British Columbia general election, 1979

← 1975

May 10, 1979

1983 →

55 seats of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia
28 seats were needed for a majority

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	Bill Bennett	Dave Barrett	Victor Stephens
Party	Social Credit	New Democratic	Progressive Conservative
Leader since	1973	1969	1977
Leader's seat	South Okanagan	Vancouver East	Oak Bay-Gordon Head (lost re-election)
Last election	35	18	1
Seats won	31	26	0
Seat change	4	8	1
Popular vote	677,607	646,188	71,078
Percentage	48.23	45.99	5.06
Swing	1.02	6.83	1.20

Premier before election

Bill Bennett
Social Credit

Premier-designate

Bill Bennett
Social Credit

The British Columbia general election of 1979 was the 32nd general election in the Province of British Columbia, Canada. It was held to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. The election was called on April 3, 1979. The election was held on May 10, 1979, and the new legislature met for the first time on June 6, 1979.

The governing Social Credit Party of British Columbia of Bill Bennett was re-elected with a majority government, and won almost half of the popular vote. The electorate was polarized between the Socreds and the social democratic New Democratic Party of former premier Dave Barrett, which won just under 46% of the popular vote and all of the remaining seats in the legislature.

Of the other parties only the Progressive Conservatives won over 1% of the popular vote, but their 5% of the vote did not enable them to hold on to their single seat in the legislature. Party leader Victor Stephens complained during the campaign that the federal PC Party was providing no assistance to the provincial party, favouring Social Credit instead. The caused embarrassment for federal party leader Joe Clark, who was leading his own election campaign for the May 22, 1979 federal election.

...
Wikipedia