alberta general election, 1940

The 9th general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada, was held on March 21, 1940 to elect members of the Alberta legislature. 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. Social Credit did despite lose a significant share of the popular vote. The Conservative and Liberal parties, recognizing the wide-spread popularity of the Social Credit party, ran joint candidates as independents in what was called the "Independent Movement" or the "Unity Movement". Although indepdent candidates won almost as many votes as Social Credit, the strategy was unsuccessful in preventing Social Credit from winning a majority of the seats in the legislature. The social democratic Co-operative Commonwealth Federation nominated cnadidates for the first time, but failed to win any seats in the legislature, despite wining over 10% of the popular vote.

owspan="2"\|Party	rowspan="2"\|Party Leader	rowspan="2"\|# of candidates	colspan="3"\|Seats	colspan="3"\|Popular Vote
lign="center"\|Previous	align="center"\|After	align="center"\|% Change	align="center"\|#	align="center"\|%	align="center"\|Change
Social Credit	William Aberhart	align="right"\|56	align="right"\| 56	align="right"\| 36	align="right"\| -35.7%	align="right"\| 132,507	align="right"\| 42.90%	align="right"\| -11.35%
Independent		align="right"\| 59	align="right"\| -	align="right"\| 19	align="right"\|	align="right"\| 131,172	align="right"\| 42.47%	align="right"\| +41.57%
Labour		align="right"\| 2	align="right"\| -	align="right"\| 1	align="right"\|	align="right"\| 3,258	align="right"\| 1.05%	align="right"\|-0.63%
Liberal		align="right"\| 2	align="right"\| 5	align="right"\| 1	align="right"\| -80.0%	align="right"\| 2,755	align="right"\| 0.89%	align="right"\| -22.25%
Cooperative Commonwealth		align="right"\| 36	align="right"\| n.a.	align="right"\| -	align="right"\| n.a.	align="right"\| 34,316	align="right"\| 11.11%	align="right"\| n.a.
Independent Progressive		align="right"\|4	align="right"\| n.a.	align="right"\| -	align="right"\| n.a.	align="right"\| 1,726	align="right"\| 0.56%	align="right"\| n.a.
Independent Liberal		align="right"\| 1	align="right"\| -	align="right"\| -	align="right"\|	align="right"\| 1,136	align="right"\| 0.37%	align="right"\| 0.06%
Communist		align="right"\| 1	align="right"\| -	align="right"\| -	align="right"\|	align="right"\| 1,067	align="right"\| 0.35%	align="right"\| -1.56%
Independent Social Credit		align="right"\| 1	align="right"\| n.a.	align="right"\| -	align="right"\| n.a.	align="right"\| 362	align="right"\| 0.12%	align="right"\| n.a.
Independent Farmer		align="right"\| 2	align="right"\| n.a.	align="right"\| -	align="right"\| n.a.	align="right"\| 314	align="right"\| 0.10%	align="right"\| n.a.
Independent Labour		align="right"\| 1	align="right"\| -	align="right"\| -	align="right"\|	align="right"\| 251	align="right"\| 0.08%	align="right"\| +0.01%
Total		165	63	57	-9.5%	308,864 (1)	100.00%
align="center" colspan="9"\|Source: Elections Alberta

Notes: (1) First vote count used. "Previous" refers to to standings at previous election, not to standings in the Legislature at dissolution. n.a. = not applicable - the party was not recognized in the previous election

Alberta General Election, 1940

See also