The battle in the riding of Hull-Aylmer seems to be being overlooked or grossly misrepresented. The Liberals are being very quiet, the Bloc Québécois is claiming they can win it, the Conservatives are saying it is possible they could win it, and then the NDP is claiming they are the real opponents for the Liberals.

 Hull-Aylmer is certainly up for grabs. The Liberals won the riding in 2006 with only a 1,785 vote margin. The Bloc Québécois finished second. It is interesting to note, however, that the Liberals lost more than 2,500 votes from their 2004 performance while the Bloc gained 162 votes. While the Bloc gain may not seem significant, it is actually far greater than it seems. In 2004, the Liberals had 33.9% of the vote in all of Quebec. In 2006, they had 20.7%, a reduction of 39% of their support. Marcel Proulx did better than the Liberals province-wide, managing to keep 87% of his vote from 2004.

 However, Bloc support in Quebec went from 48.9% in 2004 to 42.1% in 2006, a reduction of 14%, while support in Hull-Aylmer stayed constant, even increasing. The Bloc Québécois has a solid base in Hull-Aylmer, and though Bloc support provincewide will probably decrease by a few points on October 14, there is a good chance the Bloc vote will remain relatively stable here in Hull-Aylmer.

 The Liberals are seeing their provincial support decreasing even further into the high-teens. Marcel Proulx will feel the pinch, and if he loses only 10% of his support, he would be below the Bloc performance of 2006. The Conservatives and the NDP are fielding good candidates in the riding, and it is very possible that part of the Liberal and Bloc vote will bleed to these two parties. The question is whether it will bleed more from the Liberals or the Bloc. Considering the weakness of their leader and their campaign at the moment, it looks like the blood will be red.

 Raphaël Déry, the candidate for the Bloc in Hull-Aylmer, looks to gain from the problems in the Liberal campaign. The Conservatives, though they did increase their support significantly from 2004 to 2006, still finished over 8,000 votes behind the Liberals. Hull-Aylmer is an urban riding and has a long history of Liberal support – it is unlikely that the Conservatives will be able to make up that margin. As for the NDP, their confidence is bordering on the ludicrous. They are polling weakly in the province, and there isn’t any sort of orange wave appearing on the horizon. They finished over 9,000 votes behind the Liberals and will likely finish fourth on election day.

 It is true that more voters  in Quebec are looking at the Conservatives and the NDP. But, any study of the riding will show that most of those voters won’t be Bloc supporters. At 29.37% in 2006, the Bloc reached its base level of sovereigntist support. It is a mistake to discount the issue of sovereignty in this election. It may not be the topic on everyone’s lips, but a good portion of the population (35%-42% depending on the poll) still support the sovereignty option, and sovereigntists rarely vote for anyone but the Bloc. In 1995, Hull voted 30.27% in favour of sovereignty. That base still exists, and it will be much harder to bleed support away from the Bloc – who has some of the most loyal supporters – than it will be from the Liberals, who are suffering everywhere.

 So, in short, Hull-Aylmer is up for grabs. But let’s be realistic: only one party has any chance of grabbing it away.Â