Justin Trudeau wins historic third term, falls short of majority

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is poised to win a third term in a snap election but fall short of regaining the parliamentary majority he was seeking. CTV News and the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. projected his governing Liberal Party will win a plurality of seats and form a minority government.

Justin Trudeau has retained power but is still short of a majority. Trudeau’s Liberal Party was elected or leading in 155 of the 338 seats in the House of Commons, compared with 123 seats for the Conservatives under Erin O’Toole, according to results from Elections Canada at 11:15 p.m. Ottawa time. A party needs 170 seats to form a majority in the House of Commons. While results will continue to trickle in over the coming days as election officials tally the mail-in ballots, in the end little is projected to have changed in the overall seat count for each party beyond a few marginal wins and losses. The Liberals won the most seats of any party. The Liberal victory is a historic milestone for Trudeau, marking only the eighth time a Canadian leader has won three successive elections. The 49-year-old Trudeau channeled the star power of his father, the Liberal icon and late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, when he first won election in 2015 and has led his party to the top finish in two elections since. Trudeau entered the election leading a stable minority government that wasn’t under threat of being toppled. The opposition was relentless in accusing Trudeau of calling an unnecessary early vote — two years before the deadline — for his own personal ambition.