The 1970 Quebec general election was held on April 29, 1970, to elect members of the National Assembly of Quebec. The former Legislative Assembly had been renamed the "National Assembly" in 1968, with its members now known in English as Members of the National Assembly (MNAs). In the election, the Quebec Liberal Party, led by Robert Bourassa, defeated the incumbent Union Nationale, led by Premier Jean-Jacques Bertrand. This election marked the first appearance by a new party, the sovereigntist Parti Québécois, led by former Liberal cabinet minister René Lévesque. The PQ won a modest seven seats and came second in the popular vote, although Lévesque was defeated in his own riding. Only a few months after the election, Quebec faced a severe test with the October Crisis, in which Liberal cabinet minister Pierre Laporte was kidnapped and assassinated by the Front de libération du Québec, a violent pro-independence group. The Union Nationale, which had governed Quebec through most of the 1940s and 1950s, would never come close to winning power again. This was partly because a significant number of the Union Nationale's younger supporters had embraced sovereigntism and shifted their support to the PQ.

Campaign

The Liberals, Unionists and péquistes all fielded full slates, and the créditistes also nominated 99 candidates, so most constituencies experienced at least four-way contests:

Results

! colspan=2 rowspan=2 | Political party ! rowspan=2 | Party leader ! colspan=4 | MNAs ! colspan=4 | Votes ! Candidates !1970 !± !# ! ± !% ! ± (pp) ! colspan="3" style="text-align:left;" | Total ! " colspan="2"|108 ! " colspan="2"|2,872,970 ! " colspan="2"| 100.00%

Synopsis of results

Analysis