The Bloc's Downhill Battle

(Jacques Boissinot, The Canadian Press)

Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe was in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli Monday morning.

A lovely little town along the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Duceppe and the local candidate here, Nathalie Arsenault, were set to go for a walk along the pier jutting out into the river, where hundreds of small chunks of broken ice were floating quietly past.

Arsenault, an assistant or two, and the assembled media were waiting by the side of the road for Duceppe's bus to arrive.

It turns out that the quiet peacefulness of the area wasn't by accident: we were all standing in front of a cemetery, which is where Duceppe's bus let him off.

Not the kind of optics most politicians look for out on the campaign trail:

This draws attention to the Bloc's slow decline in recent years in the province.

In the 2004 election, 1,680,109 people cast a ballot for a Bloc candidate. By 2008, that number had dropped to 1,379,991, a slide of almost 18 per cent.

That trend is seen in the percentage of votes the Bloc got in every one of the ridings Duceppe plans to visit in the coming days:

 

Montmagny- L'Islet-Kamouraska-Rivières-du-Loup

2004: 57.1%

2006: 52.4%

2008: 46.0%

2009: 37.7%* (byelection, where the Bloc lost to the Conservatives) 

 

Rimouski-Neigette--Témiscouata--Les Basques

2004: 57.6%

2006: 46.4%

2008: 44.7% 

 

Haute-Gaspésie--La Mitis--Matane--Matapédia

2004: 56.5%

2006: 46.0%

2008: 37.5%** (just 384 votes ahead of the second-place Liberals)

 

Gaspésie--Îles-de-la-Madeleine

2004: 55.7%

2006: 42.7%

2008: 40.1%

 

The Bloc Quebecois needs outrage to motivate its voters.

It swept into the position of Official Opposition in 1993, in the wake of the failure of the Charlottetown Accord and the collapse of the Progressive Conservative vote in Quebec.

It peaked again in 2004, due in large part to public anger over the sponsorship scandal.

So what does it have to work with this year?

An HST deal for Quebec that hasn't been signed, yet.

A loan guarantee for Newfoundland and Labrador to develop its own hydroelectric infrastructure.

Issues that might not sit well with voters here, but will it get them out to the ballot boxes in droves?