Election 2025: networks struggle to track Canada’s two-party race

Canadian network coverage of the 2025 Federal Election kept score okay, but they had a hard time following the puck Monday night and into Tuesday morning.

With votes still being counted Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney emerged with a minority government victory over Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. The NDP got stomped, the Bloc battered, and the Greens turned Green. By Tuesday afternoon Liberals had won by 25 seats, 169 to 144, three seats shy of a majority.

On TV, it was a night of confusion. The CBC At Issue panel, for example, looked like they had been asked to be the judges on Dancing with the Stars. Chantal Hebert in particular looked like somebody had swiped her paddle. “We’ve never seen an election like this,” she said after midnight. She seemed thrown that the lost NDP support was being cast about at random instead of into Mark Carney’s lap. The stress was so bad her usually untamed hair seemed perfectly styled — especially compared to others on CBC’s coverage (more on that later).

Earlier, Hebert had said that “this is the best beginning of the night for the Liberal I have seen in decades.” C’mon now, Andrew Coyne seemed to challenge. Panelists and viewers then strapped in for what would become an up and down tightening of the race.

CBC called it a Liberal victory and projected that Mark Carney still had a shot at a majority shortly after polls closed in B.C. at 10 p.m. (CTV elected Carney possibly even before that — I was switching back and forth). The CBC scoreboard showed the Liberals with a 41-seat lead over Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives at that point, 130 to 89. Minutes later it was 145 to 105. An hour or so later, as results out west and in Ontario showed the Liberal surge waning, the lead shrunk to just two seats at 154-152. CBC Election night anchor Rosie Barton kept telling viewers it was too early to predict a Liberal majority, yet the public broadcaster never seemed to it rule out. Wishful thinking? Viewers, meanwhile, with the race tightening, had to wonder if the Liberals would cling to victory at all.

“Things are a little sticky right now I will say,” admitted Barton at 11:24, when the score narrowed to 158-148. It was at that point she and others started to point out that Poilievre was behind in early results in his own riding. CTV did not wait for things to get unstuck. They declared that Carney would fall short of a majority at 11:10 p.m. CBC, by the time the main speeches were winding down at 2 a.m., was still waiting to commit.

Kudos to CTV for a very clear and effective “projection” graphic which showed the highs and lows of the possible outcome of the election. At one point they pegged the Liberals at anywhere from 153 seats all the way up to 180 and a clear majority. Their guess that the Conservatives would wind up somewhere between 119 to 144 showed that opposition party’s late surge caught everybody off guard.

CBC’s way of expressing this was showing a graphic of the House of Commons with a threshold of how many projected seats were still in play. Those Liberal seats shrunk back under the majority threshold as the night wore on.

What CBC’s election team did seem to fathom early on was that the East Coast results were falling short of Liberal insider predictions. CBC Power & Politics host David Cochrane tried to do his best John King impersonation, standing by a large magic map and pointing out key races. While CNN’s King is still the ‘Big Daddy’ of this big screen gadget, Cochrane worked it well. His insistence on focusing on one East Newfoundland race in particular added a touch of drama and precision. As he kept suggesting, the delayed advance voter tally turned a seemingly blue victory at the very last minute back to a squeaky red win.

The early projected gains by the Tories in The East seemed to flummox the At Issue panel, who kept pleading that it was too early to draw conclusions. They were right; Liberals ultimately emerged from the Maritimes with the same seat tally they had going into the vote.

As CBC’s steady hand Ian Hanomansing explained early, “leading means shots, elected means scores.”

It was probably at that point that I switched over to the Stanley Cup playoff game on Sportsnet. The slow trickle of East coast results had me thinking up drinking games, such as take a drink everytime somebody says a seat could “flip” after the results of one poll. One ridiculous example: a candidate had seven votes which put her in the lead. Please, just bank sketches from the excellent 22 Minutes election special until there is a shred of relevant results.

I did my own flipping to the Citytv/CP24 coverage as well as briefly to CTV and Global. Global, by the way, had a killer app, where you could clock returns in your riding or anywhere across Canada. Viewers can now track election results in their hand held devices and avoid a lot of broadcast blather.

