During the recent Québec provincial election, the Parti Québécois (PQ) won only 28 percent of the vote but came just a handful of seats short of controlling the National Assembly. Photo courtesy Paul St-Pierre Plamondon/X.

Monday’s Québec election narrowly averted a crisis of democracy, but only partially and barely so. As the votes were being counted, the prospect of the Parti Québécois (PQ) winning an outright majority with less than 30 percent of the vote nearly came true. In the end, the majority didn’t quite materialize, but the result still distorts the will of the province in a very close call.

With only 28 percent of the vote, the PQ came only a handful of seats short of having total control of the National Assembly. A slight change in voter distribution would have delivered that power with far less than 50 percent of the vote. False majorities are nothing new in Canada: most majority governments federally and in multi-party provinces have less than 50 percent backing. But they are usually much closer to 40 percent, and often have a substantial gap between the first- and second-place parties.

Québec election........

© Canadian Dimension