Alberta general election, 1940

← 1935

March 21, 1940 (1940-03-21)

1944 →

57 seats in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta
29 seats were needed for a majority

	Majority party	Minority party

Leader	William Aberhart	Andrew Davison
Party	Social Credit	Independent Movement
Leader since	September 3, 1935	1940
Leader's seat	Calgary	Calgary
Last election	56 seats, 54.2%	pre-creation
Seats before	47	—
Seats won	36	19
Seat change	11	—
Popular vote	132,507	131,172
Percentage	42.9%	42.5%
Swing	11.3%	—

	Third party	Fourth party

Leader	unknown	Edward L. Gray
Party	Labour	Liberal
Leader since	—	June 4, 1937
Leader's seat	—	ran in unknown
Last election	0 seats, 1.7%	5 seats, 23.1%
Seats before	0	6
Seats won	1	1
Seat change	1	5
Popular vote	3,258	2,755
Percentage	1.1%	0.9%
Swing	0.6%	22.2%

Premier before election

William Aberhart
Social Credit

Premier-designate

William Aberhart
Social Credit

The Alberta general election of 1940 was the ninth general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada, was held on March 21, 1940 to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta.

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 a considerable number of seats that it had gained in the 1935 landslide.

The Conservative 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 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 Liberal party under leader Edward Gray chose only to support Independent candidates that it played a hand in nominating and it 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.

The social democratic 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.

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Wikipedia