Polls have closed in Atlantic Canada and early election results are trickling in

Polls have closed in Atlantic Canada and results from the region's 26 seats are starting to trickle in from Elections Canada. Voting continues in other areas of the country as Canadians head to the polls for this unprecedented pandemic election.

The region has been a Liberal stronghold for the last two election cycles — the party swept every seat there in 2015 and dropped only five in 2019.

Results from Newfoundland and Labrador and the Maritimes could signal how Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and his team will fare elsewhere tonight.

Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole, who has appointed a number of Maritimers to senior roles in the party, is looking to do better than his recent predecessors in this region. Former prime minister Stephen Harper was shut out of Atlantic Canada in 2015 while his successor, Andrew Scheer, picked up only four seats in the 2019 contest — three in New Brunswick and one in Nova Scotia.

Early results suggest O'Toole, who pitched a more moderate form of conservatism than previous Conservative leaders, is on track to outperform both Harper and Scheer in this part of Canada.

With about 120,000 ballots counted so far, the Liberals have 44 per cent of the ballots cast, the Conservatives have about 36 per cent and the NDP has nearly 15 per cent of the vote share. The Green Party has captured one per cent of the ballots cast so far, while the People's Party of Canada (PPC) has nearly four per cent of all votes.

According to the CBC Decision Desk, the first projected winner of the 44th general election is Liberal incumbent Seamus O'Regan, who serves as natural resources minister in Trudeau's cabinet. Dominic LeBlanc, another Liberal cabinet minister, has also been projected as the winner in his Beauséjour riding in New Brunswick.