Paul St-Pierre Plamondon will become premier of Quebec after his separatist Parti Québécois won the most seats in Monday’s provincial election, though the party was on track for nearly 60 seats, short of the 64 needed to govern alone in the 127-seat National Assembly.
Projections on election night put the PQ at 59 seats, with the Liberals second at 40 and the Conservatives third at 19. The Coalition Avenir Québec, the centre-right nationalist party that had governed for eight years and won 90 seats in 2022, was projected to win none. Its leader, Premier Christine Fréchette, was projected to have lost her own seat. The map itself had changed, because the assembly grew from 125 to 127 seats under new electoral boundaries.
A minority government means the PQ needs support from opposition lawmakers to pass major legislation and to survive confidence votes. St-Pierre Plamondon acknowledged as much in his victory speech, saying voters had asked his party to work with the other parties, and he promised to be direct with Prime Minister Mark Carney. He also told supporters that his goal of an independent Quebec has not changed: “I continue to dream and visualize that country.”
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The result is a sharp turnaround. The PQ last governed from 2012 to 2014, and in the 2022 election it won three seats, the worst showing in its history. ATN has gathered that it then won three consecutive by-elections, including the Arthabaska seat, before the general campaign began. Nearly a quarter of Quebec voters cast advance ballots this year, according to reporting compiled by ATN.
On the central question, St-Pierre Plamondon has promised a third referendum on independence during his first term. He has said, however, that he will not hold it while U.S. President Donald Trump is in office, which runs until January 2029, and has argued that a decision of this size requires conditions for an informed and calm debate that should not be hijacked by an unpredictable president. That timeline effectively rules out a vote before 2029. Quebec held referendums on sovereignty in 1980 and 1995, and voters rejected independence both times.
Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, said the result reflects Quebec’s multiparty system, in which support splits among several parties, rather than a surge in separatist sentiment. Support for independence stands at about 30 percent, he said, low by historical standards. Surveys cited in coverage of the campaign found about the same share of Quebecers interested in a referendum at all. Béland said the minority outcome is probably welcome in Ottawa because it could make it harder for the PQ to prepare for and call a referendum.
Even so, a separatist government in Quebec presents Carney with a new national-unity challenge, Béland said, particularly with another independence-related vote approaching. On Oct. 19, Albertans vote on a referendum question asking whether their province should begin the legal process required to hold a binding vote on separating from Canada. A pro-independence win in Quebec two weeks earlier, Béland said, “might suggest to the Trump administration that national unity remains a major issue.”
Carney congratulated St-Pierre Plamondon on Monday night and signaled that Ottawa would work with the incoming government. He said “building a stronger Québec is core to our mission of building a stronger Canada,” and that the two governments would cooperate on support for businesses and workers affected by U.S. tariffs, on job creation and on housing. The country is also contending with a trade war and annexation threats from the United States, according to reporting compiled by ATN.
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Quebec matters particularly to Carney. Analysis ahead of the vote noted that his Liberals hold 44 of the province’s 78 federal seats. Polls suggest his popularity remains high across Canada, including in Quebec.
Voters interviewed after the result reflected the divide the PQ will face. Alexia Gomez, a 19-year-old first-time voter, told a reporter she opposed an independence referendum because she believed a separate Quebec would be politically, economically and militarily vulnerable.
The 1995 referendum was decided by a narrow margin, and there has been no further vote on Quebec sovereignty in the three decades since.
