The late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher counseled that in politics “standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous. You get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.” That’s the lesson delivered to Canada’s Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole in Monday’s national election.

Mailed ballots are still being counted and several races are tight. But Liberal Party Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears to have won another minority government, with some 158 seats—short of the 170 needed for a majority.

His...

Canada's Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gestures during the Liberal election night party in Montreal, Sept. 21.

Photo: carlos osorio/Reuters

The late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher counseled that in politics “standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous. You get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.” That’s the lesson delivered to Canada’s Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole in Monday’s national election.

Mailed ballots are still being counted and several races are tight. But Liberal Party Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears to have won another minority government, with some 158 seats—short of the 170 needed for a majority.

His current Liberal government, elected in 2019, still had two years left in its mandate. But on Aug. 15, amid favorable polling on his handling of the pandemic, he called the snap election. The country spent some $610 million to end up almost exactly where it was before Mr. Trudeau’s vanity campaign.

If Liberals are relieved, Conservatives are lamenting a lost opportunity. Mr. Trudeau has been at the helm of a scandal-ridden progressive government for almost six years. Early in the latest campaign, thanks to Trudeau fatigue, Conservatives seemed to have a real chance at a least a minority government.

Yet while they again won the popular vote, they finished a distant second in seat count with about 119, two seats down from 2019. (By the way, the Tories have won the popular vote in five of the last six elections, which is a lesson for Americans who think this only happens because of the Electoral College.)

Liberals continued to win tight races, including three-way contests with smaller left-of-center parties, like the New Democratic Party and the separatist Bloc Quèbècois. But the larger reason for the defeat is the Conservative leader’s failure to excite and unite voters across the country with a message distinct from Mr. Trudeau’s big government progressivism.

Mr. O’Toole, a lawyer turned politician, ran for party leader last year as a “true blue Conservative” but he soon moved left. He broke with conservatives on social issues like guns and abortion, framing himself as a “moderate” in an attempt to widen his appeal.

Mr. Trudeau’s six-year spending binge and gaping budget deficits should have been easy targets for Mr. O’Toole. Instead the Tory leader cooked up his own big five-year spending plan, complete with Conservative deficits. He also proposed his own version of a carbon tax in order to sound more progressive on climate change.

So much for the much-ballyhooed appeal of big government conservatism. Canadians need an alternative to the tax-and-spend ideology of the Liberal Party, but Mr. O’Toole offered Trudeau Lite without the charisma. His pivot left made him look as inauthentic as Mr. Trudeau, which is hard to do.

Mr. Trudeau is now portraying his status quo victory as a “clear mandate” for progressive policies. Though that’s far from true, he can thank the muddled me-too message of the Conservatives for his victory.

Journal Editorial Report: The week's best and worst from Kim Strassel, Jason Willick, Jillian Melchior and Dan Henninger. Images: AFP/Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition