1984 Canadian federal election

The 1984 Canadian federal election was held on September 4, 1984, to elect members to the House of Commons of the 33rd Parliament of Canada.

1984 Canadian federal election

September 4, 1984

282 seats in the House of Commons
142 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Turnout75.3% (6.0pp)
  First party Second party Third party
 
Leader Brian Mulroney John Turner Ed Broadbent
Party Progressive Conservative Liberal New Democratic
Leader since June 11, 1983 June 16, 1984 July 7, 1975
Leader's seat Manicouagan Vancouver Quadra Oshawa
Last election 103 seats, 32.45% 147 seats, 44.34% 32 seats, 19.77%
Seats before 100 135 31
Seats won 211 40 30
Seat change 111 95 1
Popular vote 6,278,818 3,516,486 2,359,915
Percentage 50.03% 28.02% 18.81%
Swing 17.59pp 16.32pp 0.97pp


The Canadian parliament after the 1984 election

Prime Minister before election

John Turner
Liberal

Prime Minister after election

Brian Mulroney
Progressive Conservative

In one of the largest landslide victories in Canadian political history, the Progressive Conservative Party (PC Party), led by Brian Mulroney, defeated the incumbent governing Liberal Party led by Prime Minister John Turner. This was the first election since 1958 in which the PC Party won a majority government.

Mulroney's victory came as a result of his building of a 'grand coalition' that comprised social conservatives from the West, Red Tories from the East, Quebec nationalists, and fiscal conservatives. Mulroney's PCs won the largest number of seats in Canadian history (at 211) and won the second-largest percentage of seats in Canadian history (at 74.8%), only ranking behind Progressive Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's triumph in the 1958 federal election (at 78.5%). This was the last time that the winning party won every province and territory and the last time that the winning party received over 50% of the national popular vote. The Liberals suffered what at that time was the worst defeat for a governing party at the federal level (in terms of percentage of seats). The New Democratic Party (NDP) saw no significant change to their seat count.

The election marked the end of the Liberals' long dominance of federal politics in Quebec, a province which had been the bedrock of Liberal support for almost a century. They would not win a majority of Quebec seats again until three decades later in 2015.

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