Any Quebec Liberal who watched Sunday's Grey Cup game shouldn't be too worried because their party is trailing in the polls.
It's the Parti Québécois that should be concerned, even though it's ahead.
Yesterday's Léger Marketing-Le Devoir poll results suggest that the PQ would have formed a majority government, had a general election been held last week.
The current Liberal government's satisfaction rating, the key political indicator between elections, was only 34 per cent over-all.
Among the French-speaking voters who usually decide elections in Quebec, only 28 per cent expressed satisfaction with the government.
Consequently, before the redistribution of respondents expressing no preference, the PQ led the Liberals in party popularity by three percentage points among all voters and 15 points among francophones.
But a poll is the equivalent of the scoreboard at a particular moment in a football game. And if this were a football game, it would still be in the first quarter; the Liberals don't celebrate the first anniversary of their election victory until next Tuesday.
If you watched Sunday's game, you might recall that at the end of the first quarter, the Alouettes were trailing Saskatchewan 10-0. And you know how that turned out.
The Liberals have had as bad a first quarter as the Alouettes did. But there's still plenty of time left until the next election.
And Léger vice-president Christian Bourque attributed a 10-point drop in the government's satisfaction rating since last June to a single issue: the Liberals' refusal to call a public inquiry into allegations of corruption in the construction industry.
As discussed here last week (snipurl.com/thok9), the Liberals, at least, appear to believe that the corruption issue will die with time, especially if there is no inquiry to keep it alive into the second half of their term.
The PQ, however, might have a more lasting problem, even though it's currently ahead in the polls.
That problem is leadership. In the Léger poll, while dissatisfaction with the Liberal government was high, PQ leader Pauline Marois did no better than a statistical tie with Liberal Jean Charest on the question of which leader would make the best premier.
Whether it was among voters in general or francophones in particular, Charest was about as popular as his party, while Marois was less popular than hers.
And this isn't the first set of poll results to show Marois trailing her party. A CROP-La Presse poll conducted in late October suggested that Marois was an even bigger drag on the PQ's popularity.
Since she became leader of the PQ two years ago on her third try, when nobody else wanted the job, Marois has had image problems.
An internal party strategy paper leaked at the start of last year's election campaign bluntly remarked that voters thought she was both hesitant and an aloof "snob."
On Radio-Canada's weekly animated satirical program Et Dieu créa ... Laflaque, she is caricatured with her nose haughtily in the air.
Earlier this year, Marois supporter Lise Payette wrote in her Le Devoir column that Marois seemed to be unsure of herself.
When Marois and her husband Claude Blanchet put their Île-Bizard mansion up for sale four months ago for $8 million (still the asking price), it drew attention to their wealth and made her appear removed from the concerns of ordinary people.
And when she recently refused to commit herself on a proposal to apply to the CEGEPs Bill 101's restrictions on admission to English schools, she made her leadership of the PQ appear weak.
In spite of all that, her party is ahead on the scoreboard. But it's only the first quarter, and the PQ appears to have a quarterback with a suspect arm who has trouble completing passes. Anthony Calvillo she is not.
dmacpher@thegazette.canwest.com