How the Canadian elections panned out

The votes have been counted, and the results of the Canadian federal election are in. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives Stephen Harper’s Conservatives performed much more strongly than many expected, securing their first majority since 1993 by 13 seats. The New Democratic Party’s vote did indeed hold up: they took 31 per cent of the vote (almost exactly as the latest polls predicted), and won 102 seats, beating the Liberals by a wide margin to become the official opposition. The Liberals had their worst election result in their 144-year history, returning fewer than half the MPs they had going into the election. The Bloc Québécois had a disastrous night too, also suffering their worst-ever election. In all of the past election the Bloc have contested, they’ve won a majority of the seats in Québéc. This time they won just four, with the NDP instead winning more than half. To add insult to these various injuries, both the Liberal and Bloc party leaders lost their seats.