Despite gaining 9 seats the Tories lost 8 behind them to the Liberals Democrats and one even to Labour.

In 1841 the Liberals lost office to the Conservative Party under Sir Robert Peel, but their period in opposition was short, because the Conservatives split over the repeal of the Corn Laws, a free trade issue, and a faction known as the Peelites ( but not Peel himself, who died soon after ), defected to the Liberal side.

Following success as the successor to the Whig party, the party's share of the popular vote plummeted after the First World War as it lost votes to the new Labour party and fractured into groups such as the National and Coalition Liberals.

Apart from this, when no party has had a majority, minority governments normally have been formed with one or more opposition parties agreeing to vote for the legislation governments need to function, as the Labour government of James Callaghan formed a coalition with the Liberals in 1977 when it lost its narrow majority gained at the October 1974 election.

While the Liberals lost several seats, they still had 111 more seats than the Tories, enabling them to dominate the Canadian House of Commons.

Many Liberals criticised the Fraser years as " a decade of lost opportunity ," on deregulation of the Australian economy and other issues.

He lost his seat in the 1911 general election, which saw the Conservatives defeat his Liberals.

The Liberals lost the election of 1930 to the Conservative Party, led by Richard Bedford Bennett.

( The independent Liberal parliamentary leadership was briefly taken over by the unknown Donald Maclean until Asquith, who had lost his seat like other leading Liberals, returned to the House at a by-election ).

With the emergence of new parties, the Liberals lost its dominant position.

The Liberals increased their large majority mostly at the expense of the NDP, and the Tories under Joe Clark lost many seats and remained in fifth place, but Clark was elected in Calgary Centre in the middle of Alliance country, so the overall political landscape was not significantly changed.

The Stanfield-led Progressive Conservatives lost the 1974 election to the Pierre Trudeau-led Liberals.

Clark's reputation as a leader had taken a beating when, as Prime Minister, he carelessly lost a non-confidence motion over his minority government's budget in December 1979, leading to the fall of his government ; the PCs subsequently lost the federal election held two months later when Trudeau rescinded his announced retirement, and returned to lead the Liberals to a majority.

The Liberals lost 27 seats, including several high-profile cabinet ministers, and Trudeau announced his intention to step down as party leader.

The Liberals lost 13 seats to Labor, led by Steve Bracks, at the 1999 election, most of them in regional centres such as Ballarat and Bendigo.

The Liberals won re-election and Labor lost its slim majority.

In the 1979 election, Sauvé won the riding of Laval-des-Rapides, but the Liberals lost their majority in the commons to the Progressive Conservative Party, and Sauvé thus lost her cabinet position.

The Liberals lost the federal election, of May, 1979 to a minority Conservative government led by Joe Clark.

The Liberals lost power in the 1895 general election and for ten years were in opposition.

By this time, Asquith had become very unpopular with the public ( as Lloyd George was perceived to have " won the war " by displacing him ) and, along with most leading Liberals, lost his seat in the 1918 elections, at which the Liberals split into Asquith and Lloyd George factions.

Asquith again lost his seat in the 1924 election held after the fall of the Labour government — at which the Liberals were reduced to the status of a minor party with only 40 or so MPs.

King's Liberals originally had a bare majority position, however, since they had won 118 out of 235 seats, exactly the minimum for a majority.

The Conservatives and the Liberal Unionist Party returned with a majority of 118 over the combined Gladstonian Liberals and Parnell's 85 Irish Party seats.

In the 1920s, the Labour Party permanently replaced the Liberals as the largest opponent of the Conservative Party in British politics, and the Liberals went into decline, which culminated in their winning as few as 6 seats at general elections during the 1950s.

At the 1922 and 1923 elections the Liberals won barely a third of the vote and only a quarter of the seats in the House of Commons, as many radical voters abandoned the divided Liberals and went over to Labour.

The Liberals were reduced to a mere forty seats in Parliament, only seven of which had been won against candidates from both parties and none of these formed a coherent area of Liberal survival.

The Liberals gained ground, but once again it was at the Conservatives ' expense whilst also losing seats to Labour.

Through the 1950s and into the 1960s the Liberals survived only because a handful of constituencies in rural Scotland and Wales clung to their Liberal traditions, whilst in two English towns, Bolton and Huddersfield, local Liberals and Conservatives agreed to each contest only one of the town's two seats.

Under Grimond ( who retired in 1967 ) and his successor, Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberals regained the status of a serious third force in British politics, polling up to 20 % of the vote but unable to break the duopoly of Labour and Conservative and win more than fourteen seats in the Commons.

In the 2005 election it won 18 out of 179 seats in the Folketing and became a junior partner in coalition with the Liberals.

The Liberals held onto seats in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, while being shut out of Nova Scotia entirely, the second time in history ( the only other time being the Diefenbaker sweep ).

In the Khaki Election of 1900, nationalist concern with the Boer War meant that the Conservatives and their Liberal Unionist allies gained a majority of Scottish seats for the first time, although the Liberals regained their ascendancy in the next election.

The election resulted in a hung parliament with the Tories having the most votes but Labour having slightly more seats, and failed attempts by Heath to form a coalition with the Liberals led to the resignation of his government and the return of Harold Wilson as prime minister of a minority Labour government, which gained a three-seat majority at a second election later in the year.

The Liberals won 190 seats — the most in Canadian history at the time, and still a record for the party.

In the 2010 Parliamentary election, the Communists won 42 seats, while the Liberal-Democrats won 32, the Democratic Party won 15, and the Liberals won 12.

However, successive electoral redistributions after 1964 indicated that the Country Party was losing ground electorally to the Liberals as the rural population declined, and the nature of some parliamentary seats on the urban / rural fringe changed.

Western Australia's one-vote-one-value reforms will cut the number of rural seats in the state assembly to reflect the rural population level: this, coupled with the Liberals ' strength in country areas has put the Nationals under significant pressure.

With 379 seats compared to the Conservatives ' 132, the Liberals could confidently expect to pass their legislative programme through the Commons.

The election of 1974 saw Trudeau and the Liberals re-elected with a majority government with 141 of the 264 seats.

The Tories were decimated in the October 1935 general election, winning only 40 seats to 173 for Mackenzie King's Liberals.

While the Liberals took only two seats from Labor, Askin got the support of the two independent members, Douglas Darby ( Manly ) and Harold Coates ( Hartley ), giving him enough support to end Labor's 24-year run in power.

In response, voters in regional areas deserted the Kennett government and Labor increased their seats from 29 to 42, with the Liberals and their National Party allies retaining 43, and three falling to rural independents.