Jean Charest won re-election, despite his Liberal government’s record dissatisfaction ratings, because he was the only contender for the job that was advertised: Premier of Quebec.

André Boisclair, leader of the Opposition Parti Québécois, failed to capitalize on that dissatisfaction because he wasn’t running to become premier. He wanted to be president of a new Quebec republic. Had he won, he’d be committed to calling a referendum.

Mario Dumont, leader of the right-of-centre Action démocratique du Québec, was running to become Opposition leader. He exceeded even his own expectations, picking up 41 seats, a quantum leap from the five seats his ADQ held going into the election, displacing Boisclair as Opposition leader.

With the extra visibility he gained, Dumont’s ADQ aims to form a majority government after the next election.

Quebecers returned Charest with the province’s first minority government since 1878. Although Charest and his ministers have the experience to run the province, Quebecers wanted to make sure there were no surprises.

Charest’s popularity went into a nose dive in his first year in office and never pulled back, after his government raised the daily fee parents pay for daycare by 40% to $7 from $5, unfroze hydro rates and reneged on its promised $1 billion in annual tax cuts.

As well, bold promises to eliminate waiting lists for surgery and end the overcrowding of hospital emergency rooms foundered on the ever-growing demand for health services from an aging population.

Voters also had a message for Boisclair and the PQ: We don’t want your referendum.

Dumont’s ADQ offered an alternative for voters dissatisfied with Charest and unimpressed by Boisclair.

Dumont was the main factor behind the ADQ sweep, which claimed 26 previously Liberal seats and 10 from the PQ. Just 36, yet a veteran of Quebec politics, he is smart and a superb communicator who speaks in snappy, made-for-television sound bites.

He entered Quebec’s political scene at age 22. As president of the Quebec Liberal Party’s youth wing, he took on his party leader, then-premier Robert Bourassa, who had promised his own sovereignty referendum unless the rest of Canada agreed to a massive decentralization of powers favouring Quebec.

Instead, Bourassa offered a referendum on the now-forgotten Charlottetown Accord. Dumont wouldn’t back down, and left the Liberals in 1992. Two years later, he was elected as the first ADQ member.

Dumont led the polls in 2002, as disillusioned PQ supporters saw him as the leader who could make their dreams come true. But to mollify his business backers he went to Toronto, telling a business audience he would make no constitutional demands.

That stand earned Dumont popularity in Toronto, but his supporters at home deserted en masse. Dumont won only four seats in the 2003 election, picking up a fifth in a 2004 byelection.

This time, he ran a largely flawless campaign, portraying himself as the defender of Quebec’s families, proposing to pay $100 a week to stay-at-home moms with pre-school children. He also repackaged himself as an “autonomist.”

Charest tried to smoke him out, demanding to know if he was a federalist or a separatist. This gave Dumont a platform to explain that his option was neither.

Dumont offers Quebecers a way out of the federalist-vs-separatist paradigm that has dominated Quebec politics since 1970. And that’s bad news for Charest and Boisclair. IE