With about a third of polls reporting, the Liberal party is falling behind in the riding of Bonaventure, the seat held until a year ago by former deputy premier Nathalie Normandeau.

The PQ's Sylvain Roy has a nine point lead over Damien Arsenault, who was elected for the Liberals in a by-election in Dec. 2011.

In René-Lévésque, PQ candidate Marjolaine Dufour has been reelected, CBC News projects.

In Duplessis, the PQ's Lorraine Richard has also been returned to the national assembly.

Going into the 2012 Quebec election campaign, the governing Liberals held four out of the eight ridings in eastern Quebec, the huge geographic area that includes Bas-Saint-Laurent and Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine.

Normandeau quit politics in September 2011, vacating her Bonaventure seat.

If the Liberals were to maintain a foothold in the Gaspésie, Bonaventure was the likely place.

Ridings to watch

Liberal Georges Mamelonet, the one-time mayor of Percé, won the seat in the riding of Gaspé in 2008. He has found himself mired in controversy in recent years, charged with illegally fishing for sea urchins while he was still parliamentary secretary to the agriculture minister. More recently, he faced allegations of conflict of interest concerning business dealings from his mayoralty days.

Mamelonet is up against a well-known PQ candidate, Gaetan Lelièvre, a forestry engineer who has worked in the region for three decades. Polls late in the campaign had the two running neck-and-neck.

Iles-de-la-Madeleine was one of the tightest races in the province in 2008, with the Liberals' Germain Chevarie winning the seat by a mere 316 votes. The riding was the PQ's for the previous decade, and Parti Québécois candidate Jeannine Richard, will try to win it back.

Côte-Nord and Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean

The Côte-Nord and Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region is one the Parti Québécois can rely on.

Six of seven ridings were held by the Parti Québécois at dissolution.

Dubuc is the riding to watch in the region in this 2012 race. Serge Simard, the junior minister for natural resources in the Charest cabinet, won by just 424 votes in 2008. Simard, a former municipal councillor in La Baie, is up against Jean-Marie Claveau, who served as mayor in the tiny municipality of St-Félix-d'Otis for three decades.