With lower than eight months to go earlier than the final election, the Parti Québécois (PQ) gained a fourth consecutive byelection on Monday evening on the expense of the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) since 2023, this time in Chicoutimi.
The PQ thus regains a stronghold that was taken from it in 2018 by the CAQ, in a area, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, which had all the time been a fertile floor for Quebec nationalism.
At 8:44 p.m., with 48 polling stations counted out of 142, PQ candidate Marie-Karlynn Laflamme acquired 2,760 votes, 1,210 votes forward of the Conservative Get together of Quebec (PCQ) candidate, Catherine Morissette, CAQ member Francis Tremblay, Liberal Tricia Murray, whereas Jeanne Palardy, of Québec solidaire (QS), introduced up the rear.
About sixty PQ activists gathered in a resort cheered their new elected official by chanting “Marie! Marie!” as quickly as a tv community declared Laflamme’s victory, barely 20 minutes after the polls closed.
That is fairly a reversal in Chicoutimi in comparison with the 2022 election, when CAQ MNA and minister Andrée Laforest was re-elected with a majority of 14,930 votes, the biggest lead obtained by the CAQ on this common election.
It was the resignation final September of Laforest that made this complementary insurance coverage crucial, when she made the leap into municipal politics.
With this new victory, the PQ will now have seven elected members within the Home, whereas there have been solely three survivors the day after the 2022 common election.
A ballot commissioned by the PCQ had recommended a two-way combat between the celebration and the PQ, because the CAQ authorities enters its eighth and closing yr in workplace and dissatisfaction is rising.
There have been 45,778 electors on the checklist of electors.
The turnout price in byelections is sort of all the time decrease than in a common election and celebration machines work laborious to encourage voters to vote.
Each the PCQ and the PQ assured that the activists had struggled till the very finish, to satisfy with residents and make cellphone calls.
Actually, on Monday, the day of the vote, PQ MNA Pascal Paradis was noticed with two activists going door-to-door within the Notre-Dame-du-Saguenay district close to the college.
With this victory, the PQ maintains the momentum it has gained for the reason that victory in Jean-Talon’s complementary election in 2023. He has an ideal file, 4 wins in 4 complementary video games since 2023.
After Jean-Talon, there was Terrebonne in 2024, then Arthabaska in August 2025. Paul St-Pierre Plamondon’s celebration, which had solely managed to elect three MNAs within the 2022 common election, had up to now managed to double its parliamentary group.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews