Election '25 Deep Dive: How Atlantic Canada and Quebec delivered for Carney
But could the Conservatives build on their gains in Quebec?
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The Liberals won Atlantic Canada again and Quebec swung over to them in a big enough way to put a majority government in reach. But not all of Atlantic Canada polarized in the same way as other parts of the country and Quebec put up some surprising results in unexpected places that could portend some important shifts for the future.
This is the second in a three-part series of deep dives into the 2025 federal election results. We looked at Ontario last week and the next instalment will focus on Western Canada. Today, we’re diving into Atlantic Canada and Quebec with another series of charts and maps.
5/23 Update: A judicial recount has flipped Terra Nova–The Peninsulas from the Liberals to the Conservatives. The change in the actual number of votes was marginal, but switched the 12-vote Liberal win into a 12-vote Conservative win. The text and graphics below do not reflect this change, but it would not impact any of the analysis with the sole exception of who won the seat.
The Liberals had a strong performance in Atlantic Canada, winning 55.5% of the vote and 25 of 32 seats. The Conservatives captured 38% of the vote in the region and the remaining seven seats, while the New Democrats collapsed to just 4.3%. The region delivered for Mark Carney’s Liberals, though the results were still shy of Justin Trudeau’s sweep in 2015.
The Liberals took over 50% of the vote in all four Atlantic provinces, with 53.6% in New Brunswick (up 11.2 points from 2021), 54.1% in Newfoundland and Labrador (up 6.4 points), 57.4% in Nova Scotia (up 15.1 points) and 57.6% in Prince Edward Island (up 11.4 points). While these results did not surpass the Liberals’ performance in 2015 in three of four provinces, the New Brunswick numbers were the best for the party since 1993.
The Conservatives were up across Atlantic Canada but only in Newfoundland and Labrador did they gain more than the Liberals did. They took 35.3% in Nova Scotia (+5.9), 36.9% in PEI (+5.3), 39.7% in Newfoundland and Labrador (+7.2) and 40.7% in New Brunswick (+7.1). For the Conservatives, their Maritime results were the best since Stephen Harper’s victory in 2011, while the numbers in Newfoundland and Labrador were the party’s best since 2006.
The NDP was a non-factor throughout Atlantic Canada, with just 2.4% in PEI (-6.8), 2.9% in New Brunswick (-9.0), 5.1% in Nova Scotia (-17.0) and 5.5% in Newfoundland and Labrador (-11.9). These were the worst results for the NDP in Newfoundland and Labrador since 1993, PEI since 1965 and in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia since the days of the CCF all the way back in 1958.
The Greens and People’s Party barely registered in Atlantic Canada, with 1.1% and 0.7% of the vote, respectively.
It was a similar story of success and growth for both the Liberals and Conservatives in Quebec. The Liberals took 42.6% of the vote in the province, a gain of nine points and their highest since 2000, and won 44 seats, a gain of nine since 2021. The Conservatives were up 4.7 points to 23.3% and won 11 seats, a gain of one, but that was only good enough for third place — and didn’t surpass Harper’s share of the vote in 2006. While it was broadly a moderately good night for the Conservatives in Quebec, the province was home to 12 of the 28 ridings throughout the country where the Conservatives lost vote share compared to 2021.
The Bloc Québécois slipped 4.4 points and 10 seats to 27.7% and 22 seats, while the NDP held on to its single seat in the province but garnered only 4.5% of the vote, the party’s worst performance since 2000. In other words, all the work done over the Jack Layton and Tom Mulcair years in Quebec has been squandered by the NDP.
Neither the Greens nor the PPC cleared the bar of 1% in Quebec.
Liberals up in St. John’s, Conservatives up in the rest of the island
There was a big difference between the Liberals’ performance on the Avalon Peninsula and their results in the rest of the island of Newfoundland. The Liberals won 63% of the vote on the Avalon Peninsula, a gain of nearly 13 points, with even bigger gains in the two St. John’s ridings of Cape Spear (68.3% was the highest vote share the Liberals received anywhere in Canada) and St. John’s East.
The gains the Liberals made in Avalon were less pronounced, but there was a clear movement from the NDP (down 18 points in Cape Spear and nearly 24 points in St. John’s East) to the Liberals in the provincial capital.
In the rest of Newfoundland and Labrador, however, the Conservatives were up significantly. They won 50% of the vote and picked up nearly nine points from the last election while the Liberals were virtually unchanged at 45.2%. But even this masks some movement — the Liberals were up nearly nine points in Labrador, but dropped a couple points in both Central Newfoundland and Long Range Mountains, the two ridings the Conservatives won. That they didn’t drop in Terra Nova–The Peninsulas is what saved them from being swept outside of the Avalon (pending the results of the judicial recount).