alberta general election, 1944

The 10th general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada, was held on August 8, 1944 to elect members of the Alberta legislature. After the death of Social Credit Party founder and premier William Aberhart in 1943, Ernest C. Manning became leader. Manning steered the party down a more moderate path, largely dispensing with the party's social credit policies of monetary reform that it had been unable to implement. Manning led Social Credit to a third term in government with a resounding victory in the 1944 election, winning over 50% of the popular vote. The Liberal and Conservative parties continued their strategy of running joint candidates as independents, but were even less successful that in the 1940 election: indepdents' share of the popular vote declined by 25 percentage points. This brought the "Independets Movement" or "Unity Movement" to an end. The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation won almost a quarter of the popular vote, but only two seats in the legislature.

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	Ernest C. Manning	align="right"\|57	align="right"\| 36	align="right"\| 51	align="right"\| +41.7%	align="right"\| 146,367	align="right"\| 51.88%	align="right"\| +8.98%
Independent		align="right"\| 36	align="right"\| 19	align="right"\| 3	align="right"\| -84.2%	align="right"\| 47,239	align="right"\| 16.75%	align="right"\| -25.72%
Cooperative Commonwealth		align="right"\| 57	align="right"\| -	align="right"\| 2	align="right"\|	align="right"\| 70,307	align="right"\| 24.92%	align="right"\| +13.81
Veteran's & Active Force		align="right"\|1	align="right"\| n.a.	align="right"\| 1	align="right"\| n.a.	align="right"\| 3,532	align="right"\| 1.25%	align="right"\| n.a.
Labour Progressive (1)		align="right"\| 30	align="right"\| -	align="right"\| -	align="right"\|	align="right"\| 12,003	align="right"\| 4.26%	align="right"\| +3.91%
Labour United		align="right"\| 1	align="right"\| n.a.	align="right"\| -	align="right"\| n.a.	align="right"\| 1,788	align="right"\| 0.63%	align="right"\| n.a.
Single Tax		align="right"\| 1	align="right"\| n.a.	align="right"\| -	align="right"\| n.a.	align="right"\| 480	align="right"\| 0.17%	align="right"\| n.a.
Farmer's Labour		align="right"\| 1	align="right"\| n.a.	align="right"\| -	align="right"\| n.a.	align="right"\| 390	align="right"\| 0.14%	align="right"\| n.a.
Total		184	57	57	-	282,106	100.00%
align="center" colspan="9"\|Source: Elections Alberta

Notes: (1) Compared to the the Communist Party reuslts from the previous election. "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, 1944

See also