1975 British Columbia general election
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The 1975 British Columbia general election was the 31st general election in the Province of British Columbia, Canada. It was held to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. The election was called on November 3, 1975, and held on December 11, 1975. The new legislature met for the first time on March 17, 1976.
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55 seats of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia 28 seats were needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The governing New Democratic Party of Dave Barrett was defeated after three years in government. Bill Bennett, son of long-time Social Credit Party leader and BC premier, W.A.C. Bennett, led Social Credit back to power, winning close to half of the popular vote, and a solid majority in the legislature.
Voters abandoned the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties as the centre and right-wing vote coalesced around Social Credit. The defeated social democratic NDP suffered only a marginal decrease in its vote share. However, NDP support outside Vancouver tailed off, resulting in a 20-seat loss. Barrett was one of the casualties; he was narrowly defeated by a Socred challenger (though he returned to the legislature a few months later in a by-election).
Results
editParty | Party leader | # of candidates |
Seats | Popular vote | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1972 | Elected | % Change | # | % | % Change | ||||
Social Credit | Bill Bennett | 55 | 10 | 35 | +250% | 635,482 | 49.25% | +18.09% | |
New Democrats | Dave Barrett | 55 | 38 | 18 | -52.6% | 505,396 | 39.16% | -0.43% | |
Liberal | Gordon Gibson | 49 | 5 | 1 | -80.0% | 93,379 | 7.24% | -9.16% | |
Progressive Conservative | George Scott Wallace | 29 | 2 | 1 | -50.0% | 49,796 | 3.86% | -8.81% | |
Independent | 12 | - | - | - | 4,688 | 0.36% | +0.26% | ||
Communist | 13 | - | - | - | 1,441 | 0.11% | +0.03% | ||
North American Labour | 4 | * | - | * | 141 | 0.01% | * | ||
Revolutionary Marxist Group | 3 | * | - | * | 94 | 0.01% | * | ||
League for Socialist Action | 1 | * | - | * | 34 | x | * | ||
Total | 221 | 55 | 55 | - | 1,290,451 | 100% | |||
Source: [1] |
Notes:
* Party did not nominate candidates in the previous election.
x - less than 0.005% of the popular vote
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ "Electoral History of British Columbia 1871-1986 Part One 31st General Election 1975". elections.bc.ca. Archived from the original on December 21, 2004.
Further reading
edit- Saywell, John, ed. (1976). Canadian Annual Review of Politics and Public Affairs, 1975. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781442671898.