Q:
A: The political environment in Montreal is highly complex. It's impossible to categorize it as "mostly conservative" or "mostly liberal." Let's ignore loyalty to political parties for a second, and focus solely on social values. I would say that the majority of Montrealers are liberals in this regard. Most believe strongly in supporting poverty reduction, publicly-funded health and education, gender and trans-gender equality, reproductive rights, etc. Very liberal. On the other hand, these social values tend to be thrown to the wayside when Montrealers actually go to the polls to vote on elected representatives. Look at the last provincial election: The vote was split almost three ways between the ADQ (right of centre), the Liberals (which, unlike the federal liberals, are slightly right of centre) and the PQ (left). Separatism is such a polarising issue in Quebec that people tend to ignore their personal values and simply vote "strategically" regarding that one issue. For example, a lot of people who are non-separatist but are liberal actually voted counter-intuitively for the ADQ, simply because they were angry at the previous Charest government. Weird. Anyways to sum it up, Montrealers are more Liberal than Conservative, but this doesn't necessarily show through in their voting.