The 1981 Quebec general election was held on April 13, 1981, to elect members of the National Assembly of the Province of Quebec, Canada. The incumbent Parti Québécois, led by Premier René Lévesque, won re-election, defeating the Quebec Liberal Party, led by Claude Ryan. The PQ won re-election despite having lost the 1980 Quebec referendum on sovereignty-association, the party's proposal for political independence for Quebec in an economic union with the rest of Canada. To some extent, they were helped by Claude Ryan's old-fashioned campaign style: he refused to tailor sound bites for the evening news and ran a campaign generally unsuited for television coverage. Despite finishing only three percent behind the PQ, the Liberals still finished a distant second, with 42 seats to the PQ's 80. Historically, provincial elections in Quebec produce large disparities between the popular vote and the actual seat count. The Union Nationale, which had won 11 seats in a modest comeback in the 1976 general election, was reduced to five seats at dissolution by numerous floor crossings, retirements and resignations. Among the departures was that of its leader in the 1976 election, Rodrigue Biron, who crossed the floor to the PQ. The once-proud party lost all of its remaining seats, never to return. The party essentially ended at this point, though it lingered in desultory fashion until 1989.

Redistribution of ridings

A 1979 Act provided for the creation of the Commission de la représentation électorale, charged with the task of the redistribution of riding boundaries for elections to the National Assembly. For its initial work, it had to create a sufficient number of ridings that would have an average of 34,000 electors. In April 1980, the Commission increased the number of electoral districts from 110 to 122, effective with the next election:

Campaign

The Liberals and péquistes fielded full slates, while the Unionists decided not to run a candidate in the new riding of Ungava. The Parti national populaire ceased operations after its co-founder and only MNA Fabien Roy decided to leave the Legislature in 1979 for the federal level to lead the Social Credit Party of Canada. The Ralliement créditiste dissolved in 1978 when its leader Camil Samson created Les Démocrates, but that party failed to secure enough nominations for the coming election and thus dissolved in 1980. Samson would later join the Liberals, and would run as a candidate for that party in Rouyn-Noranda–Témiscamingue. Other disaffected créditistes opted to join the United Social Credit which had been revived by Jean-Paul Poulin.

Results

All seats were won by either the PQ or the Liberals, and no other party received better than a third-place result. The UN was once more shut out of the National Assembly. The election was notable for a large number of fringe parties, none of which received as much as 0.2% of the popular vote. ! colspan=2 rowspan=2 | Political party ! rowspan=2 | Party leader ! colspan=4 | MNAs ! colspan=4 | Votes ! Candidates !1981 !± !# ! ± !% ! ± (pp) ! colspan="3" style="text-align:left;" | Total ! " colspan="2"|122 ! " colspan="2"|3,600,097 ! " colspan="2"| 100.00%

Synopsis of results

Analysis