The Liberals picked up 148 seats, easily the biggest numerical increase for a Canadian party since Confederation.

At 9:41pm EDT, October 19, 2015, CBC News projected that the Liberals had won at least a minority government, and that leader Justin Trudeau would become the next Prime Minister of Canada.

While the Liberals had been expected to regain much of what they had lost in 2011, they tallied the second-best performance in their history; the 184 seats was bettered only by the 191 they won in 1949.

However, they suffered heavy losses in urban southern Ontario, a region which had swung heavily to them in 2011.

Several members of Harper's cabinet were defeated, including Bernard Valcourt, Leona Aglukkaq, Gail Shea, Chris Alexander, Joe Oliver and Julian Fantino among others.

The NDP, the Official Opposition in the previous parliament, fell to third place with 44 seats, losing more than half of their caucus.

For the most part, their support bled over to the Liberals, though they lost a few areas of francophone Quebec to the Conservatives and Bloc.

However, Gilles Duceppe, who had been the longest-serving party leader in Canada at the time of his defeat in 2011, failed to win back his old seat of Laurier—Sainte-Marie.

As such, their gains could be attributable to NDP-Liberal vote splitting in francophone ridings more than a surge in popular support.

Boundary changes in eleven other ridings had the effect of revising the first-place ranking from what had occurred in 2011.