QUEBEC CITY—When thousands of students pinned on the red squares of their gloried Maple Spring to march and shout in the Montreal streets this week, Québec Solidaire was right there with them.

It was an illustrative moment for the left-leaning fourth party of Quebec politics, not least because of who was absent, even outright condemned, at the Thursday protest: the Parti Québécois and its leader, Pauline Marois, who famously banged pots and wore the red square during the tumultuous student demonstrations of 2012.

“In recent months Quebecers have watched Pauline Marois pass from the red square to the recruitment of Pierre Karl Péladeau, from the red square to the exploitation of oil,” said QS co-spokesman Amir Khadir before the protest.

“The real house for progressives and sovereignists, it’s more than ever Québec Solidaire.”

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In that tight sound bite, Khadir summed up what the QS hopes will be a significant side-story to the Quebec election when votes are cast Monday. The party wants to dig in and devour support from the PQ’s left flank, which they see exposed by the party’s policies of indexing tuition hikes, opening the door to oil exploration on Anticosti Island and signing up Péladeau, a multimillionaire media magnate and notorious foe of unions, as a candidate.

The time is now, say QS faithful, to claim the mantle as the party of choice for progressives here.

“Running Péladeau as a candidate just confirmed what many of us already knew,” Molly Alexander, the QS candidate for the Montreal riding of Saint-Henri—Sainte-Anne, tells the Star. “They’ve abandoned any social democratic values they ever had.”

Alexander and the QS also see vulnerabilities in the PQ’s identity politics. With the Quebec secularism charter, which would ban religious symbols for public-sector workers, as a prime example, Alexander contends Marois and her cohort of péquistes are out of touch with contemporary Quebec society, where multiculturalism and equality are highly held ideals.

That’s why, even as an anglophone Montrealer whose parents are from Toronto, she supports the sovereigntist QS. The Quebec nation isn’t centred on the Franco-Catholic identity she sees espoused by the PQ.

“The PQ’s view of sovereignty is really nationalism … It would be even more exclusive and based on some form of nationalistic identity,” she says. “Quebecers don’t want that.”

The strategy may be working. An EKOS poll published Friday night said one-third of the 13 per cent who intend to vote QS are former PQ supporters. A Leger poll published Saturday in the Journal de Montréal/Journal de Québec puts QS support among young voters (18-25 years old) at 22 per cent.

In light of those results, the party could have a decent chance at increasing its two-member caucus in the National Assembly by winning seats in Montreal.

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Though there’s a risk of their support failing to translate into votes if people decide to vote strategically — 28 per cent of those who voted QS in 2012 now intend to vote Liberal, according to EKOS, a sign perhaps of anti-PQ sentiment — the picture is giving candidates like Alexander a welcome boost in the home stretch, especially when combined with the seemingly sinking fortunes of Marois’ PQ.

“They’re going to have a rude awakening on April 7,” she predicts.

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