Results of the Canadian federal election, 2015

The 42nd Canadian federal election was held on October 19, 2015. The incumbent Conservative Party of Canada of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in office since 2006, was defeated by the Liberal Party of Canada under the leadership of Justin Trudeau. The Liberals rebounded from third place in the House of Commons with 36 seats to a strong majority government with 184 of the 338 seats in the expanded Commons. The Liberals picked up 148 seats, easily the biggest numerical increase for a Canadian party since Confederation.

Result overview

A polling station on election day.

At 9:41pm EDT, October 19, 2015, CBC News projected that the Liberals had won at least a minority government, and that leader Justin Trudeau would become the next Prime Minister of Canada. Less than an hour later, at 10:36pm EDT, CBC News projected a Liberal majority. The New Democratic Party lost more than half the seats they had held, with Tom Mulcair becoming the first major party leader to concede defeat. The Conservatives dropped down to 99 seats to form the main opposition party, and Stephen Harper resigned as leader of the Conservative Party. The Bloc Québécois regained some ridings they had lost in the previous election, but party leader Giles Duceppe failed to regain the seat he lost back in 2011. Green Party leader Elizabeth May kept her seat.^[1]

According to preliminary figures from Elections Canada, more than 68 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot, or about 17,546,697 registered electors—a seven percentage point increase from the 2011 federal election, when turnout was just more than 61 per cent.^[2]

Summary analysis

Party		Votes			Seats
	Liberal	6,930,136	39.5%	20.6%	184 / 338 (54%)
	Conservative	5,600,496	31.9%	7.7%	99 / 338 (29%)
	New Democratic	3,461,262	19.7%	10.9%	44 / 338 (13%)
	Bloc Québécois	818,652	4.7%	1.2%	10 / 338 (3%)
	Green	605,864	3.4%	0.5%	1 / 338 (0.3%)

The disproportionality of parliament in the 2015 election was 12.02 according to the Gallagher Index, mainly in the Liberals' favour.

Detailed analysis

Party summaries

Liberals

In the previous election, the Liberals were cut down to 34 seats, the fewest they had ever won in their history. It was the first time since the nation's founding that the Liberals had not been either in government or the Official Opposition. They picked up one additional seat in a by-election and one via a floor-crossing.

While the Liberals had been expected to regain much of what they had lost in 2015, they tallied the second-best performance in their history; the 184 seats was bettered only by the 193 they won in 1949. It was also the most seats that a party had won since the Progressive Conservatives won a record 211 in 1984.

The Liberal victory came mainly on the strength of a solid performance in the eastern part of the country. They took every seat in Atlantic Canada, and also swept Toronto. They also won all but one seat in Ottawa. Most notably, they won 40 of Quebec's 78 seats, mostly on the strength of taking all but five seats in Montreal. It was the first time since 1980 that the Liberals had won the most seats in Quebec.

After going into the election with only four seats west of Ontario, the Liberals had their best showing in Western Canada in more than two decades. They not only took all but one seat in Winnipeg and all but two seats in Vancouver, but won seats in Alberta for the first time since 2004. Notably, they won two seats in Calgary; they had won only three seats there in their entire history prior to 2015. They were the only party to win seats in every province.

Conservatives

The Conservatives lost 60 seats to become the Official Opposition. They held their own in their heartlands of rural western Canada and central Ontario, and managed a respectable showing in southwestern Ontario and the more rural areas of eastern Ontario. However, they suffered heavy losses in urban southern Ontario, a region which had swung heavily to them in 2011. They lost all of their seats in Toronto itself and all but three in the 905 region. They also lost all of their seats in Winnipeg and Vancouver, as well as Atlantic Canada. It will be the first time in decades that there will be no centre-right MPs east of Quebec. They did, however, manage to make some gains in francophone areas of Quebec, mostly at the expense of the NDP.

Several members of Harper's cabinet were defeated, including Bernard Valcourt, Leona Aglukkaq, Gail Shea and Julian Fantino among others.

New Democrats

The NDP, the Official Opposition in the previous parliament, fell to third place with 44 seats, losing more than half of their caucus. For the most part, their support bled over to the Liberals, though they lost a few areas of francophone Quebec to the Conservatives and Bloc.

Bloc Québecois

The Bloc made a modest recovery after being nearly decimated in 2011, rebounding to 10 seats. However, Gilles Duceppe, who had been the longest-serving party leader in Canada at the time of his defeat in 2011, failed to win back his old seat of Laurier—Sainte-Marie. The party also received a smaller share of the popular vote than in the last election. As such, their gains could be attributable to NDP-Liberal vote splitting in francophone ridings more than a surge in popular support.

Contributing factors to party success

The parties had varying degrees of success by region and by socioeconomic factors. An analysis by The Globe and Mail shortly after the election was held revealed significant differences:^[5]

Results by province

10 closest ridings

Electoral district		1st-place candidate		2nd-place candidate		Won by	Confirmed on recount[6]
Elmwood—Transcona	MB		Daniel Blaikie		Lawrence Toet	61 votes
Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River	SK		Georgina Jolibois		Lawrence Joseph	71 votes	Y
Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte	ON		Alex Nuttall		Brian Tamblyn	86 votes	Y
Edmonton Mill Woods	AB		Amarjeet Sohi		Tim Uppal	92 votes	Y
Regina—Lewvan	SK		Erin Weir		Trent Fraser	132 votes
Hastings—Lennox and Addington	ON		Mike Bossio		Daryl Kramp	225 votes
Kitchener—Conestoga	ON		Harold Albrecht		Tim Louis	251 votes
Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup	QC		Bernard Généreux		Marie-Josée Normand	272 votes	Y
Kootenay—Columbia	BC		Wayne Stetski		David Wilks	282 votes
Jonquière	QC		Karine Trudel		Marc Pettersen	339 votes

Retiring & Defeated Incumbents

Notional gains

As a result of the 2012 federal electoral redistribution, thirty new ridings were added and many riding boundaries were changed, so several incumbent MPs who ran chose to do so in new ridings. The following table identifies the subsequent nominees in their old ridings and who they lost to.

New Seats

As a result of the 2012 federal electoral redistribution, thirty new ridings were added and many riding boundaries were changed, so several ridings did not have an Incumbent. The following table identifies what party would have held the redistributed ridings based on 2011 results for the new riding and the subsequent MP who was elected. Some of these seats did have incumbents from other districts running.

References

Canadian federal election results by region Western Canada Vancouver Island Greater Vancouver and the Sunshine Coast Fraser Valley BC Interior Calgary Edmonton and Environs Rural Alberta Northern Saskatchewan Southern Saskatchewan Rural Manitoba Winnipeg Ontario Northern Ontario Southwestern Ontario Midwestern Ontario Hamilton, Burlington and Niagara Brampton, Mississauga and Oakville Central Toronto Suburban Toronto Southern Durham and York Central Ontario Eastern Ontario Ottawa Quebec Laurentides, Outaouais and Northern Quebec Northern Montreal and Laval Western Montreal Eastern Montreal Montérégie Eastern Townships Central Quebec Quebec City Côte-Nord and Saguenay Eastern Quebec Atlantic Canada New Brunswick Nova Scotia Prince Edward Island Newfoundland and Labrador Northern Canada Yukon Northwest Territories Nunavut