Stephen Harper’s Conservatives win majority government; Jack Layton's NDP to form official Opposition

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      Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have won enough seats in the 2011 federal election to form a majority government.

      The NDP will form the official Opposition for the first time, and it appears the party is set to more than double the number of seats it holds.

      At 7:50 p.m., the Conservatives were leading in 164 ridings, the NDP 103, Liberals 32, the Bloc 4, and the Greens 1.

      In the month before election day (May 2), Harper asked Canadians to give him a majority, repeatedly raising the prospect of a coalition government led by the Liberals and then the invigorated NDP.

      The election campaign saw Jack Layton’s NDP take support away from both Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals and Gilles Duceppe’s Bloc Québécois.

      Poll after poll showed the NDP’s popular support surpass the Liberals’ nationally and the Bloc’s in Quebec for the first time in history.

      A Nanos Research poll conducted on the final weekend of the campaign put the Conservatives at 37.1 percent in popular support, the NDP at 31.6 percent, the Liberals at 20.5, the Bloc at 5.7 percent, and the Greens at 3.8 percent.

      At the dissolution of Parliament, the Conservatives had 143 seats in the House of Commons, the Liberals 77, the Bloc Québécois 47, and the NDP 36.

      Two seats were held by independents and three seats were vacant.

      You can follow Stephen Hui on Twitter at twitter.com/stephenhui.

      Comments

      2 Comments

      unknown sample

      May 3, 2011 at 12:27pm

      This is wonderful news! I sincerely hope a term of conservative majority will work out.

      A strong and stable government and economy under Conservative control is only good news.

      It appears Canadians were not fooled by the bogeyman rhetoric mouthed in these pages. That hidden agenda spectre was long past its due date.

      cuz

      May 3, 2011 at 6:04pm

      Maybe if the Libs and Ndp sourpusses had worked for the good of Canada instead of just opposing everything and wasting Canadians money on useless election after useless election, this wouldn't have happened. Even though things kept going against them in consecutive elections, all they could do is rant against the will of the people without offering any good alternatives. They brought this on themselves. And yet they still contend that anyone who doesn't think like they do is stupid. Look in the mirror.