Quebec's ruling Liberal party has been given a boost in a new poll released Tuesday, as the province's parties prepare for the crucial run-up to an election expected next month.
Popular support for the Liberals has climbed two percentage points to reach 36 per cent, according to a Leger Marketing poll conducted between Feb. 7 and 10 for the Montreal Gazette.
Support for the Liberals was at 34 per cent in a Leger poll released two weeks earlier.
Meanwhile the separatist Parti Quebecois, under Andre Boisclair, has slipped a point to 31 per cent.
As for Mario Dumont's Action Democratique du Quebec, popular support has slid three percentage points to 21 per cent.
The poll also found that Dumont is more popular than his party, with 28 per cent picking him as the best premier, while 26 per cent chose Boisclair and 24 per cent backed Charest.
Despite the Liberal party's lead, pollster Jean-Marc Leger said it's hard to say who will win.
"This is enough for (Quebec Premier Jean Charest) to feel comfortable to call the election, but it's not enough to win," Leger told The Gazette.
"If we had an election today, it would be impossible to predict who would win," he said.
One of the factors that is fuelling the unpredictability is that the Liberals remained far behind the Parti Quebecois in support among francophone voters.
Unlike non-francophones who are concentrated in Montreal and tend to vote Liberal, francophones are dispersed across the provincial ridings.
Francophones decide the vote in 80 of Quebec's 125 ridings.
Among the francophones:
- 36 supported Boisclair
- 28 backed Charest
- 22 would vote for Dumont
To win the provincial election, Charest's Liberals would need to secure the vote of 35 per cent of francophones, Leger said.
"Anything can happen with those numbers. You've got one of the more interesting campaigns -- at least potentially -- in a long, long time," CTV Montreal Quebec City Bureau Chief John Grant reported Tuesday.
While the Liberals are widening their lead, there are some troubling signs for their party, Grant said.
The Parti Quebecois is "still in advance among French-speaking voters," Grant said.
Quebecers are expected to be going to the polls as soon as the end of March, with all signs indicating Charest might call for an election after his government unveils a budget update on Feb. 20.
The five-year mandate for the majority Liberals runs out next year.
In other developments on the provincial landscape Tuesday, Quebec Finance Minister Michel Audet announced that he won't be a candidate in the coming election.
The 66-year-old Audet represents the Laporte riding on Montreal's south shore and was elected for the first time in 2003.
The Leger poll for The Gazette, Journal de Montreal and TVA Network surveyed 1,000 Quebecers of voting age Feb. 7 to 10 and is considered accurate to 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
