MONTREAL —

Stephen Harper and his Conservatives are poised for an electoral breakthrough next week among Liberal-sick Quebecers wooed by the possibility of Tory victory.

Well, they're poised to win three, maybe four seats, according to pundits, but that qualifies as a breakthrough for a party that was shut out of the province in 2004 and hasn't had a noticeable presence since Brian Mulroney was prime minister.

"We won't have 54 seats in Quebec," said Maxime Bernier, the Tory candidate in Beauce, south of Quebec City, and one of the party's best shots at victory.

But "we're a national party so we need to have a least one seat in Quebec."

In the last federal election, the Bloc Quebecois won 54 of Quebec's 75 ridings and the Liberals won the rest. The Conservatives won a single riding in 2000.

It was a far cry from the heady days of Mulroney when the Conservatives won 58 Quebec ridings in 1984 and 63 in 1988.

"There's an old store of Conservative votes in Quebec that have been silenced in recent years because of the near-disappearance of the party," said Pierre Martin, a political science professor at the University of Montreal.

The prospect of Conservative victory outside Quebec has tapped into that old Tory store.

"Now that somebody can beat the Liberals, a lot of Quebecers are jumping on the bandwagon," said Christian Bourque, vice-president of pollster Leger Marketing.

The "new blue vote" is largely francophone, from both the Liberal and Bloc camps, he said.

But the Conservatives have not so much won over Quebecers as the Liberals have lost them.

"In this province there is a strong `anything-but-the-Liberals' sentiment related to the scandals," Bourque said.

"The Conservatives right now are giving an opportunity to francophone nationalist voters that were uncomfortable with the Liberals but were also uncomfortable with the sovereignty agenda of the Bloc. They've found the perfect place to vote."

The Montreal French-language daily La Presse, usually considered to have Liberal leanings, endorsed the Conservatives on Tuesday.

Polls indicate Canadians are going to elect a Conservative government, wrote chief editorialist Andre Pratte.

"It's essential that Quebecers participate in this government, rather than confine itself to the opposition."

The most recent poll found the Bloc Quebecois remained the favourite among Quebecers with 45 per cent support.

But 28 per cent of Quebecers polled online by Decima Research said they would cast ballots for the Conservatives, compared to 14 per cent for the Liberals. Nine per cent said they support the NDP.

The poll of 2,492 Quebecers is considered accurate within 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Mario Dumont, leader of the right-wing provincial party Action democratique du Quebec, appealed last week for Quebecers to block the Bloc.

Dumont called the separatist party a "political millstone for Quebec" that limits the province's influence on the national scene.

"The question must be asked: Does the Bloc allow Quebec to best play its cards in Ottawa? The answer is no," Dumont said.

He said he will vote Conservative on Jan. 23, but stopped short of endorsing the party overall.

It's still the Bloc that stands to gain the most from the Liberal implosion in Quebec.

The party is likely to gain seats, but leader Gilles Duceppe has now distanced himself from the goal of gaining 50 per cent of the popular vote as he'd once hoped.

Duceppe has also turned his attention from Prime Minister Paul Martin to Harper.

The Tories, Duceppe told members of the Quebec City Chamber of Commerce last week, are a party that does not understand Quebec's economy.

"Very regularly, the Conservative party positions itself against the interests of Quebec," he said.

The Conservatives' best hopes are with Bernier, the son of former Tory MP Gilles Bernier, in Beauce, and in the Quebec City riding of Louis-St-Laurent, where candidate Josee Verner posted the party's best result in 2004 but still lost to her Bloc opponent by 3,000 votes.

Harper and his team remain cautious, and well they should, warns Martin.

"The Liberals stand to lose a fair number of seats," he said.

But "one should never underestimate their ability to regroup and survive."