HE was cranky on the campaign trial, cantankerous even. Francois Legault, the firm favourite in this week’s Quebec elections, had always been unapologetically nationalistic.

Now – or so his critics said – the sitting premier also sounded downright chauvinistic. The 65-year-old said increased immigration beyond 50,000 a year would be “suicidal” for his French-speaking province, or, rather, his nation within Canada.

Mr Legault, in another testy episode, even appeared to imply a link between newcomers and the threat of “violence” and “extremism”.

Earlier his immigration minister blurted out that “80% of immigrants go to Montreal, do not work, do not speak French or do not adhere to the values of Quebec society.”

For opponents of Mr Legault and his ruling Coalition Avenir Quebec or CAQ this was evidence of a xenophobic mask slipping. “These words are dangerous, because they are feeding fear of others,” said Dominique Anglade, leader of Quebec’s Liberals and the daughter of very eminent Haitian exiles.

Her retort made her headlines. But not any headway. Mr Legault on Monday secured a second and increased majority in Quebec’s National Assembly. He took 90 out of its 125 seats on just 41% of the vote, thanks to the first-past the-post system Canada inherited from Britain.

He painted the electoral map “powder blue”, his party’s colour, sweeping almost all of rural and suburban Quebec. His opponents, including Ms Anglade, were left little more than urban redoubts, most on the cosmopolitan and multi-lingual island of Montreal.

CAQ holds Francophone Quebec. How? Well, because Mr Legault has found the way to move la belle province beyond its politics of Yes and No. His secret? Nationalism without independence.

For decades Quebec politics has been dominated by one question: whether to stay in Canada. Power at the National Assembly has ebbed and flowed between two great forces: the sovereigntists f of the Parti Québécois (PQ), those who wanted independence, and the federalists of the Liberals (PLQ), who did not.

Twice PQ held referendums, in 1980 and 1995. And twice they lost, the second time by a whisker. The final result was so close the distressed pro-independence leader Jacques Parizeau blamed “money and the ethnic vote”. His side had been winning. Until ballots from Montreal started kicking in. There are still Quebecers of colour who remember the abuse which followed Mr Parizeau’s heat-of-the-moment remarks. Some of his supporters – eager to recruit Anglophone and allophone voters – were horrified. Quebec politics for at least two decades more remained stuck, calcified, in to Oui and Non camps.

An accountant and airline executive (he was one of the founders of Air Transat), Mr Legault had been a passionate sovereigntist in his youth. He served under two PQ premiers in the late 1990s early 2000s. But he quit the National Assembly in 2009 before setting up CAQ two years later. His plan: to find a way out of binary constitutional politics.

Lots of commentators see Mr Legault’s party as more than just a coalition in name, but as a vehicle for uniting people and politicians who once stood on opposite sides of the debate. CAQ is often described as neutral. Is it? Not really, says Éric Bélanger, a professor of political science at Montreal’s McGill University.

“There is a third way, it is being federalist but nationalist,” he explains. “For a long time Mr Legault and the CAQ tried to propose a third way that was kind of ‘in between’ federalism and independence. But they were never able to create interest in that. Then, at a policy congress in 2015, they decided to take sides in the debate rather than sitting on the fence. They basically said that they were federalists.”

This, for Prof Bélanger, was essentially Mr Legault, a long-time sovereigntist, accepting the political reality that Quebecers were not up for a third independence vote. “In 2015 he came to terms with the fact a majority of Quebeckers are not sovereignists but are very much nationalists.”

Mr Legault had found what other analysts, such as such as polling guru Cristian Bourque of Léger, have called Quebec’s “sweet spot”. His party unashamedly champions the nation, its secular values and its French language – sometimes making noises critics see as chauvinistic. But it makes clear it supports the federation, including during this campaign. Just not, as Prof Bélanger says, always “very loudly”. CAQ still wants to hoover up pro-independence votes.

Studies, however, show that, if asked, CAQ supporters are “more federalist than independentist”, says Prof Bélanger.

But Legault and his allies have not just hammered traditional sovereignties of the PQ, which got just three seats and 14.6% of the vote, its all-time low. They have buried mainstream federalism too. The PLQ on Monday did even worse than the PQ, collecting just 14.4% of the vote, less than ever before. Ms Anglade, however, will be leader of the opposition after picking up 21 seats, most in Montreal.

Another federalist party, the newly formed Conservatives borne on a wave of a culture-warsy libertarian protest against Covid restrictions, took 12.9% of the vote but no seats. Its shock jock radio host leader complained of a “distortion” of democracy.

Not all federalists are convinced by Mr Legault’s conversion, or his third way. Some, including in English-speaking Canada, think he a kind of stealth sovereigntist, a separatist in the closet, who will seek ructions with Ottawa. Some of his voters will be hoping so.

Quebec’s independence supporters have not completely disappeared. Polls suggest more than a third of adults in the province want their own state. However, there are big demographic trends here. Diehard sovereigntists tend to be older, conservative Baby Boomers of Mr Legault’s generation who speak French. Younger Quebecers, in contrast to Scotland, tend not to be that bothered by the issue.

That is the simple reading. But sovereigntists – like federalists – defy pigeon holes. This week second place was taken by another party breaking the mould of the province’s politics: Quebec Solidaire (QS). It beat both the PQ and the PLQ on share of the vote, running up 11 seats on 15.4%. This party is sovereigntist but, unlike the PQ, does not put independence front and centre. And its green-friendly, social-democratic, pro-immigration policies mean it does well in Montreal, even luring federalist votes.

The old Yes bloc is split three ways. “Some sovereigntists remain with PQ,” explains Prof Bélanger. “Some have gone to QS. Some have gone to CAQ. There is no glue or element to bring them back together at the moment.”

PQ and QS have flirted with merging. But these are parties with very little in common beyond independence.

And they clashed bitterly ahead of this week’s polls, not least on culture wars and identity issues. The PQ leader in one debate goaded his QS counterpart to say the French equivalent of the n-word out loud. It did not go down well.

Canada is currently suffering a massive labour shortage and at a federal level is trying to lure new workers. So are Quebec businesses. So why not the supposedly enterprise-friendly CAQ? Mr Legault is proposing a cap of 50,000 a year (PQ tried to undercut him with a figure of 35,000).

Bluntly, both CAQ and PQ want lower numbers – which they believe their society can assimilate. What is this about? Well, angst, fear that Francophones are in decline in North America.

Prof Bélanger said: “There is kind of a new divide that has emerged between pro-immigration people and those who are not so pro-immigration,” he said. “There is an insecurity behind this. There has been a clash of values, following the debate we had over reasonable accommodations around 2007. There is a fear that the secular values of the Quebec majority might be threatened by immigration.

“That has become a concern to the most nationalist Quebecers.”

CAQ is not just about holding down numbers. It has also pursued a series of new laws – designed to cement Quebec values. There is Bill 21, which bans new public officials from public displays of religion, including head and face coverings. And then there is Bill 96, which further tightens previous rules designed to ensure French has primacy in Quebec.

The last law, which came in to effect this summer, has enraged many Anglophones. So much so that some have turned on their traditional federalist politicians for not doing enough to oppose it.

For many sovereigntists independence was always about safeguarding their language and culture. Without their own state, Francophones are choosing CAQ – and its immigration rhetoric and language laws – to protect what they see as a society under long-term threat.

“Even within Quebec the number of people who speak French has been slowly but steadily declining,” explains Prof Bélanger. “There is the sense that ‘we do not want to disappear’. Since we said no to independence twice, we need to find ways to survive while staying within the Canadian ensemble. With the victories of CAQ we are witnessing the consequences of Quebecers rejecting independence.”