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. The Legislative Assembly currently has 87 members, elected first past the post from sing ...

. Despite its failure to implement its key policy, providing

prosperity certificates In 1936, the Alberta Social Credit Party-led government of the Province of Alberta, Canada, introduced prosperity certificates in an attempt to alleviate the effects of the Great Depression. Premier William Aberhart's government had won power in t ...

to all Albertans, the Social Credit Party of Premier

William Aberhart William Aberhart (December 30, 1878 – May 23, 1943), also known as "Bible Bill" for his outspoken Baptist views, was a Canadian politician and the seventh premier of Alberta from 1935 to his death in 1943. He was the founder and first leader o ...

won a second term in government. Nevertheless, it lost a considerable number of seats that it had gained in the 1935 landslide. This provincial election, like the previous three, saw district-level

proportional representation Proportional representation (PR) refers to a type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to geographical (e.g. states, regions) and political divis ...

(

Single transferable voting Single transferable vote (STV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which voters cast a single vote in the form of a ranked-choice ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vote may be transferred according to alternate p ...

) 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) is a type of ranked preferential voting method. It uses a majority voting rule in single-winner elections where there are more than two candidates. It is commonly referred to as ranked-choice voting (RCV) in the U ...

Unity Movement

The

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

and Liberal parties as well as the remains of the

United Farmers United Farmers may refer to: *The United Farmers' MPs in the Canadian House of Commons who founded the Progressive Party of Canada in 1920 *United Farmers of Alberta, a political party which governed Alberta from 1921 to 1935 and also elected membe ...

, 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 not concentrated in enough areas to translate into seats. The Independent Movement lost a number of races by small margins. However, due to the first past the post 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

Cooperative Commonwealth Federation The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF; french: Fédération du Commonwealth Coopératif, FCC); from 1955 the Social Democratic Party of Canada (''french: Parti social démocratique du Canada''), was a federal democratic socialistThe foll ...

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 The United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) is an association of Alberta farmers that has served different roles in its 100-year history – as a lobby group, a successful political party, and as a farm-supply retail chain. As a political party, it form ...

MLA

Chester Ronning Chester Alvin Ronning (December 13, 1894 – December 31, 1984) was a Canadian educator, politician, and diplomat. Ronning was born in Fancheng, China, now in Xiangyang, Hubei province, the son of Norwegian American Lutheran missionaries, ...

. Like Ronning, most of the CCF's candidates had run in the 1935 election for the UFA.

Unity Movement

Co-operative Commonwealth

Results

Members elected

References

Further reading

See also