The election was won fought almost entirely on the record of the governing Liberals. The party's new leader John Napier Turner had at first managed to distance himself from the policies of his predecessor Pierre Trudeau, but as the campaign wore on he became closely attached to these faults.
The Liberals had long not been supported by western Canada, and policies such as the National Energy Policy only aggravated this sentiment. A change from earlier elections was the great disaffection in Quebec with the Liberal government. The Conservatives had not won significant support in that province in decades, but hopes for success there was one of the main reasons Brian Mulroney had been chosen as party leader. Mulroney was a fluently bilingual Qubecer who promised a new deal for Quebec. The province, annoyed at being left out of the 1982 repatriation of constitution, shifted dramatically to support him. Other voters turned against the Liberals due to their mounting legacy of patronage and corruption. An especially important issue was that of 79 patronage appointments Trudeau made in the days before leaving office. Turner, despite promising o new way of doing politcs, refused to cancel these appointments.
The election was a landslide victory for the Progressive Conservatives. They won half the popular vote and 211 out of 282 seats. The party won a majority of the ridings in every province. The New Democratic Party under Ed Broadbent also did very well, left wing voters in the manufacturing areas of Ontario and on the prairies gave them thirty seats. At the time many pundits thought Canada was moving towards the British model of a Labour/Tory division.
Issues
Results
| Popular Vote | Seats | |
|---|---|---|
| PC | 50.0% | 211 |
| Liberals | 28.0% | 40 |
| NDP | 18.8% | 30 |
| Other | 3.1% | 1 |
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Preceded by: 1980 Canadian election | Canadian federal elections |
Followed by: 1988 Canadian election |