Quebec votes today, with the Parti Québécois ahead and a majority still in doubt

Quebecers vote on Monday for all 127 seats in the National Assembly, in an election that can end two straight majority governments for the Coalition Avenir Québec and put a referendum question back on the table.

Polls open through the day. Results will not be official until counts close on Monday night. What is already known is the shape of the campaign that produced this ballot, and the last published numbers going into it.

Élections Québec said nearly a quarter of voters had already cast ballots in advance polling. The formal campaign ran 39 days. Cost of living and the chance of a third sovereignty referendum dominated it. The province last held a referendum in 1995. A Parti Québécois majority would give leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon the assembly he has said he wants before he sets a date for another vote. A minority would leave that timetable in the hands of parties that do not want one.

The final Pallas Data poll, taken before the weekend and published on 4 October, put decided and leaning voters at 29 percent for the Parti Québécois under St-Pierre Plamondon, down one point from the firm's previous wave. The Quebec Liberal Party under Charles Milliard was at 24 percent, up one. Éric Duhaime's Conservative Party was at 20 percent, up three. The governing CAQ under Christine Fréchette was at 15 percent, down four. Québec solidaire under Ruba Ghazal was at 11 percent, up one. Other parties totalled 1 percent. In the firm's first September poll the Conservatives were at 15 percent and the CAQ at 24.

Joseph Angolano, founder of Pallas, said the PQ would almost certainly form the next government, that a minority was the likelier result, and that a majority was not out of reach if turnout and organisation broke its way. A majority in this assembly is 64 seats.

Éric Grenier's Writ model, updated on the evening of 4 October, reached a similar split from a different method. The PQ won in 94 percent of simulations. It cleared 64 seats in 36 percent of them and finished as a minority in 58 percent. The average result in the model was 58 seats, with the party leading in 65. The Liberals were projected around 37 seats, enough to return as official opposition. The Conservatives were projected around 17 seats and just over 20 percent of the vote, which would give them official party status either by seats or by the vote threshold.

The geography in the Pallas numbers explains why the seat count is tighter than the popular-vote lead. In the Quebec City region, Duhaime's party led for a fifth straight wave, at 35 percent, with the PQ at 24 and the CAQ at 20. Outside Montreal and Quebec City, the PQ led at 32 percent, the Conservatives were second at 24, and the CAQ was under 20. In the Montreal suburbs the PQ was at 33, the Liberals at 29 and the Conservatives at 18. On the island of Montreal the Liberals led with 33 percent. Among francophones the PQ led at 36, the Conservatives at 19, the Liberals at 18 and the CAQ at 16.

That map is why a five-point lead can still produce a minority. The PQ's votes are spread. The Liberal vote is concentrated where it already wins seats. The Conservative vote is concentrated in Quebec City, where it can take seats from the CAQ without giving the PQ a majority on its own.

Fréchette is defending a government that won majorities in 2018 and 2022 under François Legault. The CAQ's drop from 24 percent to 15 percent inside a month, in one polling series, is the steepest move in this campaign. If it holds on election day, the party that has run the province for eight years could finish fourth in the popular vote and still hold a bloc of seats outside the two big cities.

St-Pierre Plamondon has spent the closing days on the referendum more than on the first hundred days of a government. Milliard has campaigned as the federalist alternative in Montreal and the suburbs. Duhaime has campaigned on cost of living and against the CAQ record. Ghazal's Québec solidaire is in the position of a left party that can hold Montreal seats and still fall short of the balance of power if the PQ and the Liberals between them clear 90 seats.

The count on Monday night will answer two questions the polls cannot. The first is whether the PQ clears 64. The second is whether Duhaime's 20 percent becomes 12 seats or something closer to 20, which decides who Fréchette has to negotiate with if she is still in the assembly and the PQ is short of a majority. A third referendum is a consequence of the first number, not a separate line on today's ballot.