Liberal Party Wins Federal Election (2021)

The Liberal Party of Canada, under the leadership of Justin Trudeau, has won the federal election. 

The Liberal Party has won 158 out of 338 parliament seats. This means that the Liberals will have a minority government (a party needs 170 seats to have a majority government).

A majority government is when a single party wins 170 or more seats out of the 338 seats in parliament (which is more than 50%). 

It is called a majority because each seat equals one vote in parliament. To pass legislation in parliament there needs to be more than 50% of people (170 seats) voting in support of it. This makes it easy for a majority government to pass legislation, as to pass a legislation a party only needs a bit over 50% of votes (170 votes) in parliament. Thus if a party has 170 seats they can pass whatever legislation they want, even without any support from other parties.

In this instance the Liberal Party has only won 158 seats that forms a minority government. To pass any legislation they need at least 170 votes in support of it, so they will need to hope for and get at least 12 votes from other parties.

The number of seats won by each of the main parties are:

• Liberal Party:  158 seats
• Conservative Party:  119 seats
• Bloc Québecois:  34 seats
• New Democratic Party (NDP):  25 seats
• Green Party:  2 seats