1993 Canadian federal election

The 1993 Canadian federal election was held on October 25, 1993, to elect members to the House of Commons of the 35th Parliament of Canada. Considered to be a major political realignment, it was one of the most eventful elections in Canada's history. Two new regionalist parties emerged, finishing second and third in seat count. Most notably, the election marked the worst defeat for a governing party at the federal level and one of the worst ever suffered by a governing party in the Western democratic world. The Liberal Party, led by Jean Chrétien, won a majority government, defeating the governing Progressive Conservative Party in a landslide. The 22.6% gap between the Liberals and the newly formed Reform Party is the largest difference between the top-two popular vote parties in Canadian federal election history. The election was called on September 8, 1993, by the new Progressive Conservative (PC) leader, Prime Minister Kim Campbell, near the end of her party's five year mandate. When she succeeded longtime Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and assumed office on 25 June, the party was deeply unpopular due to the failure of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords in 1990 and 1992, respectively, the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax in 1991, and the early 1990s recession. The PCs were further weakened by the emergence of new parties that were competing for its core supporters, including the western-based Reform Party of Canada and the Bloc Québécois advocating for Quebecois sovereignty and separatism, both of which ended up heavily splitting the PC vote. Campbell's initial efforts helped the party recover somewhat in pre-election polls before the writs were issued on 8 September. However, this momentum did not last. The Progressive Conservatives launched a controversial attack ad during the campaign in hopes of staunching the bleeding. It did not work; the Progressive Conservatives suffered the most lopsided defeat for a Canadian governing party at the federal level, losing 154 seats and official party status in the House of Commons and more than half of their vote from 1988. The Western-based Reform Party won over many traditional PC voters, particularly social conservatives, alienated Western Canadians, and fiscal conservatives who opposed the Mulroney government's deficit spending and tax increases. The popularity of Preston Manning, and profound Western discontent with the PCs, led the Reform Party to replace the PCs as the major right-wing party in the Commons, although it won only one seat east of Manitoba. Though the Progressive Conservatives recovered slightly in the 1997 election, they lost seats in 2000 and would never be a major force in Canadian politics again. In 2003, the Progressive Conservative Party ceased to exist when it merged with the larger Canadian Alliance (the successor of the Reform Party) to create the new Conservative Party of Canada. The sovereigntist Bloc Québécois won almost half of the popular vote in Quebec and became the Official Opposition despite finishing fourth in the popular vote. To date, this is the only time that a party committed to the political secession of a region of Canada has become the Official Opposition of Canada, and the only time a party not first or second in the popular vote would form Opposition. (The Progressives won the second-most seats in 1921 with the third-most votes, but declined to form Opposition, and the second-place Conservatives did in lieu). The traditional third party, the New Democratic Party (NDP), collapsed to nine seats only one election after having what was then its best performance. It remained the NDP's worst result until the 2025 federal election. The turnover of MPs was stark and unprecedented for Canadian politics, with 132 MPs losing their seats. In total, 194 out of 295 ridings changed hands. Having been defeated in her Vancouver Centre riding, Campbell became the first incumbent prime minister since William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1945 to lose a House of Commons seat in a bid for re-election. This was the only election in Canadian history in which a governing party failed to win enough seats to attain official party status.