A Montreal teacher's two priorities, and the question of what decides Quebec's election
Erin Seize's short report from Montreal on the eve of the vote drew several times more viewers in a few hours than a CityNews upload usually gets in a full day, and its comment section went straight to sovereignty.
CityNewsStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 62,058 views a day, 21 times a normal first day on this channel (2,968).
Quebec election 2026: what will decide the race on Monday?
A new CityNews video usually collects around 3,000 views over its whole first day. Erin Seize's report from Montreal, posted the day before Quebecers go to the polls, passed 24,000 in about six hours.
The title asks what will decide the race on Monday, and the answer starts with voters. One of them is Ariane Moffette, a Montrealer who puts the environment and education at the top of her list and says her job is the reason: she is a teacher. It is a small, street-level piece on the kind of choice millions of people in the province were about to make.
The comment section did not stay with schools and climate. Most of the talk is about the Parti Québécois and the old question of sovereignty, with others making the case for the Liberals and a few drawing comparisons with Alberta. The PQ, founded by René Lévesque in 1968, has taken Quebec to two referendums on the question, in 1980 and 1995, and both ended in a No.
The Alberta comparison has a neighbor on the channel. Over the same weekend, CityNews covered a conference in Calgary where people discussed independence and the province's future, and that report drew far less attention than the one from Montreal.
CityNews spreads its days across nine Canadian cities, from proposed Calgary water rate hikes to an infill housing protest at Edmonton city hall. On the eve of Quebec's vote, it was the Montreal report that viewers came looking for.
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- Channel
- CityNews
- Subscribers
- 600,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 2,975,107
- Channel views, pace per day
- 525,192 (on a normal day: 369,066)
- Video published
- October 4, 2026
- Video views so far
- 24,626 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 62,058
The numbers
The numbers below show how fast the Montreal report outran a usual first day for the channel.
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Who founded the Parti Québécois in 1968?
René Lévesque founded the Parti Québécois in 1968 and became Quebec's premier when the party won the 1976 election.
