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The party has dominated the region for almost 10 years, though its grip has slightly loosened since Justin Trudeau was first elected to govern in 2015, when the Liberals won all 32 seats.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, the Tories won two seats, one of which was taken from the Liberals, and they were locked in a close race in a third.

The Long Range Mountains riding in western Newfoundland had been held by former Liberal cabinet minister Gudie Hutchings since 2015, but she stepped down in January. Conservative Carol Anstey, a real estate agent, defeated Hutchings’ replacement, Liberal Don Bradshaw, a former TV journalist. Tory incumbent Clifford Small held the redrawn riding of Central Newfoundland.

The party was also fighting to gain Terra Nova—The Peninsulas in eastern Newfoundland, which the Liberals had held since 2015. But the Tory lead evaporated late in the night, leaving the race too close to call.

The Conservatives — led by Pierre Poilievre — had been expected to hold on to some, if not all of their seats in the region, while the New Democrats under Jagmeet Singh were hoping for a surprise breakthrough in Newfoundland or Nova Scotia, but their support simply collapsed.

Political observers had said Poilievre’s aggressive, populist style of leadership was a tough sell in Atlantic Canada, where traditional Progressive Conservatives — including Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston — largely shunned the federal Tory leader.

Before the election race, Poilievre focused his attacks on the Liberal carbon pricing policy, affordability issues and Trudeau’s deep unpopularity. But there was a slower-than-expected shift in strategy after U.S. President Donald Trump started threatening Canada’s sovereignty in January.

At that time, the Conservatives’ popularity started to wane as voters appeared to be turning their attention to Carney’s claims that as a former central banker, he should be the one to defend Canada from Trump’s mercurial trade war.

However, the Conservative campaign message, highlighted by Poilievre’s repeated references to a “lost Liberal decade,” seemed to resonate in some parts of the region. 

In the Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova, a Liberal incumbent who was almost a no-show surged to victory after trailing for most of the night. Former cabinet minister Sean Fraser had decided not to run in December but changed his mind last month after receiving a phone call from Carney.

As he awaited the results, Conservative campaign manager Tyler Cameron said Fraser’s decision to re-enter the race led to a “yo-yo of a campaign” in the riding. But Cameron said the strategy for Tory candidate Brycen Jenkins, a 27-year-old real estate agent, did not change.

Cameron said residents across the riding said their top concerns were U.S. tariffs, affordability, housing and Nova Scotia’s tumultuous lobster fishery. “Enforcement of the lobster fishery, it is a big issue,” Cameron said.

In southwestern Nova Scotia, where the lobster industry is king, the Tories lost a tough fight to hold on to South Shore—St. Margarets, a riding Conservative Rick Perkins won in 2021 when he defeated then fisheries minister Bernadette Jordan.

At the time, the Liberals were facing persistent criticism over how they have handled ongoing disputes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous fishers. Those disputes have persisted, but Perkins’ popularity waned over the past four years. He lost to Liberal Jessica Fancy-Landry, a teacher, principal and leadership consultant.

In western Nova Scotia, Tory incumbent Chris d’Entremont — a well-known former provincial politician — held on to Acadie-Annapolis, defeating Liberal challenger Ronnie LeBlanc, another former provincial politician and fisherman.

In New Brunswick, Tories incumbents held on to three of their strongholds in southern and western reaches of the province: Fundy Royal, Saint John-St. Croix and Tobique-Mactaquac. 

But the race was too close to call in Miramichi-Grand Lake, in eastern New Brunswick where Conservative incumbent Jake Stewart — a one-term MP and former provincial cabinet minister — stepped down last month amid criticism from Tories in his riding. Stewart narrowly won the riding in 2021.

During the last week of the race, Carney travelled to Upper Onslow, N.S., where he told supporters that Trump was “trying to break us as a nation because they want to own us.” He compared the ongoing trade war to a hockey game, saying: “When someone else drops the gloves, we know what to do.”

Poilievre painted a bleak picture of Canada’s future when he stopped in Halifax for a campaign event last week, blaming the situation on nearly 10 years of Liberal government. The Tory leader’s pitch for change was a reminder of how he had spent much of the past two years atop the polls by relentlessly slamming Trudeau’s Liberals and insisting that “Canada is broken.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 28, 2025.

— With files from Sarah Smellie in St. John’s, N.L., Lyndsay Armstrong in New Glasgow, N.S., and Hina Alam in Fredericton.