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He only announced his intention to seek the leadership of the Quebec Liberal party three weeks ago. But were former federal cabinet minister Pablo Rodriguez to lead that party here and now, it would break out of its third place position in the polls and become a serious competitor for power in the 2026 provincial election, a new poll suggests.
The Léger poll conducted for the Journal de Montréal and TVA suggests that a Quebec Liberal Party led by Rodriguez would hold the lead in voter intentions, garnering 28 per cent support compared with 26 per cent for the Parti Québécois and 25 per cent for François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec.
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The Quebec Liberal leadership campaign does not officially launch until January and is expected to be completed by June of 2025.
The Léger survey found that at the moment, the PQ leads in voter support with 32 per cent, a jump of three points over last month, followed by the CAQ with 24 per cent, unchanged from a month ago, and the Quebec Liberals with 16 per cent, a drop of one point. Fourth place was held by Québec Solidaire with 14 per cent, a drop of one point compared with September, while the Quebec Conservative Party also dropped by one point to poll 12 per cent in support.
Rodriguez also seems poised to make a breakthrough with an essential demographic that has thus far scorned the Quebec Liberals: francophones. The poll suggests Rodriguez, a longtime Montreal MP, enjoys 20 per cent support among francophones, more than double what the party itself is polling among the same group.
The poll also found that Rodriguez enjoyed 30 per cent support among respondents who identified as Liberal voters, compared 14 per cent who supported the leadership candidacy of former Montreal mayor Denis Coderre, six per cent for tax lawyer Marc Bélanger, five per cent for former Quebec Chamber of Commerce Association director Charles Milliard and one per cent for Liberal MNA Frédéric Beauchemin.
However caution should be exercised with these last findings, since the proportion of Liberal party supporters who refused to answer or did not know who they support stood at 45 per cent.
The online survey of 1,041 Quebec adults was conducted Oct. 4-6. While no margin of error can be assigned to an online poll, a sampling of this size in a conventional survey would have a margin of error of 3.04 per cent 19 times out of 20.
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