Party leaders work to get the vote out on final campaign day

Quebec’s major party leaders made one final appeal to voters on the eve of Monday’s provincial election as polls continued to show François Legault’s party with a more than 20-point lead over his adversaries.

A poll on Sunday presented a picture that was relatively unchanged since the beginning of the election: the Coalition Avenir Québec far in the lead, with four other parties in a pack battling for a distant second.

The web survey results released Sunday for Quebecor media properties Journal/TVA/QUB has the CAQ at 38 per cent support, followed by Québec solidaire, the Liberals, the Conservatives and the Parti Québécois, each with 14 to 17 per cent.

The poll cannot be assigned a margin of error because respondents were selected from an online panel and not at random.

Legault, who was campaigning in Montreal and the Eastern Townships on Sunday, suggested his party was hoping to flip some traditional Liberal ridings to CAQ blue in his quest for a second majority government.

As he toured a market in Magog, 120 kilometres east of Montreal, Legault was approached by a citizen who suggested the party could win a tight three-way race in the Liberal stronghold of Verdun, in Montreal’s southwest. Legault’s party won only two ridings on the island of Montreal in 2018.

“We can win that!” he said. “We’ll win, it’s super.”

He began in day in the Maurice-Richard riding in Montreal, which was held by the Liberals until the sitting legislature member was ejected from caucus over a formal complaint of workplace harassment.

Parti Québécois Leader Paul StPierre Plamondon, on the other hand, conceded that a CAQ majority victory was appearing more and more likely. In a seeming admission that he’s unlikely to become premier, he pitched his party as the best choice to present a “strong opposition” to Legault on issues such as French-language protection.

St-Pierre Plamondon, whose strong campaign is credited with helping his party rise in the polls, urged would-be Legault voters to consider switching their vote.

“To sum it up, I’d say the CAQ doesn’t need your vote, but independence, the defence of French, the defence of our regions, yes,” he said at a campaign stop in the Gaspé region.

Liberal Leader Dominique Anglade began her day defending the decision to spend her final weekend campaigning in remote regions of the province where her party is polling in third.

After spending time in Gaspé and Îles-de-la-Madeleine on Saturday, Anglade headed to the northern Quebec village of Kuujjuaq on Sunday to campaign alongside her candidate in the Ungava riding.

She told reporters that she wants to show her party is a presence all across Quebec.

Quebec solidaire’s Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois was spending his day shoring up support in the Montreal area, while Conservative Leader Éric Duhaime began in Laval before heading to the Quebec Cityarea riding where he’s hoping to win a seat.