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All four parties in the House gained at least one riding at the expense of other parties, and all of these parties also had at least one of their incumbents defeated. A total of 40 ridings (13.0%) switched parties in the election. The first table below summarizes the number of gains, holds and losses for each of the four parties, plus independents. The numbers in the second table indicate the number of seats gained by each party in listed in the left hand column from each party listed in the top row.
For each constituency, the result of the 2008 election is compared either with the 2006 federal election, or with the result of its by-election in seats for which one was held during the 39th Parliament. The effects of floor crossings are not considered - results in ridings where the incumbent crossed the floor are tallied as "gains" where the incumbent was re-elected for his new party and as "holds" where the incumbent's former party re-took the seat. To further clarify, David Emerson's former seat of Vancouver Kingsway is scored as an NDP gain from the Liberals and is not included in any part of the Conservatives' tally. Seats that were vacant at dissolution are also considered as being held by the last party elected in the district.
Gains, holds and losses in the 40th Canadian federal 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.
Newfoundland and Labrador
Buoyed by the so-called "ABC Campaign", spearheaded by popular Newfoundland and Labrador PremierDanny Williams, the Liberals won six seats and the NDP one. The Avalon and St. John's South—Mount 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.
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 Brossard—La Prairie from the BQ, slightly strengthening their position.[3]
All seats were retained by their incumbent parties. The closest race was Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar. 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 Edmonton—Strathcona, 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 Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country from the Greens and Richmond from the Liberals.
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.
Andrew Telegdi, incumbent Liberal MP for Kitchener—Waterloo was defeated by Conservative candidate Peter Braid by 73 votes. The automatic recount on October 17, 2008 found that Braid won by only 17 votes.[5]
Voter turnout was the lowest in Canadian election history, as 59.1% of the electorate cast a ballot.[6] 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.