2008 Canadian Federal Election
Canada held a snap parliamentary election on October 14, 2008. All 308 seats in the House of Commons were up for election, and a party needed at least 155 seats to secure a majority government.
Incumbent Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the election in the hopes of securing his party a stronger mandate to govern. At the start of the campaign, Harper's minority government was 28 seats short of a majority.
Economic uncertainty due to the 2008 financial crisis, questions of leadership, and Canada's involvement in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan all played a role in the campaign.
Harper led the Conservative Party to a second minority government, though with a larger contingent than he won two years earlier. Virtually all of the Conservative gains came at the expense of the opposition Liberal Party, with most of the seat flips concentrated in and around the Greater Toronto Area.
Several weeks after the election, amid dissatisfaction with Harper's handling of the ongoing global financial crisis, the opposition parties agreed to form a coalition to attempt to topple the Conservatives from power. Procedural wrangling prevented the plan from coming to pass, and Harper ultimately won a majority government three years later.
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