More than 5.6 million voters in Canada's French-speaking province of Quebec are heading to the polls on Monday in a race that is too close to call.

The election could result in a minority government in Quebec for the first time since 1878, yet hold off another referendum in the province on separation from Canada, analysts say.

Successive polls suggest Quebec Premier Jean Charest's Federalist Liberals will win, but with a minority.

A minority win by separatist Parti Quebecois (PQ), led by Andre Boisclair, 36, is also a possibility.

A recent poll conducted by the Strategic Counsel suggested 30 percent of voters support the Liberals, compared with 31 percent for the PQ and Mario Dumont's Action Democratique du Quebec (ADQ) with 28 percent. The poll's margin of error was 3.1 percentage points, giving the parties a statistical tie.

Whatever the result, analysts say, Dumont's ADQ, which calls itself "autonomist," will be a major winner. Dumont has proposed that Quebec remain part of Canada but called for a massive decentralization of federal powers to the province.

When the election was called on February 21 the ruling Liberals held 72 of the 125 seats in the Quebec national assembly, the provincial legislature. The Opposition PQ had 45 seats, the ADQ five, one seat was held by an independent and two seats were vacant.

Christian Rouillard, a political science professor at the University of Ottawa, said in an interview that the ADQ is benefiting from Quebecois' disenchantment with the Liberal government and their embracing of a third option to break the federal-separatist deadlock that has dominated the province's politics since the 1960s.

Quebec held two referendums on separation in 1980 and 1995, and the federalists won the second one by a narrow margin. However, a PQ minority government would have to give up its repeated vows to hold a new referendum because it would not gain enough support from the other parties in the provincial legislature. Dumont has made it clear he does not favor a referendum.

Jean-Herman Guay, a professor of political science at the University of Sherbrooke, said the election marks a "turning point" due to "the emergence of a conservative nationalism" in Quebec.

"We can see that voters are tired of the two big parties. It is an election of realignment," he said.

Moreover, some analysts suggested that the Quebec election result would likely benefit Prime Minister Stephen Harper and trigger a federal election.

"If I were (Harper), I'd find a reason to pull the plug as soon as possible," said Jean Lapierre, a seasoned observer of Quebec politics.

He noted that the areas where Dumont's ADQ is doing well are also areas where the federal Conservatives did well in the 2006 campaign, or could do well in the next federal election.

Harper's Conservatives won 10 seats in Quebec in the last elections. Growth for his party in Quebec and Ontario are seen as crucial to the Conservatives' quest to form a majority national government.

(Xinhua News Agency March 26, 2007)