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It appears the people making the claims were using outdated numbers for how many people live in the riding based on the old boundaries and only accounting for part of the population.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