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How can a Canadian political party win more seats while receiving fewer total votes than another party?

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Justin Trudeau Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attending a meeting of the G7 in Italy, 2024.

In Canada, a political party can win more seats in the House of Commons while receiving fewer total votes than another party because the country uses a plurality system for legislative elections.1

Under this system, a candidate only needs to receive more votes than any other single opponent within their specific constituency to win that seat; they do not need to secure a majority of the total votes cast. Because seats are awarded on a constituency-by-constituency basis rather than based on the national popular vote, the system often fails to distribute legislative seats in proportion to the total share of the popular vote won by each party.1

This mechanism tends to reward the strongest party disproportionately while handicapping weaker parties. However, parties can mitigate these effects if their support is regionally concentrated, allowing them to win multiple seats in specific areas even if their national vote percentage is lower than that of a party with more broadly distributed, but less concentrated, support.1