Anger not good strategy for Bloc, says pollster

Last Updated: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 | 11:10 AM ET

CBC News

The Bloc Québécois appears to be counting on Quebecers to remain angry enough over the sponsorship scandal to punish the Liberals at the ballot box. But some Liberals say they aren't scared, and a pollster says they might be right.

In 2004, the Bloc won 54 of the province's 75 seats riding a wave of anger over the sponsorship scandal. They took nearly half the popular vote in the province.

Liberal MP Denis Paradis says that was partly because many Liberal supporters didn't vote, and that the feeling on the ground is better this time.

BQ Leader Gilles Duceppe, Wednesday.

"It won't be as difficult as last time to get volunteers," he said. "And I do think that we're in a pretty good position to retake those ridings."

The Liberals lost almost all of their seats east of Montreal in 2004.

BQ Leader Gilles Duceppe kicked off this campaign eager to build on his party's 2004 performance.

"We are always trying to do better than we did the time before, so this is our goal," said Duceppe. "We don't take anything for granted.

"I told all of my candidates that they have to work each day and not think that it's won in advance."

Duceppe himself is more popular than ever, and the party is hoping to take the Montreal-area ridings of several Liberal cabinet ministers, including Pierre Pettigrew and Liza Frulla.

But Leger Marketing pollster Christian Bourque says the Bloc could be in for a surprise.

"The right question to ask is not how many more seats they can gain, but probably how many they can lose," said Bourque. "I think they hit that sort of hard ceiling 18 months ago, and are probably looking down from that in terms of this election campaign."

Bourque says anger over the sponsorship scandal is slowly fading, and without that, the Bloc's popularity will ebb.