New Brunswick general election, 2006

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September 18, 2006

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55 seats of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick
28 seats needed for a majority

	First party	Second party	Third party
			NDP
Leader	Shawn Graham	Bernard Lord	Allison Brewer
Party	Liberal	Progressive Conservative	New Democratic
Leader since	2002	1999	2005
Leader's seat	Kent	Moncton East	Ran for Fredericton-Lincoln
Last election	26	28	1
Seats won	29	26	0
Seat change	3	2	1
Popular vote	176,410	177,744	19,212
Percentage	47.1%	47.5%	5.1%
Swing	2.7%	2.1%	4.6%

Map of New Brunswick's ridings coloured in based on the winning parties and their popular vote

Premier before election

Bernard Lord
Progressive Conservative

Premier-designate

Shawn Graham
Liberal

Bernard Lord
Progressive Conservative

Shawn Graham
Liberal

The 36th New Brunswick general election was held on September 18, 2006, to elect 55 members to the 56th New Brunswick Legislative Assembly, the governing house of the province of New Brunswick, Canada.

The campaign came earlier than expected: the incumbent Premier of New Brunswick, Bernard Lord, had pledged a vote would be held on October 15, 2007 but when the ruling Progressive Conservatives faced a loss of its majority in the legislature, Lord said he did not want to face a minority government and, moreover, feared that a by-election could tip the balance of power to the opposition Liberals.

The campaign was hard fought with pundits and pollsters calling it too close to call throughout the five-week campaign. In the end, it was won by the Liberals led by Shawn Graham. The Liberals won 29 seats to 26 for the Progressive Conservatives, although the Progressive Conservatives won a plurality of the popular vote (47.5% to 47.2%).

Unusually, the Liberals won 17 of the 36 predominantly anglophone ridings, their best showing in a competitive election in English New Brunswick since the 1944 election. The Conservatives conversely did better than they have ever done while losing an election among Francophone ridings.

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Wikipedia