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Justin Trudeau Headed for Victory in Canada, National Broadcaster Projects
(about 1 hour later)
OTTAWA — Canadians faced a wide range of possible outcomes as they voted on Monday at the conclusion of a campaign that could end a decade of power for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party.
OTTAWA — In an upset, Justin Trudeau, the leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, has unseated the Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, according to a projection by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. on Monday night.
For much of the 78-day race, all three major political parties were in a statistical dead heat, according to various polls. While the Liberal Party, led by Justin Trudeau, had emerged on top in several polls over the past week, its lead was short of conclusive.
For much of the 78-day race, all three major political parties were in a statistical dead heat, according to various polls. While the Liberal Party, led by Mr. Trudeau, the son of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, had emerged on top in several polls over the past week.
Canadians only vote for members of Parliament, not the prime minister or parties, making it difficult to translate poll findings. And Mr. Harper won the three previous elections without ever exceeding 40 percent of the popular vote.
That had left analysts offering a range of possible results from Mr. Harper being returned with another minority government, some form of Liberal government or a muddy situation in which there was no clear victor.
Regardless of the three major parties’ positions in the opinion surveys, analysts and campaigners in Canada were acutely aware that the comprehensive victory in Britain of David Cameron’s Conservative Party in May had not been forecast by polling firms. Early returns showed a higher-than-anticipated level of support for the Liberals in the Atlantic provinces. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that Liberal candidates were leading or had been declared elected in all but one of the region’s 32 Parliamentary seats.
Whether that would translate into a similar sweep nationally was unclear. The Atlantic provinces have historically favored the Liberals, although rarely to such a great extent. And election laws ban the release of polling information while voting is still underway.
While the Canadian election was initially met with summer-vacation indifference when it was called on Aug 2, the cliffhanger ending appears to have attracted voter interest.
Turnout fell to as low as 58.8 percent in 2008 and was 61.1 percent in the last parliamentary elections, in 2011. But the agency that supervises federal elections reported that 71 percent more people had cast early ballots this month than did four years ago.
News reports indicated that voters faced unusually long lines at some of the 66,000 polling stations on Monday. A rush of traffic temporarily overwhelmed the website of Elections Canada, the agency responsible for federal votes.
For many Canadians, the election was something of a referendum on Mr. Harper’s approach to government, which, in the view of his critics, has been heavy-handed and often focused on issues important to core Conservative supporters rather than to much of the population.
The focus of the campaign fluttered among issues, including a scandal over Conservative senators’ expenses; antiterrorism measures Mr. Harper introduced; pensions; the stagnation of the economy, brought about by plunging oil prices; the government’s handling of refugees; the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact; and Mr. Harper’s attempts to ban the wearing of face veils known as niqabs during citizenship ceremonies.
Many analysts have said that Mr. Harper called the election partly in the hope that the more voters saw of Mr. Trudeau during his first term as leader of the Liberals, the less they would like him. Early Conservative ads emphasized Mr. Trudeau’s relative political inexperience and concluded with the slogan, “Just not ready.”
If that was the case, it backfired.
Although Mr. Trudeau has been prone to occasional verbal slips since assuming his leadership role in 2013, including the use of a vulgar metaphor in response to Mr. Harper’s decision to commit Royal Canadian Air Force fighters to the multinational campaign against the Islamic State, he has grown in stature over the course of the election.
Although Mr. Trudeau has been prone to occasional verbal slips since assuming his leadership role in 2013, including the use of a vulgar metaphor in response to Mr. Harper’s decision to commit Royal Canadian Air Force fighters to the multinational campaign against the Islamic State, he has grown in stature over the course of the election.
He proved able at crucial events, like a debate on foreign policy, where even some Liberals feared that he might stumble. Late in the campaign, the Liberals flipped the Conservative slogan to “Ready” in its ads.
In a symbol of the Liberals’ confidence, Mr. Trudeau used part of his final day of campaigning on Sunday to visit Alberta, Mr. Harper’s adopted province and the Conservative Party’s power base. An energy program introduced in 1980 by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Justin Trudeau’s father, had for decades made the Liberal Party almost toxic in the province, which is dominated by the oil and gas industry. Mr. Trudeau’s stops included Calgary, Mr. Harper’s hometown and a place that has not elected a Liberal since 1968.
That victory 47 years ago was part of a wave of Liberal triumphs that became known as Trudeaumania. While the younger Mr. Trudeau has clearly enjoyed a successful campaign, Liberal support does not seem to have matched the euphoric level it found then under his father.
As a result, both Mr. Harper and Tom Mulcair, the leader of the New Democratic Party, were far from conceding defeat before Monday.
After spending most of the campaign delivering standard election speeches to invitation-only crowds, Mr. Harper took a more theatrical approach in the final days. At campaign stops, as he recited his party’s claims of what a Liberal government would cost individual families, a recording of an old-fashioned cash register bell repeatedly pealed through loudspeakers and audience members piled what appeared to be currency on tables.
Mr. Mulcair, who had insisted that the election should be focused on removing the Conservatives from power, devoted much of the final hours of his campaign to attacking the Liberals.
The ideal for all three parties is winning a majority of the 338 seats in the House of Commons, a feat Mr. Harper only achieved in his third successful campaign.
If the Conservatives emerge with the largest number of seats, he will have the first opportunity to form the next government. Yet Mr. Mulcair and Mr. Trudeau have both said that they will bring down any Conservative minority government at the first opportunity, most likely on the usually ritualistic vote on the government’s legislative agenda when Parliament is recalled.
Whichever of the two other parties has the second-largest number of seats would then form a government, which would be sustained, at least for a period, by the tacit support of the third-place party.
If Mr. Harper emerges with a minority, he could forestall a rapid end to his government by delaying Parliament’s return. Adam Dodek, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, said that Mr. Harper could govern without Parliament until the end of March when government spending authorizations expire.
But, he added, “in any sort of minority situation there will be political pressure to recall Parliament in a relatively timely fashion.”
