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

Claims of fraud and unfairness continue to spread over Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's election loss in his Ottawa riding of Carleton nearly two weeks ago.

Poilievre lost to Liberal Bruce Fanjoy by 4,513 votes. Some have questioned how that was possible, considering how well the Conservatives did overall. Also, Poilievre held the riding for 20 years and in the last election, he won by more than 10,000 votes.

Poilievre conceded that he lost this time and the Conservatives have not made allegations that the vote was unfair, wrong or conducted improperly.

Here are the facts of what happened.

No, not really.

Some suggested the vote was illegitimate because they felt the numbers didn't add up. By their math, they estimated turnout was nearly 100 per cent, which doesn't happen in Canadian elections.

But the claim isn't true.

According to Elections Canada, turnout in the riding was 81 per cent. That's considerably higher than the national overall turnout of 68 per cent, but it's not that unusual. Three other Ottawa-area ridings that are close to Carleton had turnout of 77 per cent, including next door in Nepean, won by Mark Carney.

It appears the people making the claims were using outdated numbers for how many people live in the riding based on the old boundaries and only accounting for part of the population.

In 2023, the Carleton riding changed significantly. The physical size of it got a lot bigger compared to 2021, and the composition of people in it changed, meaning it was not the same group of people walking into voting booths as in the last election.

Some, including former Conservative leader Stockwell Day, have suggested the boundary change was the Liberal government's doing, in order to make it harder for Poilievre to get elected.

But that's not how it works in Canada.

Every 10 years, electoral boundaries in each province are redrawn by an independent commission led by a judge and are based on the most recent census data.

As populations change and grow, the idea is to make sure each riding has roughly the same number of people in it.

The boundaries are not decided by political leaders or their parties. They do have input, as does any Canadian who wants to comment on proposed changes. But the independent panel makes the decision.

It's designed to be non-partisan and not connected to the election cycle, so it's hard to manipulate it in favour of the governing party.

Diya Jiang is a senior researcher at the Media Ecosystem Observatory, a group at McGill University that tracks election misinformation on social media.

"There is so much polarization, so people have distrust toward the political system," Jiang said. "This is the first time ever, really, social media is playing such a huge role in conveying news. So this kind of facilitates the process of claiming something that's not truthful."

A post on X claimed the riding had added 40,000 immigrants in the space of 10 years — and that 95 per cent of its population growth was due to immigration.

These figures are misleading.

The 95 per cent figure likely refers to overall population growth in Canada, not Carleton specifically, which would also have people moving into and out of it from within Canada.

Next, if you look at the areas that make up the new Carleton riding, the total number of immigrants accounts for about 20-25 per cent of the population, according to Statistics Canada. Some are recent arrivals. Some have been in Canada much longer. And when you look at where they come from, no single country dominates.

There's no evidence that all immigrants vote the same way, especially those from different places.

Others have questioned if it was too difficult for voters to find their preferred candidate on the ballot, since it was so long. Yes, it did have 91 candidates — the longest of any riding in the 2025 election.

WATCH | A very long ballot:

CBC’s David Cochrane shows off a replica of the long ballot in Pierre Poilievre’s rural Ottawa riding of Carleton. Carleton has been the target of a longest ballot protest for electoral reform, with 90 other candidates registered to run in the riding.

Most were candidates from a protest group called the Longest Ballot Committee that wants proportional representation.

The group has done this before. In each case, it followed the rules to get all those names on the ballot.

Out of 86,655 votes cast in Carleton, Poilievre and Fanjoy together received more than 96 per cent of them. Based on that, it would appear that people were able to find the name they wanted, despite the long ballot. None of the protest candidates got more than a few dozen votes.

Elections Canada also knew it would take longer to count the votes in Carleton. It granted permission for officials to start counting hours earlier than they normally would. Elections Canada was clear about this on voting day.