Alberta general election, 1948

← 1944

August 17, 1948 (1948-08-17)

1952 →

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

	Majority party	Minority party	Third party

Leader	Ernest Manning	Elmer E. Roper	James H. Prowse
Party	Social Credit	Co-operative Commonwealth	Liberal
Leader since	May 31, 1943	1942	June 26, 1947
Leader's seat	Edmonton	Edmonton	Edmonton
Last election	51 seats, 50.5%	2 seats, 24.2%	did not run
Seats before	50	2	1
Seats won	51	2	2
Seat change	1	±0	1
Popular vote	164,003	56,387	52,655
Percentage	55.6%	19.1%	17.9%
Swing	5.1%	5.1%	—

Premier before election

Ernest Manning
Social Credit

Premier-designate

Ernest Manning
Social Credit

The Alberta general election of 1948 was the eleventh general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada. It was held on August 17, 1948 to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta.

Ernest C. Manning led the Social Credit to a fourth term in government, increasing its share of the popular vote further above the 50% mark it had set in the 1944 election. It won the same number of seats — 51 of the 57 seats in the legislature — that it had won in the previous election.

The remaining seats were won by the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, the Liberal Party and independents.

Along with this election, voters got to also vote in a province wide plebiscite. The ballot asked voters about utility regulation.

Note:

* Party did not nominate candidates in the previous election.

The electrification plebiscite was possibly the third plebiscite conducted province-wide in Alberta's history. The ballot was not a traditional yes/no question, but presented two options on electricity regulation, asking if the province should create a Crown corporation to manage electricity, or leave the electricity industry in the hands of the companies currently in the business (a mixture of municipal operations and private companies).

The result shows how evenly divided the province was on the issue, with a plurality of only 151 votes in favour of leaving the old system in place. In fact, the majority of voters in Edmonton and in the rural areas were in favour of provincial control but an even larger majority in Calgary voted in favour of the old system.

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Wikipedia