Liberal Leader Mark Carney, newly elected in the Ottawa riding of Nepean, arrived on Tuesday at the Prime Minister's office to get to work. His party will go on to form a new minority government.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Mark Carney’s Liberals secured a fourth consecutive win after an election campaign dominated by the existential threat of Donald Trump’s trade war.
Pierre Poilievre said he would stay on as Conservative Leader, even though he was defeated in his Ottawa-area riding. Jagmeet Singh resigned as NDP leader after support for his party collapsed and he, too, lost his seat.
Here are the five main takeaways from election night.
The Liberals hold on to power
In one of Canada’s most remarkable political comebacks, Prime Minister Mark Carney led the Liberals to a fourth consecutive victory, lifting the party from a double-digit deficit in the polls just months ago.
The Liberals’ fortunes began to turn around after Justin Trudeau announced his plans to resign as prime minister in January. U.S. President Donald Trump‘s tariff threats appeared to benefit the Liberals further.
Throughout the campaign, Mr. Carney capitalized on fears of a trade war with the United States, with the former central banker positioning himself as the leader with the economic chops to lead the country through such an economic crisis. He also switched between campaigning as Liberal Leader and his role as Prime Minister several times during the campaign, such as when he spoke with Mr. Trump and imposed retaliatory tariffs.
In his victory speech, Mr. Carney said he would sit down with Mr. Trump to discuss the “strategic relationship between sovereign nations.”
The Liberals now look set to form another minority government, with 169 seats to the Conservatives’ 144 – 172 or more are needed for a majority – which means the party will need to work with opposition parties to survive potential confidence votes in the House of Commons. It’s a familiar position for the Liberals: From March, 2022, until September, 2024, they had a supply-and-confidence agreement with the NDP, until the New Democrats ripped it up.
Liberal cabinet ministers such as Dominic LeBlanc, Mélanie Joly and Steven Guilbeault held on to their seats, as did a number of high-profile MPs who had said they wouldn’t run for re-election but reversed their decisions after Mr. Trudeau resigned, including Nathaniel Erskine-Smith and Anita Anand in Toronto and Sean Fraser in Nova Scotia.
The Liberals also won the popular vote with 43.7 per cent to the Conservatives’ 41.3 per cent.
Poilievre loses seat but pledges to stay on as Conservative Leader
The Conservatives had their best performance in a decade, making major gains in Ontario and picking up seats from both Liberal and NDP incumbents. But it wasn’t enough.
On election night, Pierre Poilievre said he would be staying on as party leader, even though he lost his own Ottawa-area seat to Liberal Bruce Fanjoy. By Tuesday morning, Mr. Poilievre had lost the riding he had won seven previous times. The last two Conservative leaders who failed to form government, Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole, resigned or were pushed out by their party after their losses.
The Conservatives made inroads in the 905, the area surrounding Toronto, as well as in the Windsor region. The party won almost all of Alberta’s 37 ridings and swept Saskatchewan save for one riding. During the election campaign, the idea of Western sovereignty bubbled up as Albertans expressed anger toward a decade of Liberal rule.
For the past two years, Mr. Poilievre positioned the election as a referendum on the Liberals’ decade in power under Mr. Trudeau. But he has also faced criticism for not pivoting quickly enough to focus on the trade war with the U.S., even as it benefited his main rival.
During his early morning speech, he said he intended to continue leading the party. “We know that change is needed, but change is hard to come by,” he said. “It takes time. It takes work. And that’s why we have to learn the lessons of tonight so that we can have an even better result the next time.”
Jagmeet Singh's riding, Burnaby Central, was one of several that fell to Liberal challengers across Canada, with several more flipping to the Conservatives.Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press
The NDP collapses, the Bloc slips, and the Green Party holds on
After more than seven years as NDP Leader, Jagmeet Singh announced he would step down after the party’s support collapsed and he failed to win his own seat in Burnaby, B.C.
The party failed to win the 12 seats needed to maintain official party status. The NDP’s poor performance benefited the Liberals but also the Conservatives, who scooped up long-held orange ridings in Hamilton and Windsor in Ontario.
It’s a disappointing result for the NDP, which came out of the 2021 election with 25 seats and about 18 per cent of the popular vote. But Mr. Singh failed to convince Canadians that his party was a viable option to fend off threats from Mr. Trump and combat the affordability crisis. The campaign crystalized into a two-party race between the Liberals and the Conservatives.
Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet held on to his seat, but his party suffered major losses. The Liberals were able to flip nine of the Bloc’s 32 seats.
Green Party Co-Leader Elizabeth May won a fifth term in Saanich-Gulf Islands, a seat she has held since 2011. Party Co-Leader Jonathan Pedneault lost in his Montreal riding.
'Who's ready to stand up for Canada with me?' Listen to excerpts from Mark Carney's victory speech and learn more about the political landscape his Liberals must navigate.
Reuters
What the polls got right – and wrong
Since Mr. Carney was voted in as Liberal Leader, pollsters projected a Liberal win, but there was a disconnect between some polls and the final results.
Most major pollsters gave the Liberals an edge heading into election day, but many projections – from both individual pollsters and poll aggregators – wrongly predicted a Liberal majority.
The popular polling site 338Canada, for example, put the Liberals at 186 seats in their final projection, though the site also included a wide range of 144 to 222. The site projected the Conservatives with 124 seats, with a range of 90 to 164.
CBC’s aggregator had the Liberals with 189 seats, with a “likely” range of between 161 and 204 seats, while it projected the Conservatives would win 125, with a range of between 111 and 146.
Nanos Research, which conducted polling for The Globe and Mail, had the Liberals at 43-per-cent support in its final poll, released Saturday, and the Conservatives at 40 per cent.
The Liberals wound up with 43.7 per cent of the popular vote, compared with 41.3 per cent for the Conservatives – within the margin of error of the Nanos poll.
Nanos put NDP support at 8 per cent of the popular vote, they ended up with 6.3 per cent; the Greens polled at 2 per cent and finished with 1.3 per cent; and the Bloc polled at 6 per cent but garnered 6.3 per cent of the popular vote.
The poll by Nanos Research, conducted for The Globe and Mail and CTV, surveyed 863 Canadians on April 27. It has a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Respondents were asked: “For those parties you would consider voting for federally, could you please rank your top two current local preferences?”
The full methodology for all surveys can be found at: tgam.ca/polls.
MPs could be back in the House by early May as the Carney government works toward a new Throne Speech and budget.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
A look ahead at the future Liberal government
The next two weeks will be busy for Mr. Carney. He is expected to choose a new cabinet and recall Parliament, according to a senior Liberal official who spoke with The Globe and Mail.
Some of the potential new MPs the Prime Minister is expected to bring into cabinet are former Quebec finance minister Carlos Leitao, former Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson, former Delta Chamber of Commerce executive director Jill McKnight in B.C., climate change activist Shannon Miedema in Halifax and gun control advocate Nathalie Provost in Quebec. Similar to Mr. Trudeau’s cabinet, Mr. Carney will aim for gender parity.
The Prime Minister is also expected to bring in a new budget, which will include campaign promises such as a middle-class tax cut and introduce legislation to remove interprovincial trade barriers.