Liberal Convention: Party Support
By Andrew Thomson | March 31, 2021 10:05amET
The Liberals need 16 seats to regain a majority in the House of Commons. So where might the party look to add Members of Parliament in the next election?
These are the 20 closest 2nd-place Liberal results from 2019: eight are in Ontario, six are in Quebec, and four are in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland.
| Riding | Margin | Winner |
|---|---|---|
| Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON | 1.03% | Conservative* |
| Shefford, QC | 1.60% | Bloc Québécois |
| Cloverdale—Langley City, BC | 2.36% | Conservative |
| Trois-Rivières, QC | 2.49% | Bloc Québécois |
| Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON | 2.53% | Conservative |
| West Nova, NS | 2.89% | Conservative |
| Niagara Falls, ON | 3.21% | Conservative |
| Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON | 3.68% | Conservative |
| Windsor West, ON | 3.87% | NDP |
| Kenora, ON | 4.12% | Conservative |
| Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON | 4.35% | Conservative* |
| Longueuil—Saint Hubert, QC | 4.50% | Bloc Québécois |
| Thérèse-De-Blainville, QC | 4.55% | Bloc Québécois |
| Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC | 4.76% | Bloc Québécois |
| South Surrey—White Rock, BC | 4.77% | Conservative |
| Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB | 5.27% | Conservative |
| La Prairie, QC | 5.33% | Bloc Québécois |
| Vancouver Granville, BC | 5.66% | Independent |
| Hamilton Mountain, ON | 5.83% | NDP |
| Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC | 6.60% | Conservative |
The list includes:
- Flamborough—Glanbrook, where veteran Conservative MP David Sweet is not running for re-election;
- Hastings—Lennox and Addington, home to former Conservative leadership candidate Derek Sloan, now sitting as an independent after his removal from caucus in January;
- Vancouver Granville, won by former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould as an independent in 2019 after her expulsion from the Liberal caucus amidst the SNC-Lavalin affair.
The Liberals lost the popular vote and their majority in the House of Commons, but held the most seats after election night in 2019.
The Liberals won 157 seats, 13 short of a majority in the House of Commons. The Conservatives took 121 ridings, while the Bloc Québécois surge delivered 32 seats and a return to party status. The NDP won 24 seats, and the Greens 3.
Nationally, Liberal support fell to 33.1% — a 6.5% drop from 2015. But those votes were concentrated with areas with more seats.
The Liberals lost votes in every province; three-quarters of the Liberal caucus was from Ontario and Quebec, with none from Alberta or Saskatchewan. Aside from four Winnipeg seats, the party was shut out of the Prairie provinces. The losses included cabinet ministers in Regina (Ralph Goodale, who had been seeking a ninth-consecutive win) and Edmonton (Amrajeet Sohi).
And while the Liberals lost ridings there and in Atlantic Canada, the City of Toronto and its surrounding suburbs stayed with Justin Trudeau. Including the riding of Milton, where former Olympic athlete Adam van Koeverden defeated deputy Conservative leader Lisa Raitt.
The Liberals also maintained its seats in Ottawa, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Hamilton, and the Niagara region.
In Quebec, Liberals dominated the Island of Montreal, but the rise in Bloc support translated into seat gains that helped prevent another Trudeau majority government.
And in British Columbia, the Liberals lost some interior and Lower Mainland races but held on in a number of closely-watched races. That included Burnaby North–Seymour, an epicentre of protest for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and a riding where the NDP’s Svend Robinson hoped for a return to Parliament.
Take an interactive at the Liberal change in support from 2015 to 2019: