Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre delivered his party’s best showing in over a decade but failed to form government in an election that saw his party pick up new seats across the country – even as, early into Tuesday morning, his own seat remained a question mark.

With 250 of 266 polls reporting as of 2:45 Tuesday morning, the Liberals were tracking towards capturing the riding of Carleton, which Mr. Poilievre has held since 2004.

It was a result that came even as he expanded his party’s base of support in Monday’s vote into the Greater Toronto Area, Lower Mainland and parts of the Atlantic, holding the Liberals to a minority government.

He did not acknowledge his personal political prospects early Tuesday morning as he sought to frame the election results overall in a positive light: the Conservatives won more seats than last time, more votes than last time, denied the Liberals a majority and held the NDP at bay too.

“We know that change is needed but change is hard to come by,” he said early Tuesday morning.

“It takes time. It takes work and that’s why we have to learn the lessons of tonight so that we can have an even better result the next time.”

Preliminary results showed the Conservatives with 41.6 per cent of the vote overall, the highest total for the party since Stephen Harper won a majority government in 2011. The party was projected to win 145 seats out of 343, up from the 120 they held in the last, slightly smaller, Parliament.

The Conservatives were projected to pick seats from the NDP but that party’s voters largely folded into the Liberals, pushing Mr. Carney’s party over the finish line in an election that less than six months ago was all but Mr. Poilievre’s to lose.

He had dominated the polls with simple but effective messages to Canadians disillusioned by a decade of Liberal rule, promising lower taxes, more homes and less crime.

Ultimately, voters opted against his push for a wholesale change in government after 10 years of Liberal rule.

But the Conservatives were projected to pick up seats in the Atlantic, northern Ontario, parts of the Greater Toronto Area and in B.C., all target areas for the party in the campaign. The Conservatives were also projected to lose a handful of seats, including ridings in Manitoba, Nova Scotia and B.C.

Ninety-one candidates were on the ballot in Mr. Poilievre’ Carleton riding, nearly all from an initiative known as the Longest Ballot Committee which is seeking to build support for electoral reform. The size of the ballot slowed down the count.

The Liberal victory – which Mr. Poilievre described as a “razor-thin minority” – will revive criticisms of Mr. Poilievre’s abrasive style and his campaign framing, which even some within the party believed was out of touch with Canadians’ anxieties about a trade war with the U.S. and threats of annexation by Mr. Trump.

It may also raise questions about his future as party leader; former leaders – Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole – were forced out after they failed to form government in the past two elections, even though they won the popular vote.

Mr. Poilievre signalled early Tuesday morning he intends to remain, though how he will do that absent a seat in Parliament was not immediately clear.

“It will be an honour to continue to fight for you,” he said.

Two senior Conservatives told The Globe and Mail that Mr. Poilievre and his campaign team were making calls through the weekend to suss out how solid his support was to remain on. The Globe is not identifying the sources so they could speak about their interactions with the leader’s team.

Earlier Monday evening, former Alberta premier and Conservative cabinet minister Jason Kenney said if Mr. Poilievre wants to stay on, he’ll be able to.

“I don’t see any faction or group within the party egging for a new leadership,” he said on CBC. “I think the party realizes that changing leaders every three or four years is counterproductive.”

Mr. Poilievre handily won leadership of his party in 2022, building a new coalition of Conservative voters – young, previously politically disaffected and frustrated by a government they felt was out of touch.

He harnessed their energy in opposition, focusing almost exclusively on ending the consumer price on carbon, addressing crime, building homes and fixing the federal budget.

He also unrelentingly attacked then-prime minister Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, accusing them of personally being responsible for a cost of living crisis.

His efforts pushed up his party’s popularity. He used voters’ specific points of anger with the Trudeau Liberals to turn their attention to his offerings, such as Atlantic residents frustrated by home heating costs or B.C. voters unnerved by the opioid crisis.

And, he dominated public discourse on those issues with slogans crafted to meet the social media moment.

Mr. Poilievre closed out 2024 with a near 20-percentage-point polling lead.

But then, Mr. Trump launched a trade war. And Mr. Trudeau said he’d quit once a new Liberal Leader was chosen.

As Mr. Trudeau faced off with Mr. Trump, the polls began to inch back in his party’s direction, notching up with the election of Mark Carney as leader and a nationalist fervour taking over the country.

Early in 2025, though Mr. Poilievre’s advisers were telling him to do otherwise, he was still insisting the coming federal campaign would still be a “carbon tax election.”

Then, Mr. Carney promised to roll back a capital-gains tax hike, began talking about natural resource development and, as his first act as prime minister, removed the consumer price on carbon – a trifecta of issues that once belonged to Mr. Poilievre.

Mr. Poilievre was now fighting an entirely new campaign.

Mr. Poilievre refocused, holding a “Canada First” rally as an unofficial election kick-off event in February. Once the campaign began, he added another slogan: “for a change.”

Though he rolled out a new policy almost every day, Mr. Poilievre waited until the final days of the campaign to release the entirety of his platform: $34-billion in new spending and $75-billion in tax cuts over four years and $56-billion in spending reductions, figures predicated on his policies generating significant economic growth with no economic downside from the trade war.

Mr. Poilievre tried different ways to broaden his voter coalition during the campaign.

Baby boomers turning toward the Liberals were targeted with ads without Mr. Poilievre in them as a counterpoint to polling suggesting he personally was a drag on their support. Accusations he was too much “like” Mr. Trump were levelled by his rivals and detractors, even as he tried to distance himself.

The Conservatives still thought they had a path to victory with younger Canadians and newcomers, and targeted them through interviews with online influencers and multilingual ads.

Mr. Poilievre also found numerous organized allies for his message: At least 17 union and police associations endorsed his promises to crack down on crime, boost support of the trades and expansion of the natural resources sector.

But he also faced enemies from within, including Ontario Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford, who criticized Mr. Poilievre’s campaign effort.

One federal Conservative, Jamil Jivani, hit back at Mr. Ford early Tuesday morning during an interview on CBC, calling him a political opportunist who distracted the Poilievre campaign while trying to “position himself as some kind of political genius.”

- With a report from Tamara Merritt