Trudeau retains power in snap elections but still lead a minority government

 Trudeau's Liberal Party is on the way to win 158 seats in the house of 338,while Conservatives expected to win 120 seats

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau retains power in the snap general elections. He has won third term in the office. His Liberal Party emerged as the single largest party with 158 seats, an increase of 03 seats compare to the last elections in 2019. But his party failed to win the simple majority of 170 seats. 

Trudeau was expecting to win at least simple majority. Now he will run a minority government and needs help from NDP  to run the government. 

Trudeau played a gamble to call the snap elections just two years before completing his second tenure as prime minister. He was thinking to get more seats on the basis of his performance during COVID-19 pandemic. He was hoping to get more than 170 seats. But the results are just the repetition of 2019 results.  

The Conservative Party has won 119 seats but got more votes than Liberal Party. Conservative Party got 33.96% while Liberal Party bagged 32.24%.In the last general elections held in 2019, Liberals got 155 seats with 45.6% popular votes while Conservatives bagged 119 seats with 35.8% votes. Liberals have lost more than 13% votes while Conservatives lost around 2% votes. 

Block Quebec (BQ) has won 34 seats while New Democrats  (NDP) won 25 seats.The left-wing New Democrats (NDP), which ran on a "tax the ultra-rich" message with leader Jagmeet Singh trying to tap into progressive voters frustrated with the Liberals, won just one more seat but got 10% more votes. 

The NDP are likely to be kingmakers in this new parliament, and could help the Liberals to survive key confidence votes and get their policies through.Mr Singh, the NDP leader, speaking in Burnaby, British Columbia, noted he had secured concessions from Mr Trudeau in the last parliament.

He said he had a laundry list of priorities this time around, and vowed to push for action on climate change, affordable housing, and healthcare."You can be sure if we work together we can build a better society," he said.

New Democrats got more than 17% votes, which are 10% increase compare to the last elections. But NDP just increased one seat to its tally. In 2019, New Democrats got 24 seats with 7.5% votes.   Greens got 2 seats. 

                                                                   Khalid Bhatti