Conservative candidate Don Stewart won the Toronto-St. Paul's by-election.Supplied
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were hit with a stunning upset in a Monday night by-election, losing a midtown Toronto riding the party had held for three decades and raising even more questions about the minority government’s prospects in next year’s general election.
The dramatic result in Toronto-St. Paul’s even surprised Conservatives, who for weeks have said they were not expecting to win the long-shot seat.
Conservative candidate Don Stewart snatched the win from the Liberals with just 590 votes separating the two parties.
Mr. Stewart, a marketing and finance professional, won with 42.1 per cent of the vote, with all of the polls reporting around 5 a.m. on Tuesday. Liberal Leslie Church was second with 40.5 per cent of the vote and NDP candidate Amrit Parhar won 10.9 per cent of the vote.
Until last year, Toronto-St. Paul’s was represented by Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett, who had held the seat since 1997 and in the last election won with a 24-percentage-point margin over the second-place Conservatives. The Conservatives managed to close that gap Monday and win with a 1.6-percentage-point margin. The NDP vote share also fell compared to 2021, when they won 16.8 per cent.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre congratulated Mr. Stewart in a social media post, calling the result a “shocking upset in Toronto-St. Paul’s, where people voted to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.”
He said the result shows the Prime Minister needs to call a “carbon tax election now.”
A Conservative supporter watches a split screen displaying voting results and the Stanley Cup final, at an federal by-election event for Toronto-St.Paul's candidate Don Stewart in Toronto on Monday, June 24, 2024.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
The result stunned Liberals who went to sleep expecting a win and woke up to a loss that will be hard to overstate.
Around 12:30 a.m., Ms. Church was welcomed into her party’s headquarters by Liberal Party President Sachit Mehra as the riding’s “next MP for Toronto-St. Paul’s.”
Despite the fact that nearly half of the polls had not yet reported results, Ms. Church told supporters: “We are feeling great.”
Conversely, just before midnight on Monday, Mr. Stewart thanked his supporters and told them “the night is still young.”
In a brief scrum, Mr. Stewart told reporters his campaign’s performance showed “the country is waiting for change.”
On Tuesday morning, Ms. Church released a statement conceding defeat but promising a rematch in next year’s federal election. “It is a beginning, not an end,” she said.
Voters sent the Liberals a message that the party needs to “re-earn their trust,” she said.
“We’ve got 16 months until the next election, and I plan to be the Liberal candidate in St. Paul’s. We start working to earn back the trust of voters in this riding today.”
The result in a single riding though spells much more trouble for the Liberals and will dramatically increase the pressure on Mr. Trudeau and his tenure as leader. For months now he has adamantly said he will stay and try for a fourth mandate in government. But if the Liberals can’t win Toronto-St. Paul’s, it’s unclear what seats could still be considered safe for them, say political watchers. Even during the party’s worst defeat in 2011, it still held on to that seat with an 8-percentage-point margin.
It is a massive win, said Ginny Roth, a partner at Crestview Strategy and previously a senior adviser to Mr. Poilievre during his leadership campaign.
“To me, that means the Liberals are under 15 seats in a general election,” she said. The party currently holds 155 seats and, in 2011, it held on to 34.
For the Liberals, it is a “bolt of political lightning,” said Scott Reid, a Liberal strategist and principal at communications firm Feschuk.Reid.
“There is no language too hyperbolic to describe the significance of this failure,” he said. “If you can lose in St. Paul’s, then the Liberal Party can lose anywhere, and that means it can lose everything.”
Mr. Reid said the result is particularly stinging for the Prime Minister “because it tells him in indisputable, undeniable and implacable terms, that his leadership harms his own party.”
“The message for Liberals – and for the Prime Minister in particular – is unmistakable: Change or leave. Because the status quo risks carrying the party to an historic humbling.”
“The only political comparison that will now be moving through the minds of Liberals is 1993 for the Progressive Conservatives, and that is devastation at a near-extinction-level event.” In that election, the incumbent party was reduced to just two seats, from which it never recovered.
As Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s former chief of staff, Ms. Church has deep roots in the Liberal Party, but was relatively unknown in the riding. In the tough polling climate earlier this year, the Liberals delayed calling the vote as they searched for someone with better name recognition.
Among those courted by the party was the area’s city councillor, Josh Matlow, who three sources said was heavily lobbied by top Liberals.
The Globe and Mail is not identifying the sources because they were not permitted to disclose the internal party strategy.
Despite the early nerves, Liberals had become much more confident in a win in the final week of the race; they poured immense resources into the riding, sending a steady stream of federal cabinet ministers, MPs and Parliament Hill staffers to help in the campaign.
In a statement Tuesday, the Liberal Party sought to play down what it had expected from the results, despite its own president declaring victory just after midnight.
“We knew this would be a tough race, with by-elections not often favouring the governing party,” said spokesperson Parker Lund.
“We know that there’s lots of hard work ahead of us, and our Liberal team is ready to keep working to reach Canadians with our positive plan to deliver fairness for every generation.”
Turnout in the by-election was higher than typical for such races with 44 per cent of voters casting a ballot. In the most recent Durham by-election, turnout was just 28 per cent.