British Columbia general election, 1975
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The British Columbia general election of 1975 was the 31st 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 November 3, 1975, and held on December 11, 1975. The new legislature met for the first time on March 17, 1976.
The governning New Democratic Party of David Barrett was defeated after three years in government. Bill Bennett, son of long-time Social Credit Party leader and BC premier, W.A.C. Bennett, led the conservative party back to power, winning close to half of the popular vote, and a solid majority in the legislature.
Voters abandoned the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties as the centre and right-wing vote coalesced around Social Credit to defeat the social democratic NDP which suffered only a marginal decrease in its vote share.
[edit] Results
| Party | Party leader | # of candidates |
Seats | Popular vote | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1972 | Elected | % Change | # | % | % Change | ||||
| Social Credit | Bill Bennett | 55 | 10 | 35 | +250% | 635,482 | 49.25% | +18.09% | |
| New Democrats | Dave Barrett | 55 | 38 | 18 | -52.6% | 505,396 | 39.16% | -0.43% | |
| Liberal | Gordon Gibson | 49 | 5 | 1 | -80.0% | 93,379 | 7.24% | -9.16% | |
| Progressive Conservative | 29 | 2 | 1 | -50.0% | 49,796 | 3.86% | -8.81% | ||
| Independent | 12 | - | - | - | 4,688 | 0.36% | +0.26% | ||
| Communist | 13 | - | - | - | 1,441 | 0.11% | +0.03% | ||
| North American Labour | 4 | * | - | * | 141 | 0.01% | * | ||
| Revolutionary Marxist Group | 3 | * | - | * | 94 | 0.01% | * | ||
| League for Socialist Action | 1 | * | - | * | 34 | x | * | ||
| Total | 221 | 55 | 55 | - | 1,290,451 | 100% | |||
| Source: Elections BC | |||||||||
Notes:
* Party did not nominate candidates in the previous election.
x - less than 0.005% of the popular vote
[edit] See also
| Preceded by: 1972 |
British Columbia general elections | Succeeded by: 1979 |
