The 1974 New Brunswick general election was held on November 18, 1974, to elect 58 members to the

48th New Brunswick Legislative Assembly The 48th New Brunswick Legislative Assembly was created following a 1974 New Brunswick general election, general election in 1974. It was dissolved on September 15, 1978. Leadership The speaker (politics), speaker was William J. Woodroffe. Premi ...

, the governing house of the

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions out ...

New Brunswick New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and ...

, Canada. It saw

Richard Hatfield Richard Bennett Hatfield (April 9, 1931 – April 26, 1991) was a New Brunswick politician and the longest serving premier of New Brunswick from 1970 to 1987.Richard Starr, ''Richard Hatfield, The Seventeen Year Saga,'' 1987, Early life ...

Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick The Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick is a centre-right, conservative political party in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. The party has its origins in the pre-Canadian confederation Conservative Party that opposed the grant ...

win its second

majority government A majority government is a government by one or more governing parties that hold an absolute majority of seats in a legislature. This is as opposed to a minority government, where the largest party in a legislature only has a plurality of seats ...

with a gain of one seat despite losing the popular vote to

Robert J. Higgins Robert J. Higgins (born January 13, 1934) is a supernumerary justice on the Court of King's Bench of New Brunswick and a former member of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick who served as the leader of the New Brunswick Liberal Associat ...

New Brunswick Liberal Party The New Brunswick Liberal Association (french: Association libérale du Nouveau-Brunswick), more popularly known as the New Brunswick Liberal ''Party'' or Liberal Party of New Brunswick, is one of the two major provincial political parties in New ...

. For the second election in a row, the Conservatives received a majority in the parliament despite receiving fewer votes than the Liberals. Despite the Hatfield government's involvement in the failed

Bricklin SV-1 The Bricklin SV-1 is a two-seat sports car built from 1974 until late 1975. The car was noteworthy for its gull-wing doors and composite bodywork of color-impregnated acrylic resin bonded to fiberglass. Assembly took place in Saint John, New Bruns ...

automobile plant and a series of kickback schemes, there were few surprises during the campaign. Hatfield had made inroads in the

Acadian The Acadians (french: Acadiens , ) are an ethnic group descended from the French who settled in the New France colony of Acadia during the 17th and 18th centuries. Most Acadians live in the region of Acadia, as it is the region where the desc ...

community since the 1970 election, winning three

francophone French became an international language in the Middle Ages, when the power of the Kingdom of France made it the second international language, alongside Latin. This status continued to grow into the 18th century, by which time French was the l ...

seats in

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election ( Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to ...

s. The Acadian support proved key during Hatfield's entire term as premier. This was the first New Brunswick election in which candidates contested only single-member ridings, established as a result of the 1973 electoral redistribution; previous elections had each county as an electoral district electing a varying number of members, based on their respective populations, with multi-member districts predominating.

Results

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candidates !colspan="4", Seats , - bgcolor=CCCCCC , align="center",

1970 Events January * January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC. * January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). Between 10,000 and ...

, align="center", Dissolution , align="center", Elected , align="center", Change , align="center", # , align="center", % , align="center", % Change , align=left, Progressive Conservative , align=left,

, align="right", 58 , align="right", 32 , align="right", 32 , align="right", 33 , align="right", +1 , align="right", 145,304 , align="right", 46.86 , align="right", -1.54 , align=left, Liberal , align=left, Robert Higgins , align="right", 58 , align="right", 26 , align="right", 26 , align="right", 25 , align="right", -1 , align="right", 147,372 , align="right", 47.53 , align="right", -1.08 , align=left, New Democratic , align=left, Albert Richardson , align="right", 35 , align="right", 0 , align="right", 0 , align="right", 0 , align="right", 0 , align="right", 9,092 , align="right", 2.93 , align="right", +0.10 , align=left,

Parti Acadien The Parti Acadien was a political party in New Brunswick, Canada in the 1970s and 1980s. The party was founded in 1972 by Acadians who were upset over poorer living conditions in predominantly francophone areas of the province versus those areas d ...

, align=left, Euclide Chaisson , align="right", 13 , align="right", 0 , align="right", 0 , align="right", 0 , align="right", 0 , align="right", 3,607 , align="right", 1.16 , align="right", , - , align=left, Independents , align=left, , align="right", 11 , align="right", 0 , align="right", 0 , align="right", 0 , align="right", 0 , align="right", 4,723 , align="right", 1.52 , align="right", , -

Results

References

Further reading