Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party have won the Canadian election and ended a decadelong Conservative grip on power under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, according to the CBC network.
Polls had closed in more than three-fourths of the country, including in its largest provinces of Ontario and Quebec, when the state-run Canadian Broadcasting Corp. made the projection shortly before 10 p.m. Monday.
Liberals are projected to get around 45 percent of the vote — a major achievement in a country with three major national parties, plus a separatist bloc in its second-largest province (French-speaking Quebec).
Mr. Trudeau, 43, will become the second-youngest prime minister in Canadian history, having led his party back from a disastrous 2011 election in which it slipped to third place behind the leftist New Democratic Party (NDP). His father, Pierre Trudeau, dominated Canadian politics throughout the 1970s.
According to incomplete and slightly shifting by the minute projections from the National Post around 10:45 p.m., the 338-member Parliament in Ottawa will be split as follows: 179 seats, an absolute majority, for the Liberal Party; 101 seats for the Conservatives, who received around 30 percent of the vote; 33 for the NDP based on 18 percent of the vote; and 10 seats for the Bloc Quebecois, which received about 4 percent of the vote nationally but more than 15 percent in Quebec. The Green Party is expected to hold one seat; the other 14 were still too close to call.
The outcome was apparent early, when returns in the easternmost Atlantic provinces showed a Conservative wipeout there. Of the 32 seats in the Atlantic provinces, the Conservatives held 13 and the NDP had six going into Monday’s vote. According to The Associated Press, Liberals were leading in 30 seats in early returns.
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“A sea of change here. We are used to high tides in Atlantic Canada. This is not what we hoped for,” Peter MacKay, who had served as justice minister and defense minister in Harper administrations before deciding not to seek re-election, told the CBC.
In an especially bitter twist, Mr. MacKay’s district of Central Nova Scotia, which had been safely Conservative for decades, flipped parties and was won by Liberal Sean Fraser.
“Look, there’s an ebb and flow in politics,” Mr. MacKay told CBC after that result was announced. “It’s healthy for our country.”
He predicted that his party would eventually return to power.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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