3 Manitoba seats change hands as Liberals take 2, Conservatives win Elmwood-Transcona
Conservatives hold on to 5 rural strongholds, Liberals keep 4 Winnipeg seats
Three Manitoba seats are changing hands in the 2025 federal election, with two gains for the Liberals and one for Conservatives as CBC News projects the Liberals will form a minority government.
The upsets of the night in Manitoba included one in Winnipeg West, which Liberal candidate Doug Eyolfson won back from Conservative incumbent Marty Morantz.
Conservative Colin Reynolds took Elmwood-Transcona from recently elected NDP MP Leila Dance, while Liberal Rebecca Chartrand took longtime New Democrat MP Niki Ashton's seat in Churchill-Keewatinook Aski.
Overall, the Conservative seat count remained unchanged in Manitoba — seven — with the Elmwood-Transcona gain countering the Winnipeg West loss, and holds on the five rural strongholds the party held going into Monday's election, along with the Winnipeg-area Kildonan-St. Paul riding.
Meanwhile, the Liberals improved from four Manitoba seats to six, and the NDP dwindled from three seats to just one — the party's worst showing in the province since 1993.
Emergency room physician and former MP Eyolfson's win over incumbent MP and former Winnipeg city councillor Morantz in the moderately conservative Winnipeg West marks the third consecutive race between the two candidates, after Morantz previously unseated Eyolfson in the 2019 election and won again by a small margin in 2021.
Eyolfson's win for the Liberals comes after the riding recently expanded its boundaries, welcoming voters in the rural municipality of Rosser and residents of Tuxedo in Winnipeg, and had a name change from Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley.
WATCH | 'Still had butterflies,' says returning Winnipeg West MP Doug Eyolfson:
It follows a campaign defined by very different strengths for each camp: for Morantz, a ground game bolstered by a pair of very experienced political organizers, and for Eyolfson, the popular support of the Liberals within Winnipeg.
Eyolfson said Monday night he was "almost shell-shocked, but … just so very, very happy" to finally reclaim the seat he lost in 2019.
"It's been a long time coming," he said, adding he was "heartbroken" to have been previously ousted from the position.
"There was more work I wanted to do for the community and for the nation, and I'm so happy to be back to be able to do it."
Meanwhile, former business association director Dance lost the Elmwood-Transcona seat in a rematch with electrician Reynolds, after she narrowly beat him in a September 2024 byelection held to replace NDP MP Daniel Blaikie after he stepped down from the role.
That byelection win proved the New Democrats could keep the seat without a member of the Blaikie family on the ballot — the first time that's happened since the riding's creation in the 1980s.
WATCH | NDP will be back 'bigger and stronger,' says defeated Elmwood-Transcona MP:
In that byelection race, the Liberal candidate got less than five per cent of the vote — but on election night, third-place Liberal candidate Ian MacIntyre had more than 22 per cent of the ballots cast in the riding.
On paper, Winnipeg's easternmost riding should be an NDP stronghold — the party has won the riding in all but one election since it was formed in 1988, and the seat has not been held by a Conservative since 2011, when Stephen Harper led the right-of-centre party to a majority. It was also unique among Winnipeg ridings as the only one with a two-party race between the NDP and Conservatives.
But recent boundary changes, coupled with the nationwide collapse in the NDP vote, offered the Conservatives a slight advantage, with Elmwood-Transcona no longer including a slice of North Kildonan in Winnipeg and expanding east across the Red River Floodway to include the Dugald area.
Dance told reporters she thinks the changing situation in the U.S. over the last number of months and the effect of strategic voting by people who cast ballots for the Liberals instead of the NDP both played a role in the results in her riding.
"Strategic voting, it doesn't always work for everybody. It has changed this, and probably realistically did cost me this election," she said. "But again, people need to vote with their hearts and what they believe in. And if that's what people are believing, that's what they've done."
NDP crumbles
Support for the NDP crumbled in Manitoba, with Winnipeg Centre NDP MP Leah Gazan the only one of the province's three New Democrats going into the election who emerged with her seat.
The change mirrors one seen across the country, as Leader Jagmeet Singh announced he'll be stepping aside after party support collapsed and he conceded his own B.C. riding.
Gazan held off Rahul Walia, a 23-year-old former Liberal Party staffer who ran to unseat her in an inner-city Winnipeg riding that has voted NDP eight times during the nine elections since it was reformed in 1997.
While she celebrated her own win on Monday, Gazan said it was a "hard night" for her party.
WATCH | NDP's Leah Gazan on party's future after election night:
"We were in the fight of our life in Winnipeg Centre, and you know why we won? We won because we believe in human rights at the centre in Winnipeg Centre," she told supporters.
