Four years ago, the 2021 federal election saw an almost perfect three-way split of the national vote. A sliver more than one-third of Canadians voted Conservative. A hair’s less than a third of the electorate voted Liberal. And the remaining third supported the New Democratic Party, the Bloc Québécois, the Greens and the People‘s Party of Canada.

But enough ancient history. Anyone interested in current events?

On Monday, the Liberals and the Conservatives together captured 85 per cent of the vote. Nothing remotely like this has happened since 1958. Canada is, for the moment and maybe for many years to come, a two-party system. Or more precisely a two-and-a-quarter party system. The Bloc, the third party created for a temporary existence in one province, remains as permanent as ever.

The election results leave every party dissatisfied – though some far more than others.

The least humbled are Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberals. But what the voters have given them is not what they wanted, or what last week’s polls told them to expect: a majority, and possibly a whoppingly big one.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the Liberals were still three seats shy of that majority.

But because of what happened to the largest of the third parties on Monday night, Mr. Carney’s minority would have breathing room and job security. Parliament won‘t be voting non-confidence anytime soon.

The NDP lost two-thirds of its voters, compared to 2021. It lost more than two-thirds of its seats. It lost its leader. It lost official party status. And most of its voters appear to have been lost to the Liberals.

Yet, by strange fortune, its shrunken caucus, which pending recounts stood on Tuesday afternoon at just seven MPs, would hold the balance of power in a minority House. But this leaderless and penniless parliamentary rump will have zero interest in toppling the Liberal government and forcing another election. The NDP needs time to heal and try to rebuild. A lot of time.

The Elizabeth May Caucus of One, a.k.a. the Green Party, lost nearly half its support compared to 2021, dropping from 2.3 per cent of the vote to 1.3 per cent. Its erstwhile voters also likely went to the Liberals.

That Mr. Carney picked up a huge number of supporters from progressive parties, even as he visibly tilted the Liberal platform and brand to the right, is just another irony of this campaign.

And then there‘s the People‘s Party of Canada. It failed to win a seat in the last election, but that year it captured nearly 5 per cent of the vote. This time around, six-sevenths of those voters are gone. The PPC had threatened to siphon significant support from the Conservatives, but the opposite happened.

The Conservatives, who almost certainly would have won a majority had an election been called late last year, were deprived of that result by the departure of Justin Trudeau, and the arrival of Mr. Carney and Donald Trump. Pierre Poilievre‘s crew must settle for moral and statistical victories – which, though not nearly as satisfying as the prize of government – are impressive.

The message of that Conservative ad with the Boomer golfers – “are we really gonna give these clowns a fourth term?” – clearly resonated with many voters. Many, but not enough.

The Conservatives won the popular vote in 2021, and Mr. Poilievre‘s team topped that score by nearly eight percentage points, with 41.4 per cent of the vote. That’s more than Stephen Harper got when he won a thumping majority in 2011. You have to go back to Brian Mulroney in 1988 for a conservative party with a higher vote share – and that was the era before the BQ, when the Progressive Conservatives were the choice of more than 50 per cent of Quebeckers.

Mr. Poilievre also won more than 44 per cent of the vote in Ontario. That’s a higher share of the most populous province‘s electors than Mr. Mulroney got in 1988, or Mr. Harper in 2011. The Conservatives also gained 16 Ontario seats.

But for all that, the Conservative Leader lost his own riding of Carleton. Faced with the possibility of a Pierre Poilievre government, the anti-Poilievre vote congealed across the country, and nowhere more impactfully than in his own seat. The NDP vote there fell from more than 11 per cent four years ago to barely more than 1 per cent this time. Take a guess where it went.

Mr. Poilievre made himself into a one-man opposition party, giving little airtime to anyone else in his caucus. Yet the leader‘s seatless status means that, for the foreseeable future, another Conservative will have to be the parliamentary face of the party, leading the charge in Question Period.

And then there‘s the Bloc. It lost just enough seats to give the Liberals a boost, though not so many as to give them a majority. BQ support declined, but unlike the NDP, Greens and PPC, it did not collapse. It took 28 per cent of the vote in Quebec, just four points less than the last election, and 22 seats, or 10 fewer than in 2021.

Had the BQ vote fully deflated, the Conservatives could have claimed a handful of additional Quebec seats. But the Liberals would have picked up more, and before midnight on Monday, they would have been into clear majority territory.

In any case, the Liberals’ high seat count has deprived the BQ of the only prize it can ever aim for: holding the balance of power in a minority Parliament.

What does all this say about the future? In politics, some things that look like trends turn out to be one-offs, while other electoral results are the start of trends that cannot be reversed.

Take the 2011 election, when the Liberals were reduced to third-party status. There was widespread speculation that their future was a merger with the NDP, or a fade to permanent minor party status. The latter is what happened to the Liberals in Britain. But in 2015, the Liberals came roaring back to win a majority. A one-off, not a trend.

On the other hand, the shattering of the Progressive Conservative Party in 1993, in which it essentially broke into three parties, was an earthquake from which it never recovered.

Something similar happened in 1958. The election of John Diefenbaker‘s PC majority government that year saw the Liberals and Social Credit annihilated on the Prairies, where they had once been important, even dominant. The Socreds thereafter faded away, and though the Liberals recovered in the rest of the country, they never have on the Prairies.

In the 1921 election, the new Progressive Party came storming out of rural Canada to win the second-most seats. It looked the start of something big; it wasn‘t. The movement declined to accept the position of Official Opposition and spent the next few elections fracturing and fading. In 1935, it won zero seats, its voters and members having migrated to the NDP, the Socreds and the Liberals.

The party’s final, symbolic impact came in 1942, when the Conservatives, who wanted Progressive Manitoba premier John Bracken as their leader, changed their name to the Progressive Conservative Party.

Everyone ends this 2025 election humbled, though the degree of imposed humility varies.

Three third parties are absolutely devastated. The Bloc is diminished. The Conservatives made gains, but are still not in government. And Mr. Carney has been elected prime minister, but seemingly inches shy of a majority.

The parlous state of the balance-holding NDP would give him breathing room, but there are things his government may need to do – from backing pipelines to imposing spending cuts – that the NDP caucus could balk at. He is going to have to at least talk with the Conservatives and the BQ, and at times try to work with them.

Keeping a minority parliament alive and moving doesn‘t just happen; it takes political skill. Mr. Carney’s on-the-job training starts now.