On that topic, I would invite you to read—this is a bit of self-promotion—my article on forming government, which won the Germain-Brière award. In this article I examine all the cases where this happened. In Canada there was the King-Byng case, for example. King had obtained fewer seats than the Conservatives and he remained in power. When there is no majority, the party that forms government is not necessarily the one that gets the most seats.
On July 27th, 2016. See this statement in context.