Gazan said she's prepared to work in the House of Commons even if the NDP don't gain the 12 seats needed for official party status — which it now appears they have not — adding she wants to tackle housing, addictions and slum landlords in her next term.
"I'm going to hold the Liberal government to account," she said.
In addition to Dance's loss in Elmwood-Transcona, Liberal candidate Rebecca Chartrand's win in northern Manitoba's Churchill-Keewatinook Aski riding was in an upset for the NDP, which lost a seat Niki Ashton has held since 2008.
It was a rematch between the two candidates in Manitoba's largest riding by land area, after Chartrand ran in the riding in the 2015 election and lost in a close race against Ashton — getting 42 per cent of votes cast to Ashton's 45 per cent. Ashton won the following elections, in 2019 and 2021, by at least 3,100 ballots.
On Monday night, Chartrand, the president and CEO of a management consulting company, said her win felt "surreal," and said she thinks it was due in part to the riding's large Indigenous population.
"What we heard at the door is there hasn't been a government that has worked more closely with Indigenous people, and that was under Trudeau," she said. "And people are finally coming to … recognize that Mark Carney is the right person for the position, to keep things moving in the right direction in terms of reconciliation."
New faces in Manitoba
Incoming Elmwood-Transcona MP Reynolds, who did not speak with media following his win, is one of several new faces who will be heading to Ottawa to represent Manitoba.
That list also includes Liberal candidate Ginette Lavack, former executive director of Festival du Voyageur and the Franco-Manitoban Cultural Centre, who was elected in St. Boniface-St. Vital, where she held on to the seat left vacant after former Liberal MP Dan Vandal announced he would not seek re-election.
In a speech to Lavack's supporters Monday night, Vandal described Lavack as a natural fit for her new role.
"When I made the decision not to run again, it was really important for all of us that my replacement be somebody that's very good," he said.
In her acceptance speech, Lavack thanked Vandal, her volunteers and her voters.
"This is an incredible night, and I'm deeply honoured and humbled to be standing here in front of you as your newly elected representative of St. Boniface-St. Vital," she said. "The real work starts now."
Other new faces heading to Ottawa from Manitoba include former MLA Grant Jackson — who was elected to the Manitoba Legislature in 2023 and resigned from his provincial seat to run federally in this election. Jackson was able to hold on to the Brandon-Souris stronghold seat for the Conservatives after former MP Larry Maguire announced he would not seek re-election.
Jackson said he'll do parts of the job differently than Maguire, who has been a mentor to him, but said he doesn't think "constituents will feel that there's a huge change in their representation."
Some of Jackson's goals for his first term as MP will be to advocate for upgrades to the Brandon Municipal Airport and to push for more mining projects in the area, he said.
Conservatives keep rural seats, Liberals hold Winnipeg ridings
The Conservative party will also hold on to five rural Manitoba strongholds and one Winnipeg-area seat, while the Liberals will keep four Winnipeg seats they had going into the election, including the one held by new MP Lavack in St. Boniface-St. Vital.
Conservatives who were re-elected in rural strongholds are Branden Leslie in Portage-Lisgar, Ted Falk in Provencher, Dan Mazier in Riding Mountain and James Bezan in Selkirk-Interlake-Eastman.
Kildonan-St. Paul Conservative MP Raquel Dancho also held on to her seat after a tight race with Liberal challenger and political novice Thomas Naaykens that stretched into the day after the election, as final votes were counted in the Winnipeg-area riding.
"It really speaks to the hard work that we do in the community and really representing everyone with dignity, compassion and respect," Dancho said Monday night.
Liberal incumbents Kevin Lamoureux, Ben Carr and Terry Duguid will also keep their seats in Winnipeg North, Winnipeg South Centre and Winnipeg South, respectively.
Duguid's Winnipeg South riding held its reputation as a perfect bellwether for Canadian politics, with the Liberals forming government again. Since its formation in 1988, Winnipeg South has only elected candidates from the winning party on election night.
Duguid, who went into this election as Manitoba's only federal cabinet minister, told supporters Monday night he's looking forward to serving the community once again.
"Thank you so much for this decisive win," he said, adding he believes his re-election was due to his record of service in the riding, as well as economic threats from the United States.
Lamoureux, who has now won six federal and five provincial elections, said there was a sense of relief and excitement in the air on Monday night.
WATCH | Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux on party's reversal of fortunes ahead of election:
"This is my 11th victory. I get nervous every election day," he said, crediting his re-election partly to a "pivotal time in Canadian history," as U.S. President Donald Trump's threats to Canadian sovereignty led to a turn of fate for the Liberals and a two-way race with the Conservatives.
"I want you to know that I'm up for the battle. I have the experience."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With files from Alana Cole, Ian Froese, Chelsea Kemp, Josh Crabb, Bartley Kives and Rosanna Hempel