Canadian federal election, 1930

Canadian federal election, 1930

← 1926 July 28, 1930 1935 →
← outgoing members
245 seats in the 17th Canadian Parliament 123 seats needed for a majority
First party Second party   Leader R. B. Bennett W. L. Mackenzie King Party Conservative Liberal Leader since 1927 1919 Leader's seat Calgary West Prince Albert Last election 91 116 Seats won 135 89 Seat change 44 27 Popular vote 1,863,115 1,716,798 Percentage 47.79% 45.5% Swing 3.08pp 1.29pp   Third party Fourth party   Party United Farmers of Alberta Progressive Last election 11 11 Seats won 9 3 Seat change 2 8 Popular vote 56,968 70,822 Percentage 1.46% 1.82% Swing 0.55pp 2.41pp
Prime Minister before election William Lyon Mackenzie King Liberal Prime Minister-designate R. B. Bennett Conservative

William Lyon Mackenzie King
Liberal

R. B. Bennett
Conservative

The Canadian federal election of 1930 was held on July 28, 1930, to elect members of the Canadian House of Commons of the 17th Parliament of Canada. Richard Bedford Bennett's Conservative Party won a majority government, defeating the Liberal Party led by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.

The first signs of the Great Depression were clearly evident by the 1930 election, and Conservative party leader Richard Bennett campaigned on a platform of aggressive measures in order to combat it.

Part of the reason for Bennett's success lay in the Liberals' own handling of the rising unemployment of 1930. Touting the Liberal formula as the reason for the economic prosperity of the 1920s, for example, left the Liberals carrying much of the responsibility, whether deserved or not, for the consequences of the crash of the American stock market.

King was apparently oblivious to the rising unemployment that greeted the 1930s, and continued to laud his government's hand in Canada's prosperity. Demands for aid were met with accusations of being the part of a great "Tory conspiracy," which led King to make his famous "five-cent piece" outburst, alienating a growing number of voters. In retrospect, one can understand King's reasoning. Both the Western mayors and provincial Premiers who had visited King with requests of relief were overwhelmingly Conservative: in the Premiers' case, seven out of nine. King concluded in Parliamentary debates that though aid was a provincial jurisdiction, the fact that he believed there to be no unemployment problem meant that the requests from the provinces appeared to be nothing more than political grandstanding. The Federal Conservatives had certainly exaggerated the Depression in its early stages solely to attack King's government.

...
Wikipedia