The 40th Canadian federal election was held on October 14, 2008.
The Conservative Party of Canada, led by Stephen Harper, won a minority government. The Conservatives won 143 seats. The Liberal Party of Canada, won 77 seats. The separatist Bloc Québécois won 49 seats and the social-democratic New Democratic Party won 37. Two independent candidates won a seat, one each in Nova Scotia and Quebec.
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The following seats changed allegiance from the 2006 election:
The Liberals won 17 seats in the Atlantic Provinces, the Conservatives ten, the NDP four, and Independent one. This is a swing of one seat from the Liberals to each of the other parties.
Buoyed by the so-called "ABC Campaign", spearheaded by popular Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams, the Liberals won six seats and the NDP one. The Avalon and St. John's SouthâÂÂMount Pearl seats changed hands from the Tories to the Liberals. The St. John's East seat changed from the Tories to NDP, as Norman Doyle retired. The change in Avalon was a crushing blow as the incumbent Fabian Manning was soundly defeated by the Liberals' Scott Andrews.
The three Liberal incumbents have been re-elected. In the fourth riding, Egmont, incumbent Liberal Joe McGuire retired, and the seat went to the Tories.
All incumbents were re-elected, except in Halifax where the retiring Alexa McDonough was replaced by another New Democrat, Megan Leslie, and in West Nova the incumbent Liberal Robert Thibault was defeated by Tory Greg Kerr. Elizabeth May of the Green Party was defeated in the riding of Central Nova, which was a battle between her and incumbent cabinet minister Peter MacKay.
The Liberal Green Shift was most unpopular in New Brunswick. Three ridings previously held by the Liberals switched to the Tories; Fredericton, Miramichi, and Saint John. In the other seven ridings the incumbent was re-elected.
The Bloc Québécois played obstruction in preventing the Conservatives from achieving a majority. Fifteen battleground ridings were in Quebec, with only three changing hands. The BQ lost the riding of Papineau to the Liberals, but gained the riding of Louis-Hébert from the Tories. A recent recount saw the Liberals take the riding of BrossardâÂÂLa Prairie from the BQ, slightly strengthening their position.
Twenty battleground ridings were in Ontario alone, and the Conservatives took the ridings of Brant, Oakville, HuronâÂÂBruce and Halton from the Liberals, where the NDP took Thunder BayâÂÂSuperior North, Thunder BayâÂÂRainy River, AlgomaâÂÂManitoulinâÂÂKapuskasing, Sudbury and Nickel Belt from the Liberals. The Liberals themselves lost 16 seats in Ontario.
All seats were retained by their incumbent parties. The closest race was SaskatoonâÂÂRosetownâÂÂBiggar. There, the incumbent Carol Skelton did not seek reelection, giving the NDP high hopes that well-known farmers' activist Nettie Wiebe might re-establish a federal NDP presence in Parliament from the province. The seat was retained by Conservative Kelly Block in a close two-way race to keep the NDP shut out in Saskatchewan - despite the fact that their proportion of the popular vote there was in fact higher than any other province outside Atlantic Canada.
Arguably the Conservatives' power base, Alberta's Tory incumbents were all re-elected except for the riding of EdmontonâÂÂStrathcona, which the NDP narrowly took that riding with 442 votes.
The Conservatives regained the seats lost in the 2006 election and held on to seven of the ten battleground ridings. They took the ridings of West VancouverâÂÂSunshine CoastâÂÂSea to Sky Country from the Greens and Richmond from the Liberals.
Liberal candidate in the Yukon and the NDP candidate in Western Arctic (the Northwest Territories) won re-election.
However, in Nunavut the Liberal candidate Kirt Ejesiak was defeated by Conservative Leona Aglukkaq to give the modern Conservatives their first elected member from the territories.
Voter turnout was the lowest in Canadian election history, as 59.1% of the electorate cast a ballot. All federally funded parties except for the Greens attracted fewer total votes than in 2006; the Greens received nearly 280,000 more votes this election. The Conservatives lost 167,494 votes, the Liberals 850,000, the Bloc 200,000 and the NDP 70,000.