Justin Trudeau’s victory in Canada’s national elections on Monday followed what he called one of the “nastiest” campaigns in Canadian history. That may be true, to the degree that much of the campaign was about him and some bad decisions he made, and it featured a lot of name-calling. At one point supporters of his Conservative challenger even chanted “Lock him up, lock him up.”

But Canadian “nasty” should be seen in the context of a country whose people are deemed among the most polite in the world, with election campaigns capped by law at 50 days. This is a far, far cry from the marathon, multiyear, mud-clogged political wars that perennially contort the superpower to the south.

Note, for example, that the far-right candidate Maxime Bernier, whose People’s Party sought to emulate Europe’s populists with an illiberal, anti-immigrant, climate-skeptical and socially regressive platform, failed miserably, losing his own seat in Parliament and falling short of 2 percent of the vote nationwide. And that when the Conservative leader Andrew Scheer heard his followers chant “Lock him up” of Mr. Trudeau at an Ontario rally, he was actually embarrassed and tried to steer the crowd to “Vote him out, vote him out.” And that the New Democratic Party , which sits to the left of Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals and won nearly 16 percent of the vote, was led by a turban-wearing Sikh, Jagmeet Singh.

Yet the election was unlike the one four years ago, when Mr. Trudeau, the young and charismatic bearer of an illustrious political name, was swept into office declaring “Canada is back!” forming a gender-balanced cabinet, welcoming refugees, pledging to combat climate change, making amends to Canada’s Indigenous peoples, legalizing marijuana and offering a national carbon tax plan.