Municipal elections were held in the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on November 5, 2017, as part of the 2017 Quebec municipal elections. Voters elected 65 positions on the Montreal City Council, including the mayor, borough mayors, and city councillors, as well as 38 borough councillors.
Despite early polls giving incumbent mayor Denis Coderre a comfortable lead, the election concluded with Valérie Plante of Projet Montréal winning the mayoralty race by a margin of over 27,000 votes. Plante became the first woman to lead Montreal in its 375-year history. She also became the first Projet Montréal candidate to be elected mayor of Montreal. Her party won a majority of the city council, electing 34 of 65 councillors.
Projet Montréal won unanimous control of four borough councils and majorities on seven more. ÃÂquipe Denis Coderre pour Montréal won unanimous control of four borough councils and majorities on two more. The two remaining boroughs, Anjou and LaSalle, were won unanimously by local parties, ÃÂquipe Anjou and ÃÂquipe Barbe Team respectively.
Several key city council figures were defeated, such as Russell Copeman, Harout Chitilian, Claude Dauphin, Anie Samson, Réal Ménard and Elsie Lefebvre. Projet Montréal founder Richard Bergeron, who had crossed the floor to ÃÂquipe Coderre, was defeated by the candidate for his former party, Robert Beaudry.
Following his defeat, Denis Coderre announced he would resign from political life, leaving his city council seat to his co-candidate Chantal Rossi. On November 9, members of his party elected Darlington councillor Lionel Perez as leader; it was also announced that the party, named for Coderre, would change name in the coming weeks.
Coalition Montréal was left with only one remaining elected official, Montreal's longest-serving city councillor Marvin Rotrand. Vrai changement pour Montréal, which had come in second in the mayoralty race in the previous election, lost all its seats, and announced it would suspend its activities.
For the first time, a majority of Montreal's elected officials (53 out of 103) were women. Six of the 103 elected officials (5.8%), including four of the 65 members of the city council, declared themselves to be members of visible minorities. Visible minorities make up a third of the population of the city. Another elected official, ChamplainâÂÂL'ÃÂle-des-Soeurs city councillor Marie-Josée Parent, who is of Mi'kmaq ancestry, became the first indigenous person elected to Montreal city council.
The official results were released on November 8, 2017. There was one request for a recount, in the race for borough councillor for La Pointe-des-Prairies in Rivière-des-PrairiesâÂÂPointe-aux-Trembles, in which Lisa Christensen of Projet Montréal had been announced as the winner with a lead of 32 votes. The recount was conducted by a judge of the Court of Quebec and Ms. Christensen was confirmed as the winner by a majority of 30 votes. This was also the first mayoral election since 2005 in which the winning candidate won more than 50% of the vote.
Depending on their borough, Montrealers voted for:
ÃÂquipe Denis Coderre pour Montréal
Projet Montréal
ÃÂquipe Anjou
Independent
Although Jean Fortier of Coalition Montréal abandoned his campaign for mayor on October 17, 2017, and endorsed Valérie Plante, his name officially remained on the ballot.
By-elections were held on December 16, 2018:
By-elections were held on December 16, 2018:
A by-election was held on October 6, 2019:
A by-election was to do be held on March 15, 2020. However, it was delayed the day before the election due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Quebec then cancelled altogether later that year.