If you want a referendum, vote for the others. Or, in certain cases, you can stay at home, you don't vote and you could find yourself with a referendum by default because you didn't exercise your vote.

Municipalitites were allowed to hold demerger referendums if at least 10 per cent of the electorate signed a petition calling for them and only if more than 35 per cent participated in the voting process. In the last week of the campaign Charest promised an additional $700 million in tax cuts—some of it coming for the additional equalization money from the 2007 federal budget; reduction of hospital wait times; improvement and increase of French courses at school; an increase of the number of daycare spaces; and an increase in tuition fees for university students ($50 per semester until 2012). Boisclair did not perform well as Leader of the Opposition and Charest's numbers recovered somewhat.

He lost the provincial election held September 4 2012 and resigned as Premier on September 19. On September 5 2012 Jean Charest announced he will be resigning as Quebec Liberal Leader and leaving politics.