The Liberals have fallen just shy of the 172 seats needed for a clear majority, but they will be the party of government. The victory represents an astonishing flip of political fortune. Mr Carney is a political rookie who had never sought office before becoming Liberal leader on March 9th. The Liberals entered 2025 led by an unpopular prime minister, Justin Trudeau, scraping all-time lows in public opinion polls. Mr Trudeau resigned on January 6th. Mr Carney entered the race to succeed him ten days later and immediately ditched many of his party’s least popular policies such as the consumer-facing portion of Canada’s carbon tax. Mr Trump suggested repeatedly that Canada should cease to exist as a sovereign country and become the 51st member of the United States (including on the day of the vote, April 28th). These four events shocked support for the Liberal Party back to life.

Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party, had already begun to receive pointed questions about his leadership before voting started. He will bear the burden of blowing a historic 24-point polling lead to the Liberals in four months, losing his own seat in the process. That load might be lightened somewhat by results that show the Conservatives increased their share of the popular vote from 34% in 2019 to 42%. That exceeds the modern Conservative Party’s all-time high of 39.6%, won by Stephen Harper in 2011—good enough for a majority then, but not in 2025.

Left-wing Canadians from the socialist New Democratic Party (NDP) heard echoes of Mr Trump in Mr Poilievre’s calls to crack down on fentanyl dealers, to subject any tax increases to referendums and to withhold federal funding for Canadian universities judged to have been flaky on freedom of expression. To many Canadians, the Trumpy tone was unmistakable. “All of this talk about fentanyl is just a smokescreen to threaten our sovereignty,” says Brett Van Bergen, of Abbotsford, British Columbia, who works with those struggling with addiction. He switched his vote from NDP to Liberal.

Mr Poilievre tried to adopt a gentler tone during the 36-day contest, but he could never bring himself to deliver a full-throated denunciation of Trumpism. During the final days of the campaign he forecast a dystopian version of Canada if the Liberals were re-elected. NDP voters stampeded towards the Liberals to block what they saw as the looming tumult of a maple-leaf MAGA movement dressed in Canadian Conservative blue. The party’s share of the vote looks to have dropped from 16% in 2019 to just 6% this time round. (Its leader, Jagmeet Singh, stood down after the scale of the party’s loss became clear, and he lost his seat in a landslide.) Electoral districts which used to host three-way races became two-party contests. The anti-Conservative sentiment merged with anti-Trump feelings, a potent cocktail from which the Liberals were the sole beneficiaries.

Mr Carney’s limitations as a politician were obvious during the campaign. His speaking style can be described as plodding, verging on sepulchral. He responds to questions with three- or four-point outlines that reflect his wonkishness. His poor French, one of Canada’s two official languages, meant he stumbled through a series of gaffes early in the campaign. None of this mattered.

Canadian voters did not embrace Mr Carney for his charisma or political acumen. They turned to him because of his reputation as the man who led Canada’s central bank through the bruising recession of 2008-09 and the Bank of England through Brexit. He acknowledged that his candidacy had been propelled by Canadians’ anxiety over Mr Trump’s tariffs as well as his rumblings about Canada’s sovereignty. “Without this crisis there would be no Mark Carney in this election,” he told Radio Canada.

Mr Carney faces immediate challenges. Canada sends more than three-quarters of its exports to the United States. Both he and Mr Trump say the traditional relationship between the two neighbours is over. Mr Carney has signalled that he is prepared to negotiate a new economic and security pact to replace the current free-trade agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada that comes up for review next year.

He has also vowed to explore deeper trade and military arrangements with allies in Europe and friendly countries in Asia. Difficult decisions aimed at boosting Canada’s flaccid productivity will need to be made quickly. Mr Carney now has the mandate to begin a profound, and perhaps painful, restructuring of his country’s economy.