Voters on Canada’s East Coast delivered a steady-as-she-goes endorsement to the incumbent Liberals on Monday, as the party held on to its commanding position in the region.
With 98 per cent of the polls in Atlantic Canada reporting, the Liberals were elected or leading in 25 of 32 ridings, and the Conservatives were at seven. The New Democrats were not in contention, capturing less than five per cent of the popular vote. If those results hold when the final ballots are counted, the Liberals will end up with one more seat in the region than they won in the 2021 election.
The party has dominated the region for almost 10 years, though its grip has slightly loosened since Justin Trudeau was first elected to govern in 2015, when the Liberals won all 32 seats.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, the Tories won two seats, one of which was taken from the Liberals.
The Long Range Mountains riding in western Newfoundland had been held by former Liberal cabinet minister Gudie Hutchings since 2015, but she stepped down in January. Conservative Carol Anstey, a real estate agent, defeated Hutchings’ replacement, Liberal Don Bradshaw, a former TV journalist. As well, Tory incumbent Clifford Small held the redrawn riding of Central Newfoundland.
In the eastern Newfoundland riding of Terra Nova—The Peninsulas, which the Liberals had held since 2015, the Conservative candidate was ahead most of the night. But the Tory lead evaporated late in the night, leaving the race too close to call with one poll left to report.
In St. John’s East, Liberal incumbent Joanne Thompson, the fisheries minister, held the riding comfortably. But she said the surge in support for the Conservatives in rural Newfoundland was something her party needs to discuss. “We need to get out in the communities and really understand what people are feeling and where they feel the disconnect,” Thompson said.
As expected, the Liberals held all four seats in Prince Edward Island.
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The Conservatives — led by Pierre Poilievre — had been expected to hold on to some, if not all of their seats in the region, while the New Democrats under Jagmeet Singh were hoping for a surprise breakthrough in Newfoundland or Nova Scotia, but their support simply collapsed.
Political observers had said Poilievre’s aggressive, populist style of leadership was a tough sell in Atlantic Canada, where traditional Progressive Conservatives — including Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston — largely shunned the federal Tory leader. However, the Conservative campaign message, highlighted by Poilievre’s repeated references to a “lost Liberal decade,” seemed to resonate in some parts of the region.
In the Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova, a Liberal incumbent who was almost a no-show surged to victory after trailing for most of the night. Former cabinet minister Sean Fraser had decided not to run in December but changed his mind last month after receiving a phone call from new Liberal Leader Mark Carney, who has been prime minister for less than 50 days after replacing Trudeau.
Fraser delivered a victory speech that lashed out at U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments about Canada becoming the 51st state, and in an interview afterwards he stressed the magnitude of the economic threat Canada faces from the United States.
“We’re going to need a member of Parliament who’s got the experience to stand up to President Trump, and I’ll have the opportunity to be a part of the team that does just that,” he said.
He noted that the Conservatives threw a lot of resources at the riding, including staging a rally there with Poilievre in the campaign’s final week. “Despite the fact that we had a short period of time, we were able to pull together,” he said.
In southwestern Nova Scotia, where the lobster industry is king, the Tories lost a tough fight to retain South Shore—St. Margarets, a riding Conservative Rick Perkins won in 2021 when he defeated then fisheries minister Bernadette Jordan.
At the time, the Liberals were facing persistent criticism over how they have handled ongoing disputes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous fishers. Those disputes have persisted, but Perkins’ popularity waned over the past four years. He lost to Liberal Jessica Fancy-Landry, a school principal and leadership consultant.
In western Nova Scotia, however, Tory incumbent Chris d’Entremont — a well-known former provincial politician — held on to Acadie-Annapolis, defeating Liberal challenger Ronnie LeBlanc, another former provincial politician and fisherman.
In New Brunswick, Tory incumbents held on to three of their strongholds in southern and western reaches of the province: Fundy Royal, Saint John-St. Croix and Tobique-Mactaquac.
But the race was too close to call in Miramichi-Grand Lake, in eastern New Brunswick where Conservative incumbent Jake Stewart — a one-term MP and former provincial cabinet minister — stepped down last month amid criticism from Tories in his riding. Stewart narrowly won the riding in 2021.
In the riding of Fredericton-Oromocto, newly elected Liberal David Myles — a singer-songwriter — said the top things he heard from voters were concerns about U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats against Canada, and persistent worries about affordability and housing.
Myles also said he met a number of provincial Progressive Conservatives who threw their support behind the Liberals.
“We definitely gained people like that,” he said. “You know, the Red Tory, the Progressive Conservatives of the past who don’t really relate to conservatism as it is nationally.”
During the last week of the race, Carney travelled to Upper Onslow, N.S., where he told supporters that Trump was “trying to break us as a nation because they want to own us.” He compared the ongoing trade war to a hockey game, saying: “When someone else drops the gloves, we know what to do.”
Poilievre painted a bleak picture of Canada’s future when he stopped in Halifax for a campaign event last week, blaming the situation on nearly 10 years of Liberal government. The Tory leader’s pitch for change was a reminder of how he had spent much of the past two years atop the polls by relentlessly slamming Trudeau’s Liberals and insisting that “Canada is broken.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 28, 2025.
— With files from Sarah Smellie in St. John’s, N.L., Lyndsay Armstrong in New Glasgow, N.S., and Hina Alam in Fredericton.