Europe 1 with AFP 8:03 am, September 21, 2021

At the end of a complicated campaign, the Liberals of Justin Trudeau were given the winners of the Canadian legislative elections, but did not manage to return to the majority.

The party would only win around 155 seats. 

Justin Trudeau's Liberals are on their way to winning the Canadian legislative elections, a half-victory however for the outgoing Prime Minister who failed to regain a majority after a campaign during which he was abused.

According to projections by the Canadian media on Monday evening, the preliminary results confirm that the Liberal party would obtain around 155 seats, below the threshold of 170 seats allowing to obtain a majority.

But it was precisely to get out of this situation that he had called early elections in mid-August to try to regain the majority he had lost two years earlier. 

A complicated campaign 

After a rather favorable start and encouraging polls, Justin Trudeau had a particularly complicated campaign, the erosion of power was felt and the "Trudeaumanie" of 2015 seemed far away ... And on the ground, he had to to face each displacement with a crowd of demonstrators angry with the sanitary measures.

One of them even threw gravel at him. 

And until the end, the outcome of the ballot seemed uncertain: the voting intentions still gave a few hours before the ballot the two major parties neck and neck, around 31% of voting intentions.

"We worked very hard during this campaign"

Monday at the end of the morning, at the exit of his polling station in Montreal, Justin Trudeau had however said "serene". "We worked very hard during this campaign and the Canadians are making an important choice," he told AFP surrounded by his children and his wife Sophie Grégoire. During the last days of the campaign, he called for strategic voting, explaining that the return of the conservatives would be synonymous with a step backwards, in particular on the climate issue.

The approximately 27 million Canadians were called upon to elect the 338 members of the House of Commons. When neither of the two major parties that have alternated in power since 1867 is able to obtain a majority of seats in Parliament, the winner must compose a minority government. And for that, he needs to come to terms with the smaller parties to govern in Ottawa, such as the New Democratic Party (NDP, left) led by Jagmeet Singh or the Bloc Québécois, a pro-independence formation.