The 450 area code was once a Coalition Avenir Québec bastion, but voters in the ring of suburbs surrounding Montreal Island turned their backs on the party on Monday night as every riding went Liberal or Parti Québécois.
The political casualties included such prominent CAQ incumbents as Pascale Déry, Éric Girard, Simon Jolin-Barrette, Ian Lafrenière and Christopher Skeete — all cabinet ministers before the election campaign started.
The 450 ring, with its middle-class and francophone voters, offered the CAQ a stepping stone to power in the 2018 and 2022 elections. In fact, the party of then-leader and co-founder François Legault all but eradicated the other political parties in many of those suburbs in 2022.