Thirty-nine days later, the Parti Québécois finds itself more or less where it started. But behind it, things have changed a lot more.
In a few hours, the voters will have the final say. Tomorrow, we can count the votes, the seats, the surprises, and no doubt a few candidates who will still be wondering how many votes can sometimes translate into very few representatives.
But before the results reinterpret everything, it's worth looking at the campaign for what it was.
Because that's always the problem with the aftermath of an election: once the result is known, everyone suddenly realizes it was predictable. Mistakes become obvious, good decisions seem brilliant, and events that ultimately changed nothing disappear from the narrative.
So let's watch the campaign before we know the ending.
And what strikes me most is that the big move didn't happen at the front.
The PQ started first. It finishes first in the latest polls, which place it between 26% and 31%. At the very beginning of the campaign, Synopsis measured it at 28%, just ahead of the CAQ at 27%.
It was behind him that the game became interesting.
The PQ has mainly succeeded in holding on
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon had an advantage that all leaders dream of at the start of a campaign: he started in front.
However, this comes with a fairly simple problem. Everyone else then spends 39 days trying to bring you down.
The debates could have provided this opportunity. They did not.
Very quickly, the opponents of the PQ therefore sought another angle, and the referendum imposed itselfChristine Fréchette and Charles Milliard, in particular, tried to remind voters that a PQ government would not simply mean a change of party in power, but could also bring the constitutional question back to the forefront.
It was probably the most predictable attack of the entire campaign. That didn't make it any less politically relevant.
But it does not appear to have significantly changed voting intentions.
The PQ finishes again in the same general area as at the start.
In reality, PSPP didn't absolutely need to gain a lot of voters during this campaign. What he really needed was not to lose enough to let someone overtake him.
It's not spectacular.
However, it's quite useful when you're leading the race.
Christine Fréchette had eight years of CAQ behind her.
Christine Fréchette's situation was much more complicated.
She had to sell change with a party in power for eight years.
Not impossible. But let's just say the merchandise is a little more difficult to pack.
The CAQ had, however, experienced a resurgence before the campaign began. Fréchette's arrival had given the impression that a fresh start was possible. In May, Mainstreet polled its support at 24.6%, a significant increase compared to levels reached a few months earlier. On the eve of the campaign, Synopsis even placed it at 27%, just one point behind the PQ.
At the start of the campaign, his team chose to emphasize the American economic threat. Donald Trump practically became a player in the Quebec campaign, even though he hadn't bothered to run in a riding.
The strategy wasn't absurd.
Faced with an external threat, governmental experience can be reassuring. And above all, talking about what might happen tomorrow sometimes prevents us from dwelling too much on what happened yesterday.
Unfortunately for the CAQ, the other parties had perfectly understood the trick.
They therefore constantly brought Fréchette back to the government's record: health, public finances, immigration, infrastructure, cost of living.
Then came the story of American interference.
Fréchette had raised the possibility that American interests were seeking to support the sovereignty movement before acknowledging that she had no evidence of such interference. The situation became more complicated when it emerged that a member of the CAQ had previously approached journalists with this information.
What was meant to reinforce the narrative of the external threat backfired on the CAQ. For several days, the discussion no longer focused on what the Americans might have done in Quebec, but rather on what the CAQ itself had stated on the matter.
Changing the leader can change the atmosphere around a party.
That doesn't erase eight years of government.
The PCQ did something it hadn't managed in 2022
The most visible movement in the campaign probably comes from the Conservative Party.
At the start of the campaign, initial polls placed it at around 14 to 16%. The latest surveys now put it between 19 and 21%.
But the raw percentage is not the most interesting thing.
In 2022, Éric Duhaime had already proven that he existed a Conservative vote in QuebecThe PCQ obtained 12.91% of the votes, or 530,786 votes.
And no member of parliament.
It's hard to claim to have sparked a parliamentary revolution when the National Assembly can hold its Conservative caucus in a phone booth.
This time, the PCQ presented itself differently.
Duhaime continued to play his role as an opponent of the Quebec model, but he also insisted more on what he would do concretely: reducing the size of the state, bureaucracy, health, automobiles, taxation and public spending.
