Fifty years of Quebexit
It is easy to forget than a majority of Quebecers have always opposed sovereignty, except on rare occasions.
In the opinion of several Quebec commentators, the 1995 referendum was “stolen” and did not genuinely reflect what Quebecers wanted.
They might be correct regarding the last point, though not in the way they intend.
On October 30, 1995, thirty years ago, 49.5% of Quebecers cast their ballots in favor of their province becoming an independent nation. Since the 1960s, such a high level of support for independence has only been measured on a few occasions.
- A very brief spike just before the 1980 referendum;
- The year preceding the failure of the Meech Lake Accord and the years that followed;
- Another brief spike just before the 1995 referendum;
- The months following the 1995 referendum;
- Media coverage of the sponsorship scandal.
The only times the ‘OUI’ side received substantial majority support for an extended duration were after the Meech Lake Accord’s collapse and in the months following the referendum. In other instances, the sovereignist choice topped out at 50%.
What the chart primarily demonstrates is that a significant majority of Quebecers have consistently opposed sovereignty for over 45 of the past 50 years.
For the last 20 years, support for the “OUI” has stagnated between 35% and 40%.
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Methodology:
I included all polls I could find in the Archives des sondages portant sur la souveraineté au Québec and on the Wikipedia page Le souverainisme au Québec.
Some polls which had no value for the “NON” vote were removed. These represent less than ten out of more than 900 polls.
I distributed the undecided votes proportionally. This probably slightly boosts the “OUI” results.
Finally, to limit “zigzags” and preserve the readability of the graph, I used a moving average. A given point therefore represents the average of the last five polls. A few very specific peaks may thus be slightly lowered, but this does not change the overall trend. And given the number of polls compiled in the graph, it is probably not visible to the naked eye.