When discussing the results of the 2025 federal election by riding, perhaps no individual race was quite as interesting in how it all went down than Carleton.
For one, Carleton was this year’s focus of the Longest Ballot Committee, an organization dedicated to fighting against first-past-the-post electoralism in favour of proportional representation here in Canada. This meant that the ballot in Carleton was 91 names and over a metre long! Evidently, this caused a little bit of confusion – the two independent candidates with the highest vote shares were Lorant Polya and Scott Falkingham, two candidates right next to Conservative Poilievre and Liberal Fanjoy on the ballot, respectively. This may have been a coincidence, but it was more likely a product of these ballots being difficult to comprehend.
Secondly, as was previously mentioned, Carleton was the seat held by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre – a seat he’d held comfortably since 2015, and before then as Nepean-Carleton since 2004. That is, until the 2025 election, when he shockingly lost his seat to political newcomer Bruce Fanjoy.
Fanjoy won the election in Carleton with nearly 51% of the popular vote to Poilievre’s 46% in a year which saw a riding record of 84,000 votes cast for roughly 80% turnout. Poilievre did not lose votes – he just didn’t gain enough to match pace with the Liberals nearly doubling their raw vote count in the riding. So, what happened?
Firstly, the left-leaning vote of Carleton consolidated entirely into the Liberal Party. This may have happened for a few reasons; the first of which being that across Canada, the left-leaning vote consolidated into the Liberal Party. Importantly, though, the Green Party and NDP nominated less notable candidates than in previous years. For the Greens, this meant steering away from Gordon Kubanek, who received 5% of the vote in 2021 and was a perennial candidate in provincial elections. For the NDP, this meant not running Kevin Hua, who ran both in 2019 and 2021 and was slowly building up name recognition in the riding.
Additionally, this consolidation factor was not really at play for Conservatives. Sure, the People’s Party didn’t run a candidate in the riding in 2025, but they only received barely over 1% of the vote in 2021, a figure incredibly short of the 5% that the PPC received federally and the figures of 7-10% they won in much of Eastern Ontario that year. This meant that Poilievre did not really have an opportunity to receive much more than the 49.9% that they received in 2021.
Perhaps, though, the most important factor to Fanjoy’s winning in Carleton was an overall Liberal shift in many of these semi-rural Eastern Ontario districts which evidently carried over to the race in Carleton. The Liberals came within 15% of the vote, sometimes much lower, in a lot of seats that they lost by well over 20% in 2021. In Leeds-Grenville and Lanark-Frontenac specifically (two ridings which border Carleton), the Liberals came within just about 5% of a win. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that Carleton, a region that consists of similar demographics but also many older Ottawa residents, may have shifted Liberal with increased turnout this election. It’s easy to forget that Carleton is also an Ottawa seat – encompassing some of Ottawa South – but it is. And Ottawa this election voted firmly Liberal.
There have been many accusations about election rigging in Carleton, but it’s important to dispel these accusations as false. The first basis for these accusations is that the Longest Ballot Committee somehow negatively influenced Carleton for the CPC, and this is untrue for a couple reasons. First, there is no reason to believe that all these extra candidates helped one party more than the other. On top of this, even if you combine every single minor party and independent vote and gave them to Poilievre (even including the NDP and GPC), Fanjoy still ends up with more votes.
The other basis for these accusations is the high turnout seen in Carleton. The truth is, though, that Carleton has always had some of the highest turnout in the nation. And in an election that saw nearly 70% turnout federally, it’s no surprise that Carleton turned out as heavily as it did.
Carleton was the last domino to fall in the National Capital Region, and with its flip to Liberal, the entire region is now safely red. Between a major party leader losing his seat, an electoral reform group attacking the riding, and record-high turnout, the riding was one of the most fascinating to analyze in the 2025 election!
