Misinformation about Poilievre's election loss persists. Here are the facts

David Michael Lamb · CBC News

· Posted: May 09, 2025 3:07 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 minutes ago

Claims of fraud and unfairness proceed to dispersed implicit Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's predetermination nonaccomplishment successful his Ottawa riding of Carleton astir 2 weeks ago.

Poilievre mislaid to Liberal Bruce Fanjoy by 4,513 votes. Some person questioned however that was possible, considering however good the Conservatives did overall. Also, Poilievre held the riding for 20 years and successful the past election, helium won by much than 10,000 votes.

Poilievre conceded that helium mislaid this clip and the Conservatives have not made allegations that the ballot was unfair, incorrect oregon conducted improperly.

Here are the facts of what happened.

100% turnout? Really?

No, not really.

Some suggested the ballot was illegitimate due to the fact that they felt the numbers didn't adhd up. By their math, they estimated turnout was astir 100 per cent, which doesn't hap successful Canadian elections.

But the assertion isn't true.

According to Elections Canada, turnout successful the riding was 81 per cent. That's considerably higher than the nationalist wide turnout of 68 per cent, but it's not that unusual. Three different Ottawa-area ridings that are adjacent to Carleton had turnout of 77 per cent, including adjacent doorway successful Nepean, won by Mark Carney.

It appears the radical making the claims were utilizing outdated numbers for however galore radical unrecorded successful the riding based connected the aged boundaries and lone accounting for portion of the population.

Who's fiddling with the riding boundaries?

In 2023, the Carleton riding changed significantly. The carnal size of it got a batch bigger compared to 2021, and the creation of radical successful it changed, meaning it was not the aforesaid radical of radical walking into voting booths arsenic successful the past election.

Some, including erstwhile Conservative person Stockwell Day, person suggested the bound alteration was the Liberal government's doing, successful bid to marque it harder for Poilievre to get elected.

But that's not however it works successful Canada.

Every 10 years, electoral boundaries successful each state are redrawn by an autarkic committee led by a justice and are based connected the astir caller census data.

As populations alteration and grow, the thought is to marque definite each riding has astir the aforesaid fig of radical successful it.

The boundaries are not decided by governmental leaders oregon their parties. They bash person input, arsenic does immoderate Canadian who wants to remark connected projected changes. But the autarkic sheet makes the decision.

It's designed to beryllium non-partisan and not connected to the predetermination cycle, truthful it's hard to manipulate it successful favour of the governing party.

Diya Jiang is simply a elder researcher astatine the Media Ecosystem Observatory, a radical astatine McGill University that tracks predetermination misinformation connected societal media.

"There is truthful overmuch polarization, truthful radical person distrust toward the governmental system," Jiang said. "This is the archetypal clip ever, really, societal media is playing specified a immense relation successful conveying news. So this benignant of facilitates the process of claiming thing that's not truthful."

No, immigrants did not flood the riding with Liberal votes

A station connected X claimed the riding had added 40,000 immigrants successful the abstraction of 10 years — and that 95 per cent of its colonisation maturation was owed to immigration.

These figures are misleading.

The 95 per cent fig apt refers to wide colonisation maturation successful Canada, not Carleton specifically, which would besides person radical moving into and retired of it from wrong Canada.

Next, if you look astatine the areas that marque up the caller Carleton riding, the full fig of immigrants accounts for astir 20-25 per cent of the population, according to Statistics Canada. Some are caller arrivals. Some person been successful Canada overmuch longer. And erstwhile you look astatine wherever they travel from, nary azygous state dominates.

There's nary grounds that each immigrants ballot the aforesaid way, particularly those from antithetic places.

The longest ballot successful Canada

Others person questioned if it was excessively hard for voters to find their preferred campaigner connected the ballot, since it was truthful long. Yes, it did person 91 candidates — the longest of immoderate riding successful the 2025 election.

WATCH | A precise agelong ballot:

Most were candidates from a protestation radical called the Longest Ballot Committee that wants proportional representation. 

The radical has done this before. In each case, it followed the rules to get each those names connected the ballot. 

Out of 86,655 votes formed successful Carleton, Poilievre and Fanjoy unneurotic received much than 96 per cent of them. Based connected that, it would look that radical were capable to find the sanction they wanted, contempt the agelong ballot. None of the protestation candidates got much than a fewer twelve votes.

Elections Canada besides knew it would instrumentality longer to number the votes successful Carleton. It granted support for officials to commencement counting hours earlier than they usually would. Elections Canada was wide astir this connected voting day.