Justin Trudeau will keep his job as Canada's prime minister after Monday's parliamentary election that fell short of his primary goal: tightening his grip on power.
The 49-year-old Trudeau called a snap polls last month in hopes his Liberal Party would get enough votes to regain majority in Parliament.
Many votes are still needed to be counted and some Canadians have yet to cast their ballots. Based on initial results, the Liberal Party will not be able to muster enough votes to have a majority, which leaves Trudeau in the same spot he has been in.
While the full results will not be known until mail-in ballots are tallied Tuesday, Trudeau's Liberal Party is expected to improve its standing and remain the biggest party in the House of Commons.
It was a campaign that, as the prime minister's rivals often reminded the public, nobody seemed to care about. Trudeau called the election, insisting he would require a new mandate to pass a raft of big plans to bring the country out of the pandemic.
Felix Mathieu, University of Winnipeg politics professor, said Trudeau could now face a challenge for party leadership "because he lost his bet" for a majority government.
"It remains to be seen how long his minority government will last," Agence France-Presse quoted Mathieu as saying.
It's Canada's fifth government under minority rule since 2004, each having lasted no more than two years.
Trudeau's third election win comes at the culmination of a 36-day campaign disrupted by hostility on the trail. According to Trudeau, the election was necessary because of the major decisions the country faces in the months ahead about how the government wants to emerge from the global health crisis.
Trudeau supports making vaccines a requirement for Canadians to travel by air or land, something the Conservatives thumb down. And Trudeau has emphasized that Alberta, governed by a Conservative provincial government, is in crisis.
Trudeau warned voters that if his Conservative Party rival Erin O'Toole wins in the election, Canada would regress under his less progressive policies. Going into Monday's polls, the Conservative and Liberal Party were in a statistical tie.
