OTTAWA — Two obituaries may be written in the crushing defeat of the Parti Québécois in Monday’s election: for separatism as a political force in Quebec in the foreseeable future, and for the party itself, whose aging leaders were brought down by the very issue on which it was founded.

Yet Jean-Marc Léger, the president and chief executive of a Montreal polling firm that bears his name, cautioned against declaring separatism permanently vanquished, saying that by his count, its death sentence has been pronounced at least 25 times since 1974.

“People outside of Quebec don’t understand that separatism will never die,” he said.

That said, Mr. Léger added, the blow dealt to the Parti Québécois means that no party with any aspiration of holding power will openly promote a referendum on separating from Canada for years to come.

“People are fed up with that kind of debate. They want something else,” Mr. Léger said.

For a party created to take Quebec out of Canada, that leaves the Parti Québécois in a difficult spot. In The Toronto Star, the columnist Chantal Hébert wrote that by rejecting its central issue, voters “have inflicted a life-threatening defeat on the Parti Québécois.”