Results of all past Canadian federal elections to the House of Commons. Each square represents one seat in the House. Faint grey squares聽represent seats that have yet to exist/no longer exist. Note that squares聽are merely stylized renditions of provincial seat counts across the country, grouped聽from smallest political party delegation聽to largest. Squares聽are not located in the geographic聽part of the province that voted for one party. Seat counts and popular vote numbers from聽pre-1960 elections can be ambiguous, see information below the map for more.
Prior to the聽1960s, most Canadian elections would see a couple of聽MPs elected under聽labels like聽“Liberal-Conservative,” “Independent Conservative/Liberal,” “Liberal Labour,” “Liberal Progressive,” and so on.
Some electoral tallies聽include these聽MPs (and their share of the popular vote)聽in the count聽of whatever party they most closely resemble, while other lists聽count them聽as “independents” or put them in聽the “other” column (it’s not uncommon to see聽multiple聽methods of sorting used in different parts of the same tally). It is therefore impossible to offer “perfect” statistics on pre-1960s Canadian elections, since聽the ambiguity of the party system in those days and the subjective judgements聽of the official聽vote-counters has muddled the results beyond repair. The four elections between 1921 and 1930 are a particular nightmare of ambiguity, given how much chaos the party system was experiencing聽at the time.
In deciding who to count as what, I have relied on the data in the聽book Canada Votes (1962) by Howard A. Scarrow which offers well-researched suggestions聽for sorting ambiguous聽MPs in early Canadian elections.
Electoral historians generally conclude that the modern Canadian political party system didn’t really get settled until the dawn of the聽20th century. Prior to that,聽MPs were often elected with extremely ambiguous or complicated labels聽(“Independent Nationalist Liberal,” etc), or, just as often, no label at all. It’s considered all-but impossible to provide accurate or useful聽vote counts for聽Canada’s first three elections.
The chart below begins with Canada’s eighth general election, in 1896, by which time Canada’s party system had become much stronger and clearer, and聽MPs who聽identified themselves聽as something outside the mainstream聽party system were聽rare enough to be noteworthy.聽It was not until 1970 that Canadian political parties became legal entities under Canadian electoral law, and the 1972 election was the first in which party labels were printed on election ballots alongside candidate names.
Conservative majority
Conservative majority
Liberal majority
Conservative majority
Conservative majority
Conservative majority
Conservative majority
Liberal majority
Liberal majority
Liberal majority
Liberal majority
Conservative majority
Conservative majority
Liberal minority
Liberal minority*
Liberal majority
Conservative majority
Liberal majority
Liberal majority
Liberal majority
Liberal majority
Liberal majority
Conservative minority
Conservative majority
Conservative minority
Liberal minority
Liberal minority
Liberal majority
Liberal minority
Liberal majority
Conservative minority
Liberal majority
Conservative majority
Conservative majority
Liberal majority
Liberal majority
Liberal majority
Liberal minority
Conservative minority
Conservative minority
Conservative majority
Liberal majority
Liberal minority
Liberal minority
* The 1925 election marked the first time in Canadian history neither the Conservatives nor Liberals won a majority of seats. Liberal prime minister Mackenzie King refused to resign on the grounds that his party had been mostly supported by the new, third faction in parliament, the Progressives, who had been first elected in 1921, and that when counted together, Progressives and Liberals outnumbered the Conservatives. King’s decision to hang on would eventually culminate in a controversial constitutional crisis known as the King-Byng affair that would not be fully resolved until the election of 1926.