Politics of Prince Edward Island

The politics of Prince Edward Island are centred on a provincial government resembling that of the other Canadian provinces. The capital of the province of Prince Edward Island is Charlottetown, where reside the premier, provincial legislature, lieutenant-governor and cabinet.

Prince Edward Island's government is based on the Westminster model, with a unicameral legislature — the Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island —consisting of 27 Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs), elected from 27 roughly equal electoral districts using plurality voting. The legislature may sit for a maximum of five years, as is customary in the Westminster system, and may be dissolved at any time by the lieutenant-governor, normally on the advice of the premier. By custom, the provincial Cabinet (which currently has ten members) is drawn exclusively from the Legislative Assembly, and must secure the support of a majority of the Assembly's members.

Prince Edward Island has the purest two-party system of any level of government in Canada. Since joining Confederation in 1873, it has been governed at intervals by the Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island and the Progressive Conservative Party of Prince Edward Island (which has gone by other names in the past). Before 2015, only one MLA has ever been elected from a third party; Herb Dickieson served a single term as the Island New Democrats member for West Point-Bloomfield from 1996 to 2000. In 2015, Peter Bevan-Baker, leader of the Green Party of Prince Edward Island, was elected in the riding of Kellys Cross-Cumberland.