Parti Québécois wins Quebec's election with 59 seats on 28 per cent of the vote — a minority that cannot deliver the independence referendum it promised without another party's help

The Parti Québécois won Monday's provincial election with the lowest share of the popular vote ever to produce a government in Quebec. That is the fact that frames everything else. Paul St-Pierre Plamondon's sovereigntists took 59 of the National Assembly's 127 seats on 28 per cent of the vote, according to results compiled by CBC News and Élections Québec, five short of the 64 needed for a majority and roughly 20 points short of the support that polls say independence itself commands.

It is a historic result by any measure. The PQ held three seats after the 2022 election. It had not formed a government since Pauline Marois's short-lived minority of 2012 to 2014. The Coalition Avenir Québec, which won a sweeping majority four years ago on 41 per cent of the vote, did not win a single seat on Monday, and its leader, outgoing Premier Christine Fréchette, lost her own riding in Trois-Rivières. 'I have Quebec tattooed on my heart,' she said in her concession speech. 'I gave everything I could.'

The Quebec Liberal Party, under Charles Milliard, climbed from 19 seats to 40 and will form the official opposition. Éric Duhaime's Conservative Party of Quebec went from no seats to 19, and Duhaime himself, on his third attempt to enter the legislature, won in Bellechasse. Québec Solidaire, the left-leaning sovereigntist party, held nine seats, down from 11. Turnout was about 67 per cent, up slightly on 2022.

How 28 per cent became 46 per cent of the seats

The arithmetic is a product of Quebec's first-past-the-post system meeting a five-way split. The PQ's 28 per cent was spread efficiently across francophone ridings outside the big cities. The Liberals' 24 per cent was concentrated in Montreal and the Outaouais. The Conservatives' 21 per cent, enough for 19 seats, is a share that in a two-party contest would have been worth nothing at all. And the CAQ's 13 per cent, spread thinly everywhere after eight years in power, produced zero.

The PQ won only two seats on the island of Montreal and none in Laval or Quebec City, the province's second- and third-largest cities, CBC reported, which raises an obvious question about how a government with almost no urban members will govern a province whose economy runs through them. Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada moved quickly to answer it from her side, congratulating the PQ and writing that 'when Montreal moves forward, all of Quebec benefits.'

The distortion is not lost on the winners. The PQ, Québec Solidaire and the Conservatives all promised during the campaign to replace the voting system with a proportional one. François Legault made the same promise as CAQ leader in 2018 and abandoned it in office in 2021; Justin Trudeau did the same federally. Monday's result, in which the party of government is also the party with the clearest incentive to change the rules that produced it, is the strongest test that promise has had.

The referendum he cannot call alone

St-Pierre Plamondon campaigned on a third referendum on independence, after the defeats of 1980 and 1995. He has said it would come only after US President Donald Trump leaves office, in 2029 or 2030, because a vote held during a trade war with Washington could not meet the 'conditions that allow for an informed and serene debate.' Trump is due to leave office in January 2029. Minority governments in Quebec, CBC noted, typically last less than two years.

The seat count makes the problem concrete. To pass the enabling legislation for a referendum, the PQ needs 64 votes. Its 59 plus Québec Solidaire's nine would get there, and QS is the only other sovereigntist party in the chamber. But QS campaigned on taxing the wealthy to fund schools and hospitals, not on independence, and its co-spokesperson Ruba Ghazal framed Monday night as survival rather than triumph. 'We resisted,' she told supporters.

Milliard closed the other door in English on election night. His party would collaborate on many issues, he said, 'but there is no way we will collaborate on a potential referendum.' The Conservatives, who share some fiscal ground with the PQ, are a federalist party. The only route to a referendum runs through QS, and QS now holds the balance of power on everything else too.

I just want to let you know very clearly that I'll be the premier of everyone in Quebec. We share the same future. — Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, addressing English-speaking Quebecers in his victory speech, as reported by CBC News

The fights that do not need a referendum

What a PQ minority can do without a majority is pick fights with Ottawa, and St-Pierre Plamondon has already named them. He has vowed to resist any increase in immigration levels mandated by Prime Minister Mark Carney's government. He has pledged to 'abolish the monarchy in Quebec' and to defund the office of the lieutenant-governor, the Crown's representative in the province, redirecting the money to homelessness. He was among the members who refused to swear allegiance to the King in 2022, a stand that led to a provincial law making the oath optional.

The monarchy pledge is where the legal ground is softest. The lieutenant-governor gives royal assent to every bill the National Assembly passes; a province cannot unilaterally remove an office entrenched in the Constitution. Pressed on this during the campaign, St-Pierre Plamondon told reporters he was ready for a legal battle with the federal government. Ottawa may be happy to have that fight, because it is one it is likely to win in court.

Carney, for his part, offered a conciliatory first word. He congratulated the PQ leader, said he looked forward to working with him and added that 'building a stronger Quebec is at the heart of our mission to build a stronger Canada.' Carney remains popular in Quebec, though the BBC noted his support had dipped after Trump imposed new tariffs on Canada in August following a breakdown in trade talks; Oxford Economics has put the hit to Quebec from the latest round at about C$2 billion.

Why the CAQ collapsed

The simplest explanation for Monday is fatigue. The CAQ was founded by Legault as a way out of the old Liberal-versus-PQ sovereignty debate, and for two terms it worked: a nationalist party that defended French and Quebec identity without threatening a referendum. By its eighth year the formula had worn through. Legault's own support fell, the party replaced him with Fréchette, and the change did not move voters. CBC's assessment on election night was blunt: a party with little grassroots organisation and now no members in the legislature faces questions about whether it survives at all.

The irony is that the CAQ's collapse has reconstituted exactly the debate it was built to end. The two largest parties in the new Assembly are a sovereigntist party and a federalist one, and the first question put to every piece of legislation will once again be what it means for the national question.

A second unity front

Carney may be managing two unity crises at once. Alberta is weighing whether to hold its own referendum, on separation from Canada, and a PQ government in Quebec City gives Western separatists a precedent and a partner in grievance, even if the two movements want opposite things from Ottawa. The federal government has spent the year since Trump's tariffs began arguing that Canada is stronger united; Monday handed that argument a harder audience in the province where it has always mattered most.

The counter-argument to alarm is also strong. The BBC cited polling showing only about 30 per cent of Quebecers back independence. The PQ's own share of the vote was below that. The government is a minority that cannot call a referendum without a partner who did not run on one, in a legislature where a majority of members were elected on explicitly federalist or non-sovereigntist platforms. St-Pierre Plamondon said on Monday night that 'our national destiny will be achieved one day.' The result that made him premier is also the clearest evidence that the day is not close.

What endures from Monday is structural. Quebec has a sovereigntist premier for the first time in twelve years, a legislature with a working majority against his central project, a voting system that all three winning opposition parties and the government have promised to replace, and a federal government that must now negotiate immigration, trade relief and the Crown with a leader who has said he is ready to litigate. Whether or not a referendum ever comes, that is the shape of Quebec politics for the life of this Assembly.

This report is based on results as compiled by CBC News, Élections Québec and the BBC as of Tuesday morning, October 6, 2026, with most votes counted. Seat totals in a handful of close ridings may shift on judicial recounts. Popular-vote percentages are rounded. Statements by party leaders are from their election-night speeches as reported by CBC News.