By Daniel Béland

October 1, 2026

Less than a week before the October 5th Quebec general election, the Parti Québécois (PQ) remains clearly ahead in the polls and, according to recent seat projections, has a shot at winning a majority of the National Assembly’s 127 seats with only around 30% of popular support.

This outcome is likely despite the fact that a large majority of Quebecers oppose both independence (69% against) and a third referendum (60% against) partly because PQ Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon defused the referendum threat by saying he wouldn’t hold one as long as Donald Trump is in office. He then framed the election as a referendum on the last eight years of CAQ governance.

Because three Quebeckers out of four now say they want a change of government, his message seems to have worked well enough to keep the PQ significantly ahead of its main opponents.

To understand this situation, it is essential to look at the fragmentation of the political offer in Quebec and how each of the five main parties competing for seats in the National Assembly are doing across the province and among key demographics in the context of the first-past-the-post electoral system.

First there is the incumbent Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), the centre-right nationalist party created in 2011 that secured a majority of seats in 2018 and won by a landslide in 2022, both times under the leadership of party co-founder François Legault.

After the resignation of the widely unpopular Legault and his replacement by Christine Fréchette in mid-April, the CAQ doubled its average support in the polls, which increased from only 10% at the beginning of that month to 21% by late June.

Towards the end of August, in the context of the intensification of the trade war between Canada and the United States, support for the CAQ further increased but, after stagnating for a while, it is now “collapsing” in the aftermath of allegations of U.S. interference that were poorly handled by the party and created much public embarrassment for Fréchette.

Right now, the question seems to be not whether the CAQ has a shot at winning but whether it can survive.

The other story is the reemergence of the Conservative Party of Quebec, which was revived in 2009 but only started to matter electorally under the leadership of former radio host Eric Duhaime, who helped the party get nearly 13% of the popular vote in 2022 but failed to win one seat.

Can the LPQ secure more voters from francophones over the next five days, as those who want to stop the PQ are looking for an alternative to the collapsing CAQ? 

The provincial Conservatives have not elected a member of the National Assembly since 1935, the year before Maurice Duplessis merged it with the Union Nationale.

Duhaime has run a strong campaign, and his party now seems to be in an excellent position to win a significant number of seats across the province, including and especially the greater Quebec City area. The threshold in Quebec for official party status is high (12 seats or 20% of the popular vote) but Conservatives think they can meet it.

The oldest party in the province, the Liberal Party of Quebec (LPQ), has remained the official opposition since 2018. At that year’s election, they won only 31 seats, down sharply from 70 in 2014, receiving only a bit less than 25% of the popular vote. In 2022, they only won 21 seats with a popular vote of around 14.4%.

This dire outcome was related to a sharp decline of francophone support, which hovered around 10% for a long time. While much higher support among anglophones and allophones has allowed the party to keep many seats in Montreal, the LPQ cannot hope returning to power with such a low level of francophone support.

Can the LPQ secure more voters from francophones over the next five days, as those who want to stop the PQ are looking for an alternative to the collapsing CAQ? The most recent Léger poll suggests that it might be possible, but we will have to wait until election day to know for sure.

Interestingly, in this campaign, the PQ is the clear favourite despite the durable split within the sovereignty movement stemming partly from the creation of Quebec Solidaire (QS) 20 years ago. The QS won only one seat in 2008, two seats in 2012, three seats in 2014 but 10 and 11 seats in 2018 and 2022 respectively, making it a significant force in Quebec politics.

Although QS faced divisions and challenges in recent years, co-spokesperson Ruba Ghazal has run an excellent campaign, which is likely to help the party at least keep most of its Montreal seats.

Within the sovereignty camp, the PQ faced strong electoral challenges in the late 2010s and early 2020s, as the party won only 10 seats in 2018 and 3 seats in 2022.

Yet, under the leadership of Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, starting in 2023, the PQ started to move up in the polls as Premier Legault became increasingly unpopular. At the time, the Liberals, which formed the Official Opposition, were without a permanent leader (Marc Tanguay served as interim leader between November 2022 and June 2025).

In that context, St-Pierre Plamondon found a way to occupy much media and political space by criticizing the government and scoring points facing an increasingly unpopular premier. As a result, between October 2023 and February 2026, the PQ won four by elections in a row (Jean-Talon, Terrebonne, Arthabaska, and Chicoutimi), which crystallized the narrative that, among francophone voters, the PQ was now the main alternative to the CAQ.

Given the likelihood that the PQ will win at least a plurality of seats on October 5^th, and with an Alberta referendum that could lead to separation happening two weeks later, this could be a most politically significant month for national unity.

A fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Daniel Béland is professor of political science and director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University.