One could agree or disagree with the proposals. That's not the point here.
The difference is that the PCQ gave more of an impression of wanting to govern rather than simply protesting.
However, this brings us back to the same problem as in 2022: geography.
A party can obtain 20% of the vote and get almost no one elected if its vote is scattered everywhere.
The Quebec voting system has this particular little talent: it can transform hundreds of thousands of voters into statistical decoration.
We will see tonight if the PCQ has managed to concentrate enough of its support to avoid reliving the same scenario.
The PLQ had already lost a lot even before the start of the campaign
It would be somewhat misleading to describe the Liberal campaign as a long fall.
The main collapse had already occurred.
In the spring, some polls still placed the PLQ above 30%. Léger had measured it at 33% in early April and Mainstreet at 32% in May. By the end of August, it had fallen to around 20 to 22%.
Charles Milliard thus began the campaign in a strange position: his party remained one of the major political formations in Quebec, but at the same time he had to rebuild a good part of his credibility.
Recent polls place it between 23 and 25%.
This is not a return to the spring peaks, but it is not a further collapse either.
And that was probably Milliard's realistic task during this campaign: to stop the slide, give the party direction and start rebuilding an electoral coalition that has shrunk considerably over the past several years.
The fundamental problem remains.
The PLQ needs to win back Francophone voters without losing its traditional base. However, this constituency now has far more options than when Quebec was essentially divided between Liberals and Parti Québécois supporters.
This cannot be resolved in 39 days.
Québec solidaire has made little progress.
QS is probably the party whose campaign has least changed the overall situation.
He spent a good part of the campaign around 10%. The latest figures range from 9 to 13%, depending on the household.
Ruba Ghazal was certainly not lacking in ideas or proposals. Environment, housing, public transit, government intervention: no one could really mistake Québec solidaire for the other four parties.
The problem, therefore, was not to stand out.
It was about attracting new voters.
And on this point, the polls do not indicate any major transformation.
There's an irony in that.
In a campaign where almost every party is desperately trying to define its identity, QS probably has the clearest identity of all.
But knowing exactly what a party represents does not necessarily mean that one wants to vote for it.
And the debates?
They probably changed things less than we imagined.
That's almost always the case.
Before each debate, we are told the decisive moment of the campaignThen the leaders debate for two hours, their supporters declare that they have won, their opponents claim that they have lost, a few excerpts circulate on social media and, three days later, the campaign resumes.
Once again, no debate has caused any lasting upheaval in the polls.
They mainly confirmed what we already knew.
PSPP needed to protect its lead.
Fréchette had to distance himself from the wear and tear of the CAQ while defending his record.
Duhaime sought to show that his party could be more than just a protest vote.
Milliard was trying to get the PLQ back on track.
Ghazal needed to find a way out of the zone where his party had been operating since the beginning of the campaign.
No one really changed their character along the way.
What the campaign ultimately changed
Perhaps that's what best characterizes these 39 days.
Quebec's political system has not been overthrown.
It became clearer.
The PQ always finishes in first place.
The PCQ has gained ground.
The PLQ seems to have stabilized its situation after its fall in the spring.
The CAQ failed to maintain the momentum generated by its change of leader.
QS remained in the same general area.
No revolution, then.
But the fog has lifted.
Now there remains the part that national polls are unable to tell us correctly: the transformation of these percentages into constituencies.
That's where things can get strange.
A party can win many votes but few seats. Another can gain a few extra points in the right place and sweep an impressive number of constituencies. A few thousand votes shifted from one region to another can completely alter the composition of the National Assembly.
And this time, there are some 127 to distribute.
From now on, it's not really the pollsters who have the say anymore.
These are the few 6.4 million registered voters.
And tomorrow, we will finally be able to compare the two stories: the one told by the polls and the one that the ballot boxes will have actually written.
About the Author
What if we had had a proportional representation election?
https://ici.radio-Canada.ca/info/2026/elections-quebec/reforme-mode-scrutin-simulation-proportionnelle/
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