1959 Alberta general election

The 1959 Alberta general election was held on June 18, 1959, to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta.

1959 Alberta general election

June 18, 1959 (1959-06-18)
65 seats in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta 33 seats were needed for a majority
Majority party Minority party   Leader Ernest Manning Cam Kirby Party Social Credit Progressive Conservative Leader since May 31, 1943 1958 Leader's seat Strathcona East Red Deer (lost re-election) Last election 37 seats, 46.4% 3 seats, 9.2% Seats before 37 3 Seats won 61 1 Seat change 24 2 Popular vote 230,283 98,730 Percentage 55.7% 23.9% Swing 9.3% 14.7%   Third party Fourth party   CCF Leader Grant MacEwan Floyd Albin Johnson Party Liberal Co-operative Commonwealth Leader since November 1, 1958 1957 Leader's seat Calgary-North (lost re-election) ran in Denvegan (lost) Last election 15 seats, 31.1% 2 seats, 8.2% Seats before 15 2 Seats won 1 0 Seat change 14 2 Popular vote 57,408 17,899 Percentage 13.9% 4.3% Swing 17.2% 3.9%
Premier before election Ernest Manning Social Credit Premier after election Ernest Manning Social Credit

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.

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.[1] 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.[2]

One or more multi-member district had been used in each Alberta election since 1909, but in 1956 it was decided to start to use only single-member districts. This, in conjunction with an increase in the number of members, allowed drastic re-drawing of district boundaries, allowing the government to suit itself. Simultaneous with cancellation of STV/AV, the government increased the number of MLAs, from 61 used in 1955 to 65 in 1959. Alongside the change to FPTP, this increase necessitated the creation of 15 new districts, the most since 1913. Almost all of these new districts were in Calgary and Edmonton, where those two previous districts were converted into 16 seats. This figure includes the oft-overlooked district of Jasper-West, which covered part of Edmonton. As well, the district of Dunvegan was created.[3]

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.[1]