Alberta Liberal Party

Alberta Liberal Party
Party leader	David Swann
founding	September 1, 1905
Headquarters	Edmonton
Alignment	liberalism
Parliament seats	1/87
Website	www.albertaliberal.com

The Alberta Liberal Party (French Parti libéral de l'Alberta ) is a liberal political party in the Canadian province of Alberta . Although the party is ideologically similar to the Liberal Party of Canada at the federal level, the two parties are organizationally independent. From 1905 to 1921 the Alberta Liberal Party had three prime ministers in a row, but has been in opposition ever since. Since the elections in May 2015, it has had one representative in the Alberta Legislative Assembly.

history

On September 1, 1905, the day the Province of Alberta was founded, the Alberta Liberal Party emerged from the former Liberal Conservative Party of the Northwest Territories . The following day, party leader Alexander Cameron Rutherford was appointed the first prime minister of the new province. This led the party to an absolute majority in the first elections in November 1905. The government fell apart in 1910 after Rutherford was charged with incompetence. Rutherford's successor was Arthur Sifton , who held the party, weakened by a scandal, together and led two electoral victories. He was followed in 1917 by Charles Stewart .

During Stewart's reign, the party was embroiled in several scandals. This led to a severe election defeat in 1921. It was the last time so far that the Liberals could provide the provincial government. In 1940 the Liberals formed an informal alliance with the Conservatives , the Independent Citizen's Association , to oust the ruling Social Credit Party of Alberta . The tactic failed and the alliance fell apart. Not a single Liberal candidate ran in the 1944 elections.

Although the Liberals were able to unite almost a third of all voters in 1955, a steady decline began as a result of internal power struggles. In ideological terms, the party was blocked between the conservatives and the social democratic NDP . The conservatives also increasingly adopted liberal positions. As a result, the party was no longer represented in the provincial parliament from 1971 to 1986. The low popularity of the liberal federal government under Pierre Trudeau also contributed to this.

In the 1980s there was an upward trend again. Laurence Decore , the Mayor of Edmonton , led the Liberals in 1993 to their greatest success since the 1920s. Although they won all the seats in the provincial capital and achieved a share of the vote of almost 40 percent. But the Conservatives have remained in power to this day, while the Liberals' voter share has steadily declined.

Election results

Results of the legislative assembly elections:

choice	seats total	candidates data	Weighted seats	be right	proportion of
1905	25th	26th	23	14,485	57.56%
1909	41	42	36	29,634	59.26%
1913	56	54	38	47,748	49.23%
1917	58	49	34	54,212	48.14%
1921	61	61	15th	101,584	34.07%
1926	60	54	7th	47,450	26.17%
1930	63	36	11	46.275	24.59%
1935	63	61	5	69,845	23.14%
1940	57	2	1	2,755	0.89%
1944	not started
1948	57	49	2	52,655	17.86%
1952	61	55	4th	66,738	22.37%
1955	61	53	15th	117,741	31.13%
1959	65	51	1	57,408	13.88%
1963	63	55	2	79,709	19.76%

choice	seats total	candidates data	Weighted seats	be right	proportion of
1967	65	45	3	53,847	10.81%
1971	75	20th	0	6,475	1.01%
1975	75	46	0	29,424	4.98%
1979	79	78	0	43,792	6.16%
1982	79	29	0	17,074	1.81%
1986	83	63	4th	87,239	12.22%
1989	83	83	8th	237,787	28.68%
1993	83	83	32	392.899	39.73%
1997	83	83	18th	309.748	32.75%
2001	83	83	7th	276.854	27.33%
2004	83	83	16	261,478	29.40%
2008	83	83	9	250,862	26.37%
2012	87	87	5	127,645	9.89%
2015	87	56	1	62.171	4.19%

Party leader

Surname	Chair	premier
Alexander