trends of the last election, and the speed with which the results showed a dominance of CAQ candidates made the decision quite clear. The final result, province-wide, was never in doubt."

NOT TAKING ANY CHANCES

Of course, no one was going to take any chances, says Claire Durand, who points out that even if the broadcasters follow a series of rigorous criteria, these trends are not infallible.

"Remember that, during the Quebec City municipal elections, they applied the criteria and made a mistake in the decision and announced the victory of Marie-Josée Savard," she said.

No one has forgotten the discomfort caused by Ms. Savard's victory speech when, a few minutes later, she was finally told that the victory went to Bruno Marchand instead.

That's why it took so long, for example, to find out whether Liberal leader Dominique Anglade and her PQ counterpart Paul St-Pierre Plamondon were elected: the results were not clear enough to venture out, and no one wanted to be wrong.

WAIT FOR THE GREEN LIGHT

So, on the Oct. 3 election, the massive influx of advance polls, half of which were CAQ blue and the other half perfectly fragmented into four, opened the door to a quick announcement.

"The journalist who is responsible for making the government forecast knows the ratings that were given to each of the ridings," said Vanasse.

"He is looking for anomalies. We felt comfortable making the prediction of the CAQ majority government so early because we had a lot of results, the CAQ was far ahead, and then there were no anomalies. All the ridings where we had predicted that something would happen, that's what was happening."

When all your indicators are green, when you check off all the boxes on your checklist, you feel comfortable going with the result.

The difference this year, then, is that everything fell into place much faster than usual because of the size of the advance poll, its almost complete count soon after 8 p.m., and the gap between the CAQ and everyone else.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Oct. 4, 2022.