The never-say-die campaign of Martine Ouellet

MartineOuellet has been anunderdog sincetheParti Qubcois leadership race began in May.

She doesn't have the big name supporters of front-runner Alexandre Cloutier, nor does she have the long experience of her closest rival, Jean-Francois Lise.

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But she has waged a scrappy campaign throughout the summer, managing to wrangle headlines for herself. And she now appears to be surging as the race enters its final month.

With the sudden departure of Vronique Hivon from the race,Ouellet now finds herself in third place. Apoll by Lger, commissioned by the Journal de Montral and Le Devoir,showsOuellet with 18 per cent support, behind Lise's23 per cent and Cloutier's39 per cent.

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Impressive jump

That represents a jump of 11 percentage points forOuellet since the last Lger polltaken in June evidence that a series of shrewd moves is paying dividends.

Her latest came Friday, when she announced she was adopting elements ofHivon's program. It was abold play for the support of the five MNAs who backed Hivonand arenow being courted by the other camps.

That comes in addition to a number of attention grabbing statements. Earlier this weekshe said, as premier,she would consider nationalizing internet infrastructure in Quebec if telecommunications companiesfailed to make their services more accessible.

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She turned the heads of many federalists when she proposed Quebec athletes compete under the Quebec flag at international events like the Olympics. And sheturned the heads of many sovereigntists by repeatedly blasting Lise and Cloutierfor failing to commit to holding a referendum in the first term of a PQ government.

"It's changing and I can feel it," Ouellet said of her campaign during an interview with The Canadian Press on Saturday.

"InTrois-Rivires, where I was this morning, the room was full, everyone was standing up. There were a hundred people there."

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Benefits of the ballot

This is not Ouellet'sfirst stab at the PQ leadership. She also ran to replace Pauline Marois in 2014, finishing a distant third behind Cloutier, himself a distant second behind runaway winner Pierre Karl Pladeau.

The party, though, has adopted a different votecounting system this time, which may benefit Ouellet. Unlike the run-off system of the last leadership race, the PQ will rely on apreferentialballot to tabulate the votes on Oct. 7.

A preferential ballot allows voters to rank their choices for leader, and is thought to limit the tactical voting that can doom third and fourth-place candidates.

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Ouellet's supporters, in other words, won't be pressured to vote for someone else in order to block an even worse option voting for Cloutier, for instance, to prevent a Lise win.

But at some point she will need to leapfrogLise, or her name will be dropped from the ballot as successive rounds of counting push one candidate towards the50-per cent threshold.

With each round, the bottom name gets dropped and their votes are redistributed to the remaining candidates based on the second or third choices of the voters.

As it stands now, with fourth-place Paul St-Pierre Plamondonat only oneper cent,Ouellet would likely make it toa third round before her supporters would be divided among Cloutier and Lise and ultimately decide the winner of the race.

Between now and the start of votingon Oct. 5, the party will hold a series of debatesa chanceforOuelletto score points against the front-runners.

If her scrappy campaign thus far has been any indication, expect her to come out swinging.

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