Mark Carney’s Liberals are projected to form Canada’s next government, marking an historic turnaround for a party that looked to be headed for collapse just months ago.

But as results continue to be declared, the party has not secured a clear majority in parliament – meaning it may have to work to unite Canadians in the face of tariffs and threats from US President Donald Trump.

“Who’s ready to stand up for Canada with me?” Carney said in a victory speech early on Tuesday morning.

The former banker – who had never held political office before replacing Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader earlier this year – presented himself during the campaign as the most experienced leader in a time of crisis.

“One of the responsibilities of government is to prepare for the worst, not the best,” he said during his victory speech.

“President Trump is trying to break us, so America can own us.”

Cheers erupted inside an Ottawa sports arena in which the Liberals held their official election night party, after Canada’s public broadcaster the CBC called the election for Carney shortly after 22:00 EST (02:00 GMT).

“Four months ago it wasn’t cool to be a Liberal supporter,” Luka Jovic, who works with the Liberal party, told the BBC. Now, the party can claim “the biggest come-back of political history in this country”, he said.

But it remained unclear past midnight whether the party would be forming a majority or a minority government.

A majority requires 172 seats or more – while a minority means the party has more seats than any other, but not more than half of the total number available in parliament. The latter is a weaker type of government that could be toppled by the other parties with a vote of no confidence.

The vote share between the Liberals and the Conservatives, led by Pierre Poilievre, looks close, indicating division in the country and a challenge for Carney as he looks to lead Canada through a trade war with the US.

But in a bitter personal blow for Poilievre, Carney’s defeated rival has also been projected to lose his seat in Ottawa.

Earlier, at the Conservative Party election night headquarters, the mood was one of defeat. Supporters of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre told the BBC that the results left them unsettled, disheartened and confused.

“You always want to win. You’re always disappointed,” Jordan Paquet, a former government communications adviser, told the BBC.

“There’s going to be a lot of good Conservative MPs that are going to be elected across the country tonight, that are going to be coming to Ottawa to hold the government to account.”

But Poilievre may not be one of them – as he has been trailing Liberal candidate Bruch Fanjoy in his Carleton seat, according to CBC’s projections.

It is a stunning reversal of fortunes for the man who was once tipped to be the country’s next PM. Poilievre, a long-time MP in Ottawa, was leading in the nationwide polls for over a year before Trump’s arrival in the White House.

Back then, Canadians were preoccupied with kitchen-table issues like crime, housing and the rising cost of living, and were fed up with former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The Conservative leader promised them change with lower taxes, tougher policies on crime and a reversal of Trudeau-era environmental policies that he argued blocked economic growth.

Trudeau then resigned after mounting pressure from his party, and Canadians’ priorities quickly shifted after Trump imposed punishing tariffs on their auto, aluminium and steel sectors and repeated his claim that the country would be better off as a US state.

Carney focused much of his campaign on countering the US president by making “Canada strong” and forging ties with other nations like the UK and the European Union.

In addition the Trump’s existential threat, Carney is inheriting a country that has faced high inflation and a never-ending housing crisis. He said that as prime minister, he will invest in building new housing and limit immigration, which has been blamed for straining Canada’s services.

Poilievre, on the other hand, doubled-down on his message of change, blaming the Liberal Party for making Canada worse off at a critical moment and vowing to put “Canada First”.

But Poilievre, who has also been vocal against “woke ideology”, has struggled to fend off comparisons to Trump.

The Trump factor also appears to have impacted smaller parties like the Bloc Quebecois, who only run candidates in Quebec, and the left-leaning New Democratic Party.

Both are projected to lose seats as voters appeared to migrate towards the bigger Liberal and Conservative parties, with the NDP poised to lose more than a dozen seats.

With additional reporting by Nada Tawfik and Alexander Lederman