To measure the depth of the hole that the Parti Québécois is in as a result of last month’s defeat, consider that Gilles Duceppe — who led the Bloc Québécois to a historic rout in the last federal election — may offer it its last, best hope of digging itself out.

But first, some numbers from a weekend Léger Marketing poll that was done a month to the day after the Quebec election. They add up to the worst PQ showing ever.

Province-wide, the sovereignty party has fallen below 20 per cent in voting intentions and to third place, eight points behind the Coalition Avenir Québec (27 per cent).

The PQ ranks third among francophone voters and fourth among those 35 years old and under.

Support for sovereignty is down to 32 per cent. Here again, the demographics are devastating. Sixty-seven per cent of voters aged 35 to 44 would vote no to sovereignty as would a clear majority in all age cohorts.

Those devastating numbers explain why so many longtime sovereigntists fear that last month’s defeat has dealt the party a fatal blow.

It is not as if there was an obvious saviour in sight

Since Pauline Marois resigned on election night, more than half-a-dozen names have surfaced. But only Duceppe’s resonates both with PQ sympathizers and voters in general.

In the Léger poll, the former BQ leader was the first choice of 26 per cent of PQ respondents and 21 per cent of voters.

Duceppe expressed interest in the top PQ job twice in the past, once going as far as throwing his hat in the ring, only to withdraw it a few days later rather than take Marois on in a leadership battle.

He has hands-on experience at running a party and years of practice in opposition.

After two decades in parliament, he is better learned than most Quebec politicians in the global issues that increasingly dominate the political agenda.

Perhaps even more importantly, Duceppe opposed the PQ’s charter of values even before it was shown to be a poison pill for the party.

The PQ will not choose a leader until next year at the earliest. By then Quebecers could have soured on the austerity medicine that Philippe Couillard’s Liberal government is about to dish out.

They may crave for a party that is led by a leader with Duceppe’s social-democrat credentials rather than look to double-down on fiscal restraint with the conservative CAQ.

But here is the rub: by the time of the next Quebec election, in four years, Duceppe will be 71 years old. If he ran, he might be no more than a transitional leader.

And here is the pickle the PQ is in. If Duceppe pulls his name out of the mix, the other leadership aspirants expected to be on offer amount to a choice between death by injection, hanging or electrocution.

Pierre-Karl Péladeau — Marois’ double-edged star recruit of the last campaign — runs second to Duceppe in the leadership choices of PQ members. But at 13 per cent, he does not do well with voters.

He is also a far more polarizing figure than the former Bloc leader.

When Péladeau appeared on the scene early on in the last campaign, the party’s progressive champions made a show of supporting his recruitment.

That did not prevent many PQ supporters from turning their backs on the party, after concluding that it had lost its social-democratic soul.

A PKP bid would be strenuously opposed from inside and his advent as leader could trigger another exodus.

Former charter minister Bernard Drainville is the PQ’s most effective stump speaker. But his presence at the helm would brand the PQ as the party of a charter that split its own ranks wide open.

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Besides, like Jean-François Lisée, his former journalistic and ministerial colleague, Drainville elicits the support of less than 5 per cent of voters. For the record, that’s still twice as much as some of the former junior ministers whose names are being floated as the fresh faces the PQ needs.

And then, every one of them — including Duceppe — has yet to come up with a way to square the circle of selling voters on a cause that has fallen in disfavour.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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