With a federal general election expected within the next two years, the results of three byelections in Quebec on Monday are being seen as an indicator of party popularity.

Although the final outcomes of the byelections will not substantially change the seat count in the House of Commons, the byelections will test the Liberal leader on his home turf and possibly give the NDP a breakthrough by providing its first Quebec seat since 1990. For the Bloc Québécois, it will be a question of holding off the Conservative party in two races in rural Quebec.

As for the Conservatives, a strong second-place showing would give them a sense of victory, a senior research fellow with the University of Ottawa says.

"It will be an extraordinary foray into a marginal — quote, unquote — part of Quebec which nobody believed, say five years ago, that the Conservatives had any chance to make inroads into," Gilles Paquette said.

Paquette noted that the Conservatives have not held any of the seats up for grabs in more than a decade, so Harper's party doesn't even have to take any of the seats to look like a winner.

The other way Harper can win is if the Liberals lose, observers in Ottawa have said.

Voters on Monday are heading to the polls in St-Hyacinthe-Bagot, Roberval-Lac-St-Jean and Outremont.

NDP edging out Liberals in Outremont: poll

The Montreal riding of Outrement, which has traditionally been a Liberal stronghold, is now under threat of being captured by the NDP. A Unimarketing poll released on Friday showed the NDP's candidate, former provincial Liberal cabinet minister Thomas Mulcair, had 38 per cent of voter support, compared with 32 per cent for Liberal Jocelyn Coulon.

Letting Outremont slip away would deal a major blow to federal Liberal party Leader Stéphane Dion, whose party is facing its first ballot test since he was chosen leader last December.

If that happens, it will further strengthen the Conservatives' bid to be the federalist alternative to the Bloc Québécois. 

The CBC's Tobias Fisher said on Monday from Ottawa it would be "a day of reckoning" for Dion, who is being tested on his home turf of Quebec.

'Star campaigners'

"Mr. Dion has had star campaigners in with him this weekend, he has a handpicked star candidate … and the view is that if the Liberals can't hold Outremont, then what Liberal seat in Quebec is still safe?" Fisher said.

A victory for Mulcair would give Quebec only its second NDP member of Parliament. The party won its first seat in a 1990 byelection.

Speaking to the CBC on Monday, NDP Leader Jack Layton said that "Quebecers really are, if I can put it this way, social democrats."

"There's very strong feeling here against the war in Afghanistan and people want to get Canada back on a course that has us speaking for peace in the world, as well as of course the environment issue, so when you add it all up, there seems to be a lot of enthusiasm for our NDP candidate," Layton said.

Conservatives close 2nd in last election

Elsewhere, in the Roberval-Lac-Saint-Jean riding, there is a sense that the Bloc-dominated riding could fall after 15 years into the Conservative fold.

In the last election, the Bloc edged out the Conservatives by only 3,000 votes, and the Conservatives are no longer facing Bloc stalwart Michel Gauthier, who has retired from politics. The Tories' candidate in Roberval-Lac-Saint-Jean is the mayor of Roberval, Denis Lebel.

Still, even Lebel has said the strengthening Conservative vote should not be taken as a sign sovereignty is dead. Quebecers simply have other priorities right now, he said: "Here we are talking about jobs, the future of the kids — that's the main thing."

Provincially, St-Hyacinthe-Bagot is held by Claude L'Écuyer of Action Démocratique du Québec. In the federal contest for the agricultural district, he came out in support of Conservative Bernard Barré, but polls have suggested the Bloc could still hold on to St-Hyacinthe-Bagot, vacated with the resignation of the Bloc's Yvan Loubier.