Ninety to Zero: What Quebec Decided, and What Happens Now

Quebec has a new government and no majority. With every polling station counted, the Parti Québécois (PQ, sovereigntist) leads in 59 of the 127 seats in the National Assembly, the provincial legislature. Sixty-four make a majority. The Quebec Liberal Party (federalist) has 40 and forms the official opposition. The Conservative Party of Quebec has 19. Québec solidaire (left, sovereigntist) has 9. The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), in power since 2018, has none ^{[Élections Québec]}. Turnout was 66.9 percent, slightly above the 66.2 percent of 2022.

Yesterday we gave three numbers to watch: 64, 12 and Papineau. The PQ fell short of 64, which the models had called the likelier outcome. The Conservatives, who elected no one in 2022, cleared the 12-seat threshold for official party status with seven seats to spare. Papineau went to the PQ by 554 votes, against the model.

That Conservative result closes a long gap. The last time candidates were elected to Quebec’s legislature under a Conservative banner was November 1935, and their leader was Maurice Duplessis. The following year Duplessis merged the party with a group of dissident Liberals to create the Union Nationale, won the 1936 election and went on to govern Quebec for eighteen years. The Conservative name then disappeared from the benches for nine decades. Today’s Conservative Party of Quebec is a separate organization, founded in 2009. Its only members until now had been elected for another party and crossed the floor. Éric Duhaime is the first leader since Duplessis to bring an elected Conservative caucus into the House.

A Defeat Without a Quebec Precedent

The CAQ won 90 seats in 2022. Last night it took 13.4 percent of the vote, more than Québec solidaire, and won nothing. Québec solidaire took 12.4 percent and won nine seats. The outgoing Premier, Christine Fréchette, lost her own seat in Trois-Rivières by 499 votes and told her supporters the defeat was hers, not theirs ^[Noovo].

No Quebec government has gone from office to zero seats in a single election. The closest federal comparison is 1993, when Kim Campbell’s Progressive Conservatives fell from a majority government to two seats and the Prime Minister lost her own riding. The only cleaner wipeout of a sitting government in modern Canada is New Brunswick in 1987, when Richard Hatfield’s party lost all 58 seats.

The lesson is the one we drew from Chicoutimi in September. Quebec votes under first-past-the-post: in each riding, the candidate with the most votes takes the seat, and every other vote counts for nothing. A party that finishes second and third everywhere finishes with nothing.

The Arithmetic That Governs

The PQ won 28 percent of the vote and 46 percent of the seats. It needs five more votes to pass anything, and it has three places to find them. With Québec solidaire it reaches 68. With the Conservatives it reaches 78. With the Liberals, 99.

The government can be defeated only if all three opposition parties vote against it at the same time. The Liberals and Conservatives together hold 59 seats, five short of a majority themselves. An alternative government would need the federalist right and the sovereigntist left in the same cabinet. So the PQ is the only party that can govern, and it can choose its partner file by file. That is a stronger position than Pauline Marois held in 2012, when her minority of 54 seats lasted nineteen months.

The partners pull in opposite directions. Québec solidaire wants more spending and would raise permanent immigration to 70,000 a year; the PQ would cut it to 35,000. The Conservatives want $36.5 billion in spending reductions over five years and oppose a referendum. Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, the Premier-designate, has said he will work with the other parties ^{[Les Affaires]}. Every budget will show which way he leans.

The Referendum Question, Restated

Yesterday we explained that under Quebec’s Referendum Act a referendum question must be approved by the National Assembly, so a minority government needs an ally ^{[Referendum Act, ss. 7–8]}. That ally now exists on paper. The PQ and Québec solidaire are both sovereigntist, and together they hold 68 seats. Together they drew 40.5 percent of the vote.

Two clocks apply. Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon has said there will be no referendum before January 20, 2029, when the current American presidential term ends ^[AP]. The next fixed election is in October 2030. To reach that window, a minority government must first survive twenty-seven months, eight more than the last PQ minority managed.

The pledge is also a statement of priorities. The United States is Quebec’s largest trading partner, and the new government has chosen stability in that relationship ahead of its own founding project.

What the PQ Does Until Then

The platform it ran on gives the outline. A balanced budget by 2028–29, after a $6.5 billion deficit this year ^{[PQ framework]}. Permanent immigration cut to 35,000 a year and temporary immigration cut in half. The abolition of Santé Québec, the agency that has run the health network since 2024. The French-language charter, Bill 101, extended to CEGEPs, the public colleges that sit between high school and university in Quebec. For business, the party promises less state intervention and a lighter tax burden ^{[Les Affaires]}.

Each of those needs five votes the government does not have. Our read: it will look to the Conservatives for its budgets and to Québec solidaire for its sovereignty file, and it will avoid any vote that unites the three opposition parties.

Three Things to Watch Now

1. The first budget. It is the first vote the government cannot afford to lose. Who votes for it tells you who the real partner is.

2. Electoral reform. In 2025 Québec solidaire tabled a bill for a proportional voting system, backed by the PQ and the Conservatives ^{[Mouvement démocratie nouvelle]}. Those three parties now hold 87 of 127 seats. A party that took 571,520 votes and no seats is the strongest argument reformers have had. Reform is also the obvious price of Québec solidaire’s support.

3. Ottawa. Prime Minister Mark Carney congratulated Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon last night and said that building a stronger Quebec is key to building a stronger Canada ^[CBC]. The federal government now deals with a sovereigntist government in Quebec City for the first time since 2014, in the middle of a trade negotiation with Washington.

The Outaouais

Yesterday we wrote that if the PQ formed the government, the region around Gatineau would sit almost entirely in opposition. It does. The Liberals took four of the five seats: Pontiac (André Fortin, 61 percent of the vote), Hull (Sacha Cannon, by 8,343 votes), Gatineau (David Logue, by 7,239) and Chapleau (Michel Langevin, by 6,076) ^{[TVA Gatineau]}.

The exception is Papineau. The model had the Liberal ahead by seven points. The PQ’s Isabelle Millette won with 30.2 percent, 554 votes ahead of the Liberal Isabelle Sabourin. TVA Gatineau reports it is the first PQ win in the riding since 1976. Ms. Millette is now the only member from the Outaouais on the government side of the Assembly, which makes her the region’s one direct line to the new cabinet.