Former Gatineau, Que., councillor Maude Marquis-Bissonnette is set to become the city’s next mayor, Radio-Canada is projecting.
As of 9:40 p.m., Marquis-Bissonnette had just under 42 per cent of the vote, with former mayor Yves Ducharme in second place with just over 31 per cent.
Seven candidates were running in Sunday’s byelection, after the unexpected resignation of France Bélisle in February.
Marquis-Bissonnette is set to serve as mayor of the western Quebec city until 2025, when the next general election is held.
A Sigma Research poll commissioned by Radio-Canada and published earlier this month showed that Marquis-Bissonnette and Ducharme were the two front-runners, with Marquis-Bissonnette’s lead in the double digits.
Elected as councillor for Gatineau’s Plateau ward in 2017, Marquis-Bissonnette resigned to run for mayor in the 2021 election.
She ended up coming in second behind Bélisle.
As the leader of Action Gatineau, Marquis-Bissonnette was the only one of the seven candidates in Sunday’s byelection who were aligned with a municipal political party.
Ducharme was attempting to return to the mayor’s chair after nearly 20 years away, having previously served from 2001 until 2005.
Before that, he was mayor of the pre-amalgamation city of Hull from 1992 until 2001.
Voters are also electing a new councillor in the city’s Carrefour-de-l’Hôpital ward Sunday, as former councillor Olive Kamanyana had stepped down to launch her own mayoral bid.