List of Canadian federal general elections
This list provides an overview of the elections to the Canadian House of Commons, the elected chamber of the Canadian Parliament. The number of seats increased over the years continuously, from 180 in the first elections to 308 today. The existing structure of government was created in 1867 with the Constitutional law.
Two parties have dominated politics in Canada: The Liberal Party and the historical Conservative Party (referred to as Progressive Conservative Party from 1943). If the modern Conservative Party is regarded as the successor of the historical, so there are only two parties, which have formed the government ( the Unionist Party of 1917 was a coalition of Liberals and Conservatives, who favored conscription ).
Although so far only two political camps have ever formed the government and thus a two-party system seems to exist, Canada since the 1920s, effectively a multi-party system, as various minor parties were represented in the House and are and these are the two major parties regularly to the formation of minority governments force. At the beginning these were the Progressive party and the movement of the United Farmers. This was followed in the 1930s, the Social Credit Party and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF ). In 1961, the CCF changed to the New Democratic Party (NDP ), while the Social Credit Party in 1980 disappeared into oblivion.
The dominant in the 1980s, Progressive Conservative Party never recovered from the crushing electoral defeat in 1993 ( when she was only two seats and even the fraction lost status ). The right side of the political spectrum then successively represented the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance. The latter merged with the Progressive Conservatives to the new Conservative Party forms the government since 2006. Since 1993, the separatist Bloc Québécois is represented holding the most seats in the French-speaking province of Quebec.
Summary of Results
The results of the third, fourth and fifth strongest parties are grouped under "other parties " if the party has not won at any time in their history at least four seats. Independent are also summarized under "Other Parties".