The 1983 British Columbia general election was the 33rd provincial election for the province of

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

, Canada. It was held to elect members of the

Legislative Assembly of British Columbia The Legislative Assembly of British Columbia () is the deliberative assembly of the Legislature of British Columbia, in the province of British Columbia, Canada. The other component of the Legislature is the lieutenant governor of British Columbi ...

. The election was called on April 7, 1983. The election was held on May 5, 1983. The new legislature that resulted from this election met for the first time on June 23, 1983. The governing Social Credit Party of British Columbia was re-elected with a

majority government A majority government is a government by one or more governing parties that hold an absolute majority of seats in a legislature. Such a government can consist of one party that holds a majority on its own, or be a coalition government of multi ...

, defeating the opposition

New Democratic Party of British Columbia The New Democratic Party of British Columbia (BC NDP) is a social democracy, social democratic List of political parties in British Columbia, political party in British Columbia, Canada. The party sits on the Centre-left politics, centre-left of ...

. The "Socreds" increased both their share of the popular vote to almost half of all votes cast, and their number of seats in the legislature. No other parties other than the Socreds and the NDP won seats in the legislature. In addition to 43 single member districts, where single winner

First-past-the-post voting First-past-the-post (FPTP)—also called choose-one, first-preference plurality (FPP), or simply plurality—is a single-winner voting rule. Voters mark one candidate as their favorite, or first-preference, and the candidate with more first- ...

was used, this election used seven two-member constituencies. Voters in those places were allowed two votes (

plurality block voting Plurality block voting is a type of block voting method for multi-winner elections. Each voter may cast as many votes as the number of seats to be filled. The candidates with the most votes are elected. The usual result when the candidates div ...

) and generally used them both on the same party. None of those districts elected both a SC and a NDP MLA. All districts elected either two SC members (4 districts) or two NDP members (three districts), with no representation given to the other voters in the district. In the case of Surrey, Social Credit candidates with only a minority of the vote, a combined 71,000 votes of the 150,000 cast, took both seats. That helped ensure the government's capture of the most seats. (The use of both first past the post and block voting also makes the "popular vote," the number of votes cast, not truly reflective of the sentiment of the voters, because some voters in those seven districts cast two votes and the voters in the other 43 districts cast only one.)

Results

Note: * Party did not nominate candidates in the previous election.

Results

See also

References

Further reading