Turnout: 68.30%
About this election
The 2015 Canadian federal election, held on 19 October 2015, swept the Liberal Party of Canada to a decisive majority government under Justin Trudeau, ending nearly a decade of Conservative rule under Stephen Harper. The Liberals took 39.47% of the vote and 184 of the 338 seats in the House of Commons, a gain of 148 seats — the largest single-election increase in Canadian history — vaulting the party from its worst-ever result and third-place standing in 2011 straight to a majority. The Conservatives won 31.91% and 99 seats and formed the Official Opposition, while the New Democratic Party (NDP) under Tom Mulcair fell to 19.72% and 44 seats. Voter turnout rose sharply to 68.3%.
Canada elects its House of Commons by first-past-the-post: each of the 338 ridings (electoral districts) returns one member, and the candidate with the most votes wins. There is no separate national vote for prime minister; the leader of the party that can command the confidence of the House — normally the party with the most seats — becomes prime minister. A majority required 170 seats. The Senate is appointed, not elected, so federal elections decide only the lower house. The map on this page shows which party won the most seats in each province and territory.
Stephen Harper had governed since 2006, winning a majority in 2011, but after nine years in office faced considerable "time for a change" sentiment, a slowing resource-dependent economy that had tipped into a technical recession, and controversies over security legislation and a proposed ban on the niqab at citizenship ceremonies. The campaign was the longest in modern Canadian history at 78 days. Trudeau, the telegenic son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, broke from NDP orthodoxy by pledging to run modest deficits to fund infrastructure, outflanking Mulcair — who had promised balanced budgets — on the left and positioning the Liberals as the clearest agents of change.
The Liberal surge was national but rested on two pillars. In Atlantic Canada the party won every single seat — a clean sweep of all 32 ridings in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. In vote-rich Ontario and Quebec the Liberals also surged, recovering ground the NDP had taken in the 2011 "Orange Wave," which now receded. The Conservatives were reduced to their western strongholds, holding most seats in Alberta and Saskatchewan, which is why the provincial map shows a Liberal-dominated country with a Conservative Prairie core. The Bloc Québécois recovered slightly to 10 seats, and Green leader Elizabeth May held her British Columbia seat.
Trudeau was sworn in on 4 November 2015 with a gender-balanced cabinet and an ambitious agenda: a new top income-tax bracket, infrastructure spending, the legalisation of cannabis, a national carbon-pricing framework and the resettlement of Syrian refugees. The result realigned Canadian politics for the next decade, restoring the Liberals as the natural governing party and beginning the Trudeau era that would run through three further elections.
Elections Canada — official voting results of the 42nd general election — elections.ca.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.