Quebec general election, 1981
The
Quebec general election of 1981 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
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 generally TV-unfriendly campaign.
The
Union Nationale, which had won 11 seats in a modest comeback in the
1976 general election, was wiped off the map in this election, and never won another seat in any subsequent election. It is now disbanded. The party were not helped by the fact that its leader in the 1976 election,
Rodrigue Biron, had resigned from the party and joined the
Parti Québécois.
| Party | Party leader | # of
candidates | Seats | Popular vote |
|---|
| 1976 | Elected | % Change | # | % | % Change
| Parti Québécois | René Lévesque | 122 | 71 | 80 | +12.7% | 1,773,237 | 49.26% | +7.9%
| Liberal | Claude Ryan | 122 | 26 | 42 | +53.8% | 1,658,753 | 46.07% | +12.9%
| Union Nationale | Roch LaSalle | 121 | 11 | - | -100% | 144,070 | 4.00% | -14.2%
| Workers Communist | | 33 | * | - | * | 4,956 | 0.14% |
| Freedom of Choice | | 12 | * | - | * | 4,955 | 0.14% |
| Marxist-Leninist | | 40 | * | - | * | 3,299 | 0.09% |
| Libertarian | | 10 | * | - | * | 3,178 | 0.09% |
| United Social Credit | | 16 | - | - | - | 1,284 | 0.04% | -4.6%
| Workers | | 10 | * | - | * | 1,027 | 0.03% |
| Communist | | 10 | * | - | * | 768 | 0.02% |
| Independents/no designation | | 29 | | | | 4,570 | 0.12% | |
| Total | 525 | 110 | 122 | +10.9% | 3,600,097 | 100% | |
|---|
| Source: Elections Quebec |
|
Note:* Party did not nominate candidates in the previous election of information not available.
*
List of Quebec premiers*
Politics of Quebec*
Timeline of Quebec history*
List of Quebec political parties{{sequence| prev=
1976| list=
List of Quebec general elections| next=
1985*
CBC TV video clip
