Turnout: 62.30%
About this election
The 2021 Canadian federal election, held on 20 September 2021, was called by Justin Trudeau two years early in a bid to convert his minority into a majority — and produced a House of Commons almost identical to the one it replaced. The Liberals won 160 of the 338 seats on 32.62% of the vote, again finishing second in the popular vote behind the Conservatives' 33.74% (under new leader Erin O'Toole), who took 119 seats. The NDP rose slightly to 25 seats, the Bloc Québécois held 32, the Greens fell to 2, and the People's Party tripled its vote to 4.94% without winning a seat. Turnout dropped to 62.3%, among the lowest in modern Canadian history.
The 338 members were again elected by first-past-the-post, with 170 seats needed for a majority. The Senate being appointed, the election decided only the House of Commons. As in 2019, the Liberals' more efficient distribution of votes across Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic let them win more seats than the Conservatives despite a smaller national vote share. The map shows the leading party by seats in each province and territory.
Trudeau called the election in mid-August 2021, midway through the COVID-19 pandemic, gambling that approval of his government's pandemic response would deliver a majority. The gamble misfired: many voters resented being sent to the polls during a public-health emergency, and the campaign was dominated by anger over the election's very necessity, alongside debates over vaccine mandates, the pandemic recovery, housing affordability and climate. O'Toole tried to steer the Conservatives toward the centre but was squeezed on his right flank by the surging People's Party, whose opposition to vaccine mandates drew protest votes.
The seat map barely moved from 2019. The Conservatives again dominated the Prairies, the Bloc again anchored Quebec, and the Liberals again held Ontario, the Atlantic and the major urban centres to stay in power. The most closely divided province was British Columbia, where the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP each won a clutch of seats. Commentators widely described the contest as a costly election — running to hundreds of millions of dollars — that returned essentially the same Parliament, leaving Trudeau once more at the head of a minority government.
In March 2022 the Liberals and the NDP signed a "supply and confidence" agreement, under which the New Democrats agreed to support the government on confidence and budget votes through to 2025 in exchange for action on dental care, pharmacare and other priorities. The deal gave the minority Parliament unusual stability, until the NDP withdrew from it in 2024 and Trudeau's own resignation in early 2025 reshaped the political landscape ahead of the next election.
Elections Canada — official voting results of the 44th general election — elections.ca.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.