1959 Alberta general election

Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox election The 1959 Alberta general election was held on June 18, 1959, to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta.

Ernest C. Manning, in his fifth election as party leader and provincial premier, led the Social Credit Party to its seventh consecutive term in government, with 55% of the popular vote, and all but four of the sixty five seats in the legislature.

Social Credit was also helped by a split in the opposition vote: whereas in the 1955 election, opponents were largely united behind the Liberal Party, in this election the vote was divided between the Liberals and the resurgent Progressive Conservative Party under the leadership of Cam Kirby, won almost 15% of the popular vote, placing ahead of the Liberals whose leader, Grant MacEwan lost his Calgary seat. The Tories and Liberals each won only one seat in the legislature while the Alberta CCF was shut out of the legislature for the first time in seventeen years. The other two opposition seat were taken by a Coalition candidate in Banff and an Independent Social Credit-er, both with strong local support.

Change in voting system

Under an Act passed in 1956, Alberta's MLAs were now elected through First-past-the-post voting.<ref>Template:Cite canlaw</ref>

Previous to this election, the Social Credit government had done away with the Instant-runoff voting system in use in the rural constituencies, and the Single Transferable Vote system in Edmonton and Calgary, both of which had been in place since 1924. The move was made, the government claimed, to prevent the waste of votes caused by votes being declared spoiled due to unsatisfactory ballot marking, to bring Alberta in line with the other provinces who were using the First past the post systems, and to stop what the government called a conspiracy by the opposition parties to gang up on the SC government. The cancellation of STV and AV also standardized and simplified voting results across the province. Under single transferable vote and instant-runoff voting, final results would take up to five days to count the necessary vote transfers, before the last seat in a multiple-member district, Edmonton nor Calgary, was declared filled. (Manning always knew he was elected only hours after the polls closed due to his high vote count on the First Count.) The delay was especially large in the Edmonton, which elected seven members in 1955.

The 1955 election had produced a large opposition in the Legislature (large by Alberta standards anyway). Besides Liberals, Conservatives and CCF-ers electing MLAs in proportion to their numbers in the cities, the government had lost a few members in rural constituencies due to IRV, when they had received the largest portion of the vote in the constituency in the First Count (but not a majority) but were not elected to the seat due to another candidate receiving many vote transfers and eventually accumulating a majority of the vote themselves. The cancellation of IRV system in the rural districts was meant to prevent this in the future.<ref name="Bob Hesketh">Bob Hesketh, "The Abolition of Preferential voting in Alberta", Prairie Forum, Spring 1987</ref> The cancellation of STV in the cities gave the government a windfall of seats as well. SC candidates captured all the seats in Edmonton and all but one in Calgary although getting only 48 percent of the Edmonton city vote and only 54 percent of the Calgary vote.<ref>A Report on Alberta Elections</ref>

Electoral redistribution

An Act was passed in 1957 that provided for the increase in the number of MLAs from 61 to 65, upon the next election.<ref>Template:Cite canlaw</ref> The following changes were made:

Abolished	New
New districts
	Dunvegan<ref group=a>from part of Peace River</ref>
Abolition of multi-member districts
Calgary (six members)	Calgary Bowness Calgary-Centre Calgary-Glenmore Calgary-North Calgary-North East Calgary-South East Calgary-West
Edmonton (seven members)	Edmonton North Edmonton-Centre Edmonton-North East Edmonton-North West Edmonton-Norwood Jasper West Strathcona Centre Strathcona East Strathcona West

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Prior to this election, one or more multi-member districts had been used in each Alberta election since 1909.

Alongside the change to FPTP, this increase necessitated the creation of 15 new districts, the most since 1913. The change was met by some harsh criticism at the time. The government was accused of changing the rules to help itself and for failing to consult the public, but it did not hurt the government's popularity at the polls.<ref name="Bob Hesketh" />

Results

Template:Canadian party colour

Party	Party Leader	# of candidates	Seats			Popular Vote
Party	Party Leader	# of candidates	1955	Elected	% Change	#	%	% Change Template:Canadian party colour	Social Credit	Ernest C. Manning	64	37	61	+64.9%	230,283	55.69%	+9.27% Template:Canadian party colour	Progressive Conservative	Cam Kirby	60	3	1	−66.7%	98,730	23.88%	+14.69% Template:Canadian party colour	Grant MacEwan	51	15	1	−93.9%	57,408	13.88%	−17.25%
Independent Social Credit	2	1	1	-	2,393	0.58%	−0.14% Template:Canadian party colour	Frank Gainer	1	1	1	-	2,279	0.55%	−0.66% Template:Canadian party colour	Co-operative Commonwealth	Floyd Albin Johnson	32	2	-	−100%	17,899	4.33%	−3.91% Template:Canadian party colour	Independent		2	1	-	−100%	3,640	0.88%	−0.25% Template:Canadian party colour		4	-	-	-	884	0.21%	−0.69%
Total		216	61	65	+6.6%	413,516	100%
Source: Elections Alberta<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1\|citation									CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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Results by riding

References

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1959 Alberta general election

Contents

Change in voting system

Electoral redistribution

Results

Results by riding

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References

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1959 Alberta general election

Change in voting system

Electoral redistribution

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