Post-election reflection: Liberals reversed their fortunes and made gains

The evening of April 28 was a night to remember for the Liberals and their supporters as the party, helmed by Mark Carney, successfully averted the feared electoral collapse it would have suffered under Justin Trudeau’s leadership. 

In fact, the Liberals were able to win both the vote-share percentage and the per capita popular vote — a feat the party had not been able to accomplish since the 2015 federal election. 

Carney has also broken the recent historical trend of prime ministers who gain the job via winning party leadership contests, only to be thrashed in an election, as was the case for John Turner in 1984 and Kim Campbell in 1993. 

However, the party did suffer one noteworthy loss — missing the 172-seat parliamentary majority threshold by three seats. The Liberals did well in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and urban areas in general, but it seems that they did not make the further inroads in neither Ontario nor Quebec, which was needed to make a majority government. 

Their traditional base in the Atlantic was also more competitive than they would have liked.

The Conservative Party gained seats since last time to the point of overperformance, thus making election night a competitive one. 

As per usual, the Tories dominated the Prairies, but also gained in rural British Columbia and held strong in southern Ontario. However, they too incurred a significant loss. Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre lost his seat in Carleton, which he had held since 2004. His riding being targeted by the Longest Ballot Committee likely did not help. 

Poilievre intends to stay on as leader, looking to parachute into the safe seat of Alberta’s Battle River-Crowfoot.

Recall that for two years, the party previously led the pre-campaign polls by a wide margin only for the gap to rapidly close this year. 

Previous party leaders Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole resigned and were removed from the role after failing to lead the Conservatives to desired victories. Poilievre might share the same fate if the party base so wishes.

This Liberal resurgence came at the expense of the other three parties. The Bloc Québécois, Green Party, and New Democratic Party all lost seats, though the latter one suffered far worse than the former two. 

The Bloc’s grip in Quebec definitely loosened with Liberals taking seats in the province outside of cities, but not to a worrisome degree for a strictly regional party. The Greens went from two seats to one, but they are used to having only one member of Parliament on the docket. 

The NDP were the true losers of the night. With only seven seats — excluding their leader Jagmeet Singh who lost in Burnaby Central — the New Democrats lost party status for the second time ever and faced their worst results since the 1993 election under then-leader Audrey McLaughlin. 

On Vancouver Island, a traditional safe base for the party, support collapsed as only one NDP incumbent was re-elected in Courtenay-Alberni. Metro Vancouver largely went red, including the reliably Conservative South Surrey-White Rock.

The spectre of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats certainly haunted this election, enough to boost the Liberals but fall just short of 172 seats. 

In between the writ drop and election day, the anti-Trump momentum slowed quite a bit and domestic issues began to return to the centre stage, but the cause has made an undeniable effect. 

The question now is what will the Liberals do? It sounds like they won’t enter into a formal pact with the NDP this time around.

And how will Carney govern now that he has his own mandate?