Only Progressive Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's triumph in the 1958 federal election, at 78.5 percent, was higher.

The Liberals suffered what at that time was the worst defeat for a governing party at the federal level (in terms of percentage of seats).

This was a sharp departure from usual practice for a Westminster system, in which the incumbent in a safe seat resigns to allow a newly elected party leader a chance to get into Parliament.

But the Liberal Party had lost favour with western Canadians, and policies such as the National Energy Program only aggravated this sentiment.

Turner's plan to run in a western Canada riding was, in part, an attempt to rebuild support in that region.

Hoping for success in Quebec, leader Joe Clark began actively courting soft nationalist voters in the province.

This was also a main reason why businessman Brian Mulroney, a fluently bilingual native of Quebec, was chosen as Clark's replacement.

Although Turner was not required to call an election until 1985, internal data initially showed that the Liberals had regained the lead in opinion polls.

Turner and his advisers were also mindful of the fact that Trudeau had seemingly missed an opportunity to take advantage of favourable opinion polls in the latter half of the 1970s, when he waited the full five years to call an election only to go down to an (albeit temporary) defeat.

Additionally, several by-election losses and floor crossings had eroded the large majority that the Liberals had won four years earlier.

With this in mind, the new Prime Minister requested that Queen Elizabeth II delay her tour of Canada, and asked Governor General Jeanne Sauvé to dissolve Parliament on July 9.

An especially important issue was Trudeau's recommendation that Sauvé appoint over 200 Liberals to patronage posts just before he left office.

However, Mulroney turned the tables by pointing to the raft of patronage appointments made on the advice of Trudeau and Turner.

Turner continued to refer to "make work projects" and made other gaffes that caused voters to see him as a relic from the past.

Turner even rehired much of Trudeau's staff during the final weeks in an attempt to turn the tide, but this did nothing to reverse sliding poll numbers.

1 Tony Roman was elected in the Toronto-area riding of York North as a "coalition candidate", defeating incumbent PC MP John Gamble.

The Revolutionary Workers League fielded five candidates: Michel Dugré, Katy Le Rougetel, Larry Johnston, Bonnie Geddes and Bill Burgess.

Turner's inability to overcome the alleged resentment against Trudeau, combined with his own mistakes, resulted in a debacle for the Liberals.

One of those belonged to Turner, who defeated Tory incumbent Bill Clarke in Vancouver Quadra by a fairly solid 3,200-vote margin.

They won both a majority of seats and at least a plurality of the popular vote in every province and territory, the only time in Canadian history a party has achieved this (the nearest previous occasion being in 1949, when only Alberta kept the Liberals from a clean sweep).

In many cases, ridings where few living residents had ever been represented by a Tory elected them by margins similar to those the Liberals had scored for years.

This led to speculation that Canada was headed for a UK-style Labour–Conservative division, with the NDP knocking the Liberals down to third-party status.

This, along with Sweigard instituting a new party-wide policy of not engaging with the press, caused the drop in support that had begun at the previous election to accelerate dramatically.

What remained of Social Credit essentially reverted to being a western-based party, which was only able to run 52 candidates in 51 ridings (with two Socreds standing in a British Columbia seat), none of whom came even close to being elected.

It was its second-smallest slate since first running candidates east of Manitoba four decades earlier, and barely enough to allow Social Credit to retain its party registration.