1979 Canadian Federal Election
May 22, 1979 · The Trudeau years · 282 seats, 142 for a majority
Joe Clark became, at 39, the youngest Prime Minister in Canadian history, his 136 seats short of a majority. Trudeau's Liberals won the popular vote by four points but piled up wasted majorities in Quebec.
Prime Minister before
Pierre Trudeau
Liberal
Prime Minister after
Joe Clark
Progressive Conservative
Government formed
Progressive Conservative
minority government
Turnout
75.7%
The result
Progressive Conservative
Joe Clark · +38 seats · 35.9%
136
seats
Liberal
Pierre Trudeau · -19 seats · 40.1%
114
seats
New Democratic
Ed Broadbent · +9 seats · 17.9%
26
seats
Social Credit
Fabien Roy · -3 seats · 4.6%
6
seats
The result by province & territory
Seats won and vote share in each province and territory. Blank cells mean the party did not contest the province; the results table splits allied labels (Liberal-Conservatives, farmers' candidates, independents) that the headline figures group together.
Progressive Conservative
BC 19 (44.3%)AB 21 (65.6%)SK 10 (41.2%)MB 7 (43.4%)ON 57 (41.8%)QC 2 (13.5%)NB 4 (40.0%)NS 8 (45.4%)PE 4 (52.8%)NL 2 (27.7%)NT 1 (32.3%)YT 1 (40.6%)
136
seats
Liberal
BC 1 (23.0%)AB 0 (22.1%)SK 0 (21.8%)MB 2 (23.5%)ON 32 (36.4%)QC 67 (61.7%)NB 6 (44.6%)NS 2 (35.5%)PE 0 (40.6%)NL 4 (41.7%)NT 0 (34.1%)YT 0 (36.4%)
114
seats
New Democratic
BC 8 (31.9%)AB 0 (9.9%)SK 4 (35.8%)MB 5 (32.7%)ON 6 (21.1%)QC 0 (5.1%)NB 0 (15.3%)NS 1 (18.7%)PE 0 (6.5%)NL 1 (30.6%)NT 1 (31.9%)YT 0 (23.1%)
26
seats
Social Credit
BC 0 (0.2%)AB 0 (1.0%)SK 0 (0.5%)MB 0 (0.2%)ON 0 (<0.1%)QC 6 (16.0%)
6
seats
Total seats
282