Canada’s 2015 Federal election at a glance

By Laura Bohnert

Monday, October 19, 2015, marked the date for Canada’s 42nd Federal election, and the stark results have demonstrated with pretty distinct clarity that Canada is ready for change.

Despite predictions of a minority government and what initially began as a tight race, the Liberal Party came through the election with a sweeping majority, leaving Stephen Harper and the New Democrats in the dust.

Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party won 184 seats with 39.5 per cent of the popular vote, marking a 42.7 per cent increase in elected seats as compared to their pre-election status. The Conservatives, on the other hand, lost 22.3 per cent of their pre-election seats with 99 elected seats and 31.9 per cent of the popular vote this election. Mulcair and the NDP won 44 seats with 19.7 per cent of the popular vote; their pre-election seats dropped by 17.8 per cent. The Bloc Québécois won 10 seats with 4.7 per cent of the popular vote and a 2.4 per cent increase in pre-election seats, and Elizabeth May’s Green Party won one seat with 3.5 per cent of the popular vote and a 0.3 per cent decrease in seats.

The PC Party’s loss to Trudeau came as a bit of a surprise given the advantages (and strategies) of the Conservative campaign. The lengthened campaign, which was extended to 11 weeks rather than the standard five, better funding, and the sparking of the Niqab debate were all thought to offer the Conservatives a clear advantage; however, as Monday evening demonstrated, things didn’t go quite as planned.

Part of the Conservative strategy rested on the lengthened campaign. Backed by better funds, the Conservatives thought they could pull a clear lead by out-spending the other parties during the campaign period. This advantage was demonstrated by their clear advertising lead. According to an analysis by the CBC, Conservative ads outweighed Liberal ads 2:1 during the Blue Jays playoff games, “some of the most expensive ad real estate there is out there,” explained Rob Russo.

While the lengthened campaign and advertising advantage were working to their advantage, Stephen Harper and the PC Party’s attempt to wedge voters by sparking the Niqab debate may not have gone quite as planned. While the debate did help to secure the votes of traditional voters, and while it did block the NDP from getting their Quebec votes, Harper’s pressing of the Niqab issue also managed to drive away new Canadian voters — during an election that featured a dramatic increase in young voter turnout.

This increase in young voters was not only spurred on by the increased availability and accessibility of advanced polling stations (made possible by the extended campaign length), many of which were located on campuses as well as over the Thanksgiving weekend to help increase the turnout of student and family voters, but was also largely influenced by campaign presence across social media. New voters, many of whom were already turning away from Harper’s Conservatives because of the Niqab debate, were faced with an online slurry of posts, tweets, and celebrity endorsements encouraging them to “vote for change.”

In an election that quickly turned into a referendum on Stephen Harper and the sharp-elbowed ways of the Conservative Party, Russo described, the country quickly turned to the Liberal Party, the next most distinctive economic identity, in order to vocalize its hopes for change. The result: Stephen Harper has stepped down from his leadership of the Conservative Party, Mulcair and the NDP need to reclaim their political presence, and our newly-elected prime minister, one of the youngest Canadian prime ministers to date, has a lot of work ahead of him if he’s going to show Canadians that he’s serious about change.