The best blather of the night, however, was when a victorious but very frustrated Jamil Jivani tore into Ontario premiere Doug Ford. Re-elected in Bowmanville, Ont., Jivani spoke with CBC’s David Common. One of the best field reporters on the night, Common confronted Jivani with his own words about how Ford had “sabotaged” the federal Conservative campaign as “a hype man for the election.” That’s when Jivani let it rip.

“I see Doug Ford as a problem for Ontario and for Canada,” said Jivani, who once worked for Ford. “He kept getting in the way, all his goons around him all the time…this guy’s a political genius because he beat Bonnie Crombie and Steven Del Duca? And we got to sit around and get advice from him? Na-no.”

“Tell us how you really feel Jamil,” a bemused and suddenly wide-awake Adrienne Arsenault said back at the CBC broadcast centre in Toronto. The panel jumped on this brewing rift within the Conservative ranks.

More fireworks were lit when CBC kept putting partisan ex-politicians from all parties in the fourth chair on the increasingly antsy At Issue panel. One Liberal pundit who decided to sit out this election kept electioneering, pissing off panelists Altheia Raj and Andrew Coyne with Rosie struggling to referee.

“It’s one thing to measure the drapes, another to measure the coffin,” bristled Coyne, who pushed back on talk of Poilievre’s political demise. The Globe and Mail columnist pointed out that Poilievre’s share of the popular vote had outperformed former PM Stephen Harper’s best tally, a data point that needs a “two party race” asterisk.

Altheia in particular looked as if she had lost the will to live, eventually grousing about not being able to ask follow up questions earlier in the campaign. Which leads to a note about hair and makeup and lighting on the CBC coverage. Cochrane and others talked about their election night rehearsals prior to Monday. On show night, however, it looked as if the hair and makeup folks had been sent home early. Not helping, I suspect, was setting the coverage on the floor of the CBC building, at the bottom of a ten-story shaft that needed a more robust lighting grid. Guess playoff tenants Rogers and Sportsnet are hogging all those large stages on the 10th floor.

Covering these elections are a marathon, and you’ve got to know that CNN has a team of folks standing by if one hair falls out of place on Kaitlan Collins’ face. On Monday night, CBC’s election team did not look well put together.

Holding up best was one CBC team member who didn’t need the hairdressers — David Cochrane. One of his best moments was holding up that prank ballot from Poilievre’s riding, which listed 90 candidates and looked like one of those maps your dad used to unfold and hold over the windshield while bombing along the Trans Canada highway in the family wagon.

One detail CBC got wrong in what was otherwise a clean, uncluttered screen presentation: no clock. CTV had one counting down to the next part of Canada indicating when polls would close. It helps to always know what time it is. Place a ticker on screen, they are all like 60-inches and up now.

CTV had their share of pundits, including Doug Ford strategist Tory Teneycke, who had earlier in the campaign lashed out at Poilievre’s braintrust for “campaign malpractice.” Would that he had been on CBC’s coverage after that spicy Jivani rant.

As for the speeches: Singh’s was short and gracious; Poilievre’s was longer and more partisan, although still, as a relieved Hebert pointed out, a proper concession. CBC cameras caught the disappointment at the Poilievre after party, where supporters filed out stunned at having blown a 25-point pre-election lead.

While those two leaders thanked and hugged their spouses, neither woman was given an opportunity to speak. Carney, in contrast, had his wife Diana Fox Carney, a British-Canadian economist described by The Daily Telegraph as an “eco-warrior,” come out in advance and take the spotlight solo. This wasn’t just thanking the spouse, it was showcasing her in the first moment of triumph, a move I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

Carney came next, thanked Diana, thanked his four kids, thanked everybody but Mike Myers, who he should have thanked first. He spoke about humility, said he will make mistakes, and pledged to represent everybody. He then warned Canadians it was going to be a hell ride thanks to you-know-who south of the border, and asked us all to unite Canada strong.

The universe kept unfolding as it should, and Trump being mentioned, I went to bed.