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Sonja Puzic, CTVNews.ca Published Monday, April 7, 2014 6:36AM EDT Last Updated Tuesday, April 8, 2014 8:28AM EDT

Philippe Couillards Liberals have won the Quebec election with a majority government, crushing the sovereigntist Parti Quebecois and Premier Pauline Marois.

Liberal candidates won in 70 of the province's ridings, the Parti Quebecois won 30, the Coalition Avenir Quebec took 22 and Quebec Solidaire picked up three. The PQ got about 25 per cent of the popular vote, its lowest share since 1970.

In a stunning turn of events, Marois lost her own seat in Charlevoix-Cote-de-Beaupre to Liberal Caroline Simard.

Couillard, who was a neurosurgeon before he entered politics, easily won his riding of Roberval, defeating PQ incumbent Denis Trottier.

Taking the stage at Liberal headquarters after most of the ballots had been counted, Couillard vowed to run an inclusive and stable government that represents the interests of all Quebecers.

Our language, our flag belongs to all Quebecers, he said.

Addressing the provinces anglophones in English, Couillard said: We are all Quebecers. We should all focus on what brings us together. What unites us makes us stronger.

He later added in French: Division is over; reconciliation has arrived.

In her concession speech, Marois announced she will step down as PQ leader and ensure an orderly transition.

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CTV projection: Liberals win Quebec election

Posted:Today Updated: 12:08 AM Fears of another referendum on independence from Canada could have motivated voters.

By Sean Farrell Associated Press

And Rob Gillies

MONTREAL The Liberal Party won Quebecs legislative elections Monday, in a crushing defeat for the main separatist party and major setback for the cause of independence in the French-speaking province.

Official results Monday showed the Liberals, staunch supporters of Canadian unity, won or were leading the race in about 75 of the of National Assemblys 125 seats, outstripping the separatist Parti Quebecois.

Those results will allow the Liberals to form a majority government, less than 18 months after voters had booted the party from power for the first time in nine years.

Quebec Premier Pauline Marois, who led a minority government, called the snap elections last month in the hopes of securing a majority for her PQ party. But the campaign stirred up speculation that a PQ majority would ultimately lead to another referendum on independence from Canada, an idea that has lacked support in recent years.

Fears of a referendum galvanized supporters of the Liberals.

Marois had tried to mute talk of another referendum on independence. She had hoped instead to make the election about the PQs proposed charter of values, a controversial but popular law that would ban public employees from wearing Muslim headscarves and other overt religious symbols.

But the strategy backfired early in the campaign when one PQ candidate, multi-millionaire media baron Pierre Karl Peladeau, burst onto the scene with a fist-pumping declaration of his commitment to make Quebec a country.

The rest is here:

Liberals win Quebec vote

Democrats facing a tough midterm election need someone to fire up the base. Joe Biden, on Twitter and on the trail, can be good at that. But there's a bigger social media powerhouse out there.

Joe Biden is back on Twitter just in time to fire up Democrats for 2014. On Monday morning he suddenly reactivated his @JoeBiden account on the mini-blog social media site, which had gone radio silent following a happy holidays tweet in 2012.

Washington Editor

Peter Grier is The Christian Science Monitor's Washington editor. In this capacity, he helps direct coverage for the paper on most news events in the nation's capital.

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Dusting off the Twitter handle for a big midterm election year. Lets get to it folks! the US vice president tweeted.

The post was signed Joe, so Biden himself allegedly wrote it. Unsigned posts are the work of the Democratic Party, since its a campaign-related account.

In a way, Biden never really left Twitter. His official vice presidential handle, @VP, has stayed up throughout the Obama administration. But the official feed has to remain pretty strait-laced, while the campaign site gets to loosen up. So in that sense its the real Joe thats being resurrected.

As the Washington Posts own un-tight political analyst Chris Cillizza wrote today, This is going to be good. Then he ran through all his favorite Joe Biden Twitter memes (twemes?) from years past, such as photos of Biden in aviator sunglasses, and Joe Biden carrying pumpkins.

The rest is here:

Joe Biden returns to Twitter. Democrats' 2014 secret weapon? (+video)

Democrats facing a tough midterm election need someone to fire up the base. Joe Biden, on Twitter and on the trail, can be good at that. But there's a bigger social media powerhouse out there.

Joe Biden is back on Twitter just in time to fire up Democrats for 2014. On Monday morning he suddenly reactivated his @JoeBiden account on the mini-blog social media site, which had gone radio silent following a happy holidays tweet in 2012.

Washington Editor

Peter Grier is The Christian Science Monitor's Washington editor. In this capacity, he helps direct coverage for the paper on most news events in the nation's capital.

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition

Dusting off the Twitter handle for a big midterm election year. Lets get to it folks! the US vice president tweeted.

The post was signed Joe, so Biden himself allegedly wrote it. Unsigned posts are the work of the Democratic Party, since its a campaign-related account.

In a way, Biden never really left Twitter. His official vice presidential handle, @VP, has stayed up throughout the Obama administration. But the official feed has to remain pretty strait-laced, while the campaign site gets to loosen up. So in that sense its the real Joe thats being resurrected.

As the Washington Posts own un-tight political analyst Chris Cillizza wrote today, This is going to be good. Then he ran through all his favorite Joe Biden Twitter memes (twemes?) from years past, such as photos of Biden in aviator sunglasses, and Joe Biden carrying pumpkins.

More here:

Joe Biden returns to Twitter. Democrats' 2014 secret weapon?

Washington (CNN) - From the White House to Capitol Hill to the campaign trail, Democrats are planning an across-the- board push on paycheck equality on Tuesday, the party's first large-scale coordinated effort on the issue ahead of November's midterm elections.

The full-court press by the White House, congressional Democrats and party officials, comes on National Equal Pay Day, which reflects how far into the current year women must work to match what men earned in the previous year.

Democrats seize on equal pay as midterm issue

President Barack Obama on Tuesday will go back to the first law he signed as President, addressing equal pay with two new executive actions that satisfy both policy and political priorities within the White House.

According to a White House official, Obama's executive actions will focus on "pay secrecy," the idea that women who are paid less than their male counterparts may not know it because they don't know what other employees are making.

"If women do not even know that they are underpaid, they cannot take steps to remedy the pay gap," said the official. "For example, Lilly Ledbetter was paid less than her male co-workers for decades without realizing it until someone took a risk and slipped her an anonymous note."

When Obama entered the White House in 2009, the first law he signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a law named for the Alabama grandmother who became a champion for equal pay after men in her Goodyear plant doing similar work had been paid up to 40% more.

The law allowed a victim of pay-based discrimination to file a complaint to the government within 180 days of their most recent paychecks, as opposed to within 180 days of the first "unfair" paycheck.

The first executive order Obama will sign will prohibit "federal contractors from retaliating against employees who choose to discuss their compensation," according to the White House official. The second order will ask the secretary of labor to establish new requirements for federal contractors to submit summaries of pay data, including a breakdown of sex and race.

"The Department of Labor will use the data to encourage voluntary compliance with equal pay laws, and allowing more targeted enforcement by focusing efforts where there are discrepancies, reducing burdens on other employers," the official added.

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Democrats highlight equal pay in political push