The Federal By-Elections called to take place on August 31st have came and went, and with them, electoral politics nerds like myself have been given tonnes of new material to over-analyze. With that said, in this article, I will be grading every party’s performance in the by-elections as a whole, equally weighing in their performances in each respective riding.

Before I get into the grades, I’ve attached images below via Wikipedia displaying the results of all three by-elections and the change from the 2025 federal election.

Chicoutimi-Le Fjord

Beaches-East York

North Vancouver-Capilano

Grades for the August 31st By-Elections

Liberal Party Of Canada: A+

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s alleged gambit in appointing Conservative Chicoutimi-Le Fjord incumbent Richard Martel to the Senate in order to trigger a by-election has paid off with a huge Liberal victory. Of the three by-elections, Chicoutimi is easily the biggest success for the Liberals, where they went from 31.1% and third-place in 2025 to 51.3% and an easy victory on Monday. This was almost unilaterally built on a CPC collapse, as the other four parties contesting the election largely stagnated. Granted, there is some likely voter redistribution where 2025 CPC voters changed to the BQ, and 2025 BQ voters changed to the LPC, but I digress.

The Liberals should probably also be content with their performance in Beaches-East York. A very popular incumbent in Nate Erskine-Smith resigned, and the party still won safely. In fact, they won by around the margins that they were winning by in 2019 and 2021. It’s safe to say that NES has turned this inner Toronto riding into safe LPC. The NDP performed strongly here — but the CPC performed terribly. This kind of result probably means that a 2027 federal election would see the NDP seriously challenge some urban Toronto seats, but that the Liberals would cover for this by gaining a bunch of suburban GTHA seats from the Conservatives.

In North Vancouver-Capilano, it’s a similar story to Beaches; a popular (though not quite as popular as NES) incumbent Liberal MP resigned, and the party remained completely unfazed despite this, only losing about 1% of their vote. There’s not too much to say here, except that the federal Liberals are looking very strong in Vancouver.

Overall, I don’t think that Carney’s party will see these by-elections as anything but an absolute win — and proof that he should soon call a snap election.

Conservative Party of Canada: F

I don’t mean to be dramatic, but I don’t think that Poilievre’s CPC could’ve had a much worse showing on Monday than they did. They were not within 25% of the Liberals in any riding, and were only in second-place in North Vancouver, despite being the incumbent party in Chicoutimi-Le Fjord.

For reference, the Conservatives decreased from 24% to 16% in Beaches, from 34% to 29% in North Vancouver, and from 34% to a pathetic 13% in Chicoutimi.

Chicoutimi is fascinating as it points to a further decimation of an already weak Conservative base in Quebec, but I think that the by-elections in Vancouver and Toronto are even more interesting. In both of these ridings, the CPC regressed to numbers near what they did in 2019 and 2021. If that Conservative Party — the one that gets 34% of the vote nationally — is the one that we’re getting in the next federal election, we’re in for a Liberal super-majority.

To give the Conservatives the slightest bit of good grace, none of these ridings are exactly Conservative demographic strongholds. They only ever held Chicoutimi because Richard Martel was an incredible candidate, and the other two urban ridings are not exactly Conservative hotbeds. Still, they should’ve done a lot better than they did. Brantford-Brant South will likely be the party’s true litmus test.

New Democratic Party: B

The NDP is, in my opinion, the hardest party to judge for how they performed in these by-elections.

In Chicoutimi, the party performed about exactly as well as they did in 2025, which was already next to nothing. There is almost nothing to say about this race. I don’t think it even says anything about how the party will do in inner Montreal, which is about the only place that they could possibly win seats in Quebec at this point.

If the party performed in the other two by-elections like they did in Beaches-East York, they would probably get an ‘A’ grade. Here, they received 26% of the vote, which was a clear second-place finish, a near 20-point increase from 2025, and the party’s strongest showing in this riding since 2015. If this race was not a fluke, the NDP would be favoured to win back seats like Davenport and Hamilton Centre in the next election. The party would’ve probably liked this race to be a little more competitive, but this was a great result. In fact, NDP candidate Shannon Devine more than doubled her 2025 raw vote count (4k to 8.5k), despite the fact that this by-election only saw about half as many voters turn out (59k to 33k).

North Vancouver-Capilano is where it gets tricky for the NDP. They put up an utterly atrocious performance in this riding’s by-election, finishing with an even worse performance than their already terrible 4.2% of the vote in 2025. The 2025 election was the party’s worst-ever showing in this riding dating back to 1984, and somehow, this by-election was even worse. This may carry grave implications for the party, as they’ll need to pick up some seats in BC if they want to regain party status. I would be inclined to believe that this result was just due to typical vote consolidation seen in by-elections, were it not for the fact that the Greens skyrocketed in this riding. This result should scare the NDP, and it probably even carries implications for the BCNDP.

Bloc Quebecois: C+

Though the Bloc actually increased their vote share from 2025 in Chicoutimi, they probably should have done more given the implosion in Conservative vote. Many were expecting this by-election to be a close race between the Bloc and Liberals, and it simply was not. I’d consider this by-election a success for the Bloc if they received 35-40% of the vote and lost to the Liberals by under 10%, but they received 33% of the vote and lost by 18%. It’s not great.

Green Party of Canada: B

There is not much to say here, but I must point out that a very strong performance in North Vancouver (~9%) is really good for the Greens. It probably means that the party can seriously contest some seats on Vancouver Island, and, more importantly, that the provincial BC Greens are doing very well.

People’s Party of Canada: D

Why is this party still around? They completely imploded into winning only 0.7% of the national popular vote in 2025, and somehow managed to lose vote share from 2025 in the two ridings where they fielded candidates both then and in these by-elections. The People’s Party should not be treated like a major political party anymore.