The 1940 Alberta general election was held on March 21, 1940, to elect members of the

Legislative Assembly of Alberta The Legislative Assembly of Alberta is the deliberative assembly of the province of Alberta, Canada. It sits in the Alberta Legislature Building in Edmonton. Since 2012 the Legislative Assembly has had 87 members, elected first past the post f ...

. Despite its failure to implement its key policy, providing prosperity certificates to all Albertans, the Social Credit Party of Premier William Aberhart won a second term in government. Nevertheless, it lost eleven seats that it had won in the 1935 landslide. This provincial election, like the previous three, saw district-level

proportional representation Proportional representation (PR) refers to any electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to political divisions (Political party, political parties) amon ...

(

Single transferable voting The single transferable vote (STV) or proportional-ranked choice voting (P-RCV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote in the form of a ranked ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vo ...

) used to elect the MLAs of Edmonton and Calgary. City-wide districts were used to elect multiple MLAs in the cities. All the other MLAs were elected in single-member districts through

Instant-runoff voting Instant-runoff voting (IRV; ranked-choice voting (RCV), preferential voting, alternative vote) is a single-winner ranked voting election system where Sequential loser method, one or more eliminations are used to simulate Runoff (election), ...

Unity Movement

The

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...

and Liberal parties as well as the remains of the United Farmers, recognizing the widespread popularity of the Social Credit party, ran joint candidates as independents in what was called the "Independent Movement" or the "Unity Movement". Although independent candidates won almost as many votes as Social Credit, their support was dispersed across many areas so few of the movement's candidates took a majority of the votes (required under

to take the seat) so the movement's overall vote tally did not translate into its due share of seats overall. The Independent Movement lost a number of races by small margins. However, due to the Parliamentary system, which awards power solely on the basis of seats won, Social Credit was returned for a second term, albeit with a considerably reduced majority. The Liberals under leader Edward Gray chose only to support Independent candidates that they played a hand in nominating, and nominated other candidates under its own banner. Gray felt that candidates should not be machined into the field and left it up to the individual Liberal constituency associations to decide if they would support a candidate or not. This would be the most opposition that Social Credit would face until 1959.

Co-operative Commonwealth

The

social democratic Social democracy is a Social philosophy, social, Economic ideology, economic, and political philosophy within socialism that supports Democracy, political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach toward achi ...

Cooperative Commonwealth Federation nominated candidates for the first time, but failed to win any seats in the legislature, despite winning over 10% of the popular vote under the leadership of former United Farmers of Alberta MLA Chester Ronning. Like Ronning, most of the CCF's candidates had run in the 1935 election for the UFA.

Reduction of electoral districts

An Act was passed in 1939 that provided for the reduction of the number of MLAs from 63 to 57, upon the next election.

Calgary Calgary () is a major city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in C ...

and

Edmonton Edmonton is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Alberta. It is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Central Alberta ...

now returned five MLAs each instead of six, and the following other changes were made:

Results

MLAs elected

Synopsis of results

: = Open seat : = turnout is above provincial average : = Candidate was in previous Legislature : = Incumbent had switched allegiance : = Previously incumbent in another riding : = Not incumbent; was previously elected to the Legislature : = Incumbency arose from by-election gain : = previously an MP in the

House of Commons of Canada The House of Commons of Canada () is the lower house of the Parliament of Canada. Together with the Monarchy of Canada#Parliament (King-in-Parliament), Crown and the Senate of Canada, they comprise the Bicameralism, bicameral legislature of Ca ...

: = Multiple candidates

Multi-member districts

: = Candidate was in previous Legislature : = First-time MLA : = Previously incumbent in another district.

STV analysis

Exhausted votes

Twenty-eight districts went beyond first-preference counts in order to determine winning candidates:

Calgary

The Independent Movement (also called the "Citizens' Slate) fielded six candidates for the five seats. The other parties nominated fewer candidates than the maximum seats sought.

Edmonton

The Independent Movement presented seven candidates for the five seats being contested.