The 1952 British Columbiageneral election was the 23rd general election in the Canadian province of British Columbia. It was held to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, alongside a plebiscite on daylight saving time and liquor. The election was called on April 10, 1952, and held on June 12, 1952. The new legislature met for the first time on February 3, 1953. It was the first BC general election to use a preferential ballot, a short-lived phenomenon in the province. The presence of multi-member districts, such as Victoria City with 3 MLAs, in conjunction with the Alternative voting system called for an innovation where the district's candidates were split into three "ballots," each with one candidate from each party. The system was adopted to enable the governing Liberal / Progressive Conservative coalition to keep the socialistCo-operative Commonwealth Federation out of power. To lock out the CCF, the coalition adopted the Alternative Voting system, instead of leaving the existing system in place or switching to STV. While they ran candidates under their own names, Liberal and Conservative party leaders believed that if Liberal voters picked a Tory as their second preference and vice versa, one of the candidates of the two parties would have enough votes to be elected in many districts, hopefully ensuring the coalition's retention of power. However, the coalition did not consider what CCF voters would do with their second preferences. In districts where CCF candidates were eliminated, back-up preferences were marked overwhelmingly for the British Columbia Social Credit League. Combined with many second-preference votes transferred from eliminated Liberal and Conservative candidates, this vaulted Social Credit to 19 seats. The CCF received 18 seats, helped in many cases by transfers from eliminated SC candidates. Meanwhile, the coalition was decimated, winning only 10 seats between them. Both Premier Byron "Boss" Johnson and Tory leaderHerbert Anscomb lost their seats. Not even the Socreds had expected to win the election. The party had no official leader, though Alberta Social CreditMember of Parliament Rev. Ernest George Hansell led the party during the election campaign without contesting a seat. The Socreds persuaded Tom Uphill, a Labour member of the Legislature, to support the party, and so the Socreds were able to form a minority government. The party's next task was to elect a leader who would become the province's new premier. In a vote of the newly elected caucus, W.A.C. Bennett, a former Conservative MLA who joined the Socreds after losing a bid for the Tory leadership, won a caucus vote and became premier-elect on July 15, 1952. This began what would be 21 years–and 36 of the next 39 years–of Social Credit government in British Columbia. In hopes of getting a stronger mandate, Bennett deliberately lost a confidence vote, forcing fresh elections in June 1953 at which Social Credit won a majority in its own right.
Results
Note: * Party did not nominate candidates in the previous election. 1 In the previous election, the Liberal and Conservative parties ran candidates jointly as "Coalition" candidates, electing 39 MLAs. The Conservatives withdrew from the coalition in 1951 hastening the government's collapse.
