François Legault's revolutionary politics of the status quo

In the end, what changed was that nothing changed. The Coalition Avenir Québec, the conservative, nationalist party that has guided Quebec for the past four years, coasted to another majority government, as just about every pollster, pundit and amateur political scientist had been predicting for months.

It took the television networks just 11 minutes after polls closed to project that François Legault would once again lead a majority government, this time by an even more impressive margin than his historic victory in 2018.

And this, despite Legault having run what was, by most accounts, the worst campaign of the leaders of the five major parties.

He was quarrelsome with journalists; he looked by turns angry or annoyed during the debates, and he had to apologize twice for inflammatory comments about minority groups.

In the first instance, he associated immigration with violence and extremism when trying to spell out Quebec values. In the second, he claimed he had "resolved" the racism problem at the Joliette, Que., hospital where an Atikamekw woman, Joyce Echaquan, died amid a torrent of abuse.

WATCH | François Legault addresses Quebecers after election win:

Legault also had to publicly scold his immigration minister, Jean Boulet, when it was revealed Boulet had said during a debate that 80 per cent of newcomers to the province don't bother finding work or learning French — both claims that are verifiably false.

On the same day, however, Legault said it would a "bit suicidal" for Quebec to increase its immigration levels, insisting — as he has done for months — that accepting more immigrants entails a threat to the French language. (In fact, 81 per cent of immigrants in Quebec speak French, according to Statistics Canada.)   

During the final days of the campaign, newspapers and social media in Quebec saw dozens of immigrants testify, in French, about what drew them to Quebec, about the jobs they worked, about what they had contributed to the province.

In one of his final campaign stops, Legault grumbled about the "analysts" who accused him of being racist. He boasted that he alone had the courage to speak about Quebec values but then declined to specify what those values are — saying, "You know what happens when I try to do that."

There was speculation, fleeting though it was, about whether this negativity, this divisiveness, would hurt him on election day. 

The answer voters delivered on Monday was a resounding no. Legault's growing number of supporters endorsed, instead, his politics of the status quo. 

This is a politics of more tax cuts aimed at the broad middle class and of docile environmental policies, of investments in elder care and the odd quarrel with Ottawa.

And, perhaps above all, it is a politics of defensiveness against the demands that Quebec do more to address systemic racism, do more to make immigrants feel welcome, do more to define its nationalism in pluralistic terms.