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Does Monday’s election result mean the sovereignty movement is dead in Quebec?

It would be easy to look at Monday's Quebec election results and suggest that the sovereignty movement is dead — that a vote against the PQ was a vote against an independent Quebec.

There's a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest support for a sovereign Quebec is, at least, waning.

In the 2012 election about 38 per cent Quebecers voted for a party that promoted sovereignty; in 2014, that number dropped to about 32 per cent. Moreover, during this campaign, when star candidate Pierre Karl Peledeau started talking about a referendum, PQ support numbers plummeted in the opinion polls.

[ Related: Pauline Marois resigns as PQ leader after crushing election defeat ]

There are also people who have closely analyzed the demographic shifts in Quebec, concluding that things are definitely different now than in the 1980s and 90s.

The Economist magazine cites two individuals who suggest the sovereignty movement is at least in hibernation.

"Claire Durand, a sociologist at the University of Montreal, speculates that the sovereignty issue has been defused for younger Francophone voters because of measures taken by successive governments to boost protection of the French language at school and in the workplace, and to acquire more control over the economy and immigration.

"Maurice Pinard of McGill University, who conducted the first poll on support for sovereignty in Quebec in the early 1960s, sees separatism as a social movement taken up by one generation and dropped by the next."

[ Related: Philippe Couillard’s Liberals win majority government in Quebec ]

But while the nationalist sentiment may be dormant, others warn that things can change very quickly in la belle province.

"The sovereignty issue will always still be alive in Quebec. There will always be about 40 per cent of the people supporting the sovereignty issue," Former Conservative MP and Quebec adviser to Stephen Harper, Andrew Bachand, told CBC News on election night.

"So the message for the rest of the country: don't be fooled about the result tonight. The sovereignty issue is still a question in Quebec. But people understand more and more in Quebec that we need to create jobs, we need to be fiscally responsible and move towards something else.

"There will always be a risk of having a new referendum. Always."

And finally, there was this history lesson by NDP leader Thomas Mulcair who spoke to reporters last weekend, prior to vote.

"There have been lots of politicians over the years who have written off sovereignty," Mulcair said, according to Postmedia News.

"I remember Pierre Trudeau declaring word for word that sovereignty is now dead after the 1980 referendum. What a mistake that was. Because it’s a mistake, period, to write off the deep feelings of a significant proportion of a very proud people."

(Photo courtesy of the Canadian Press)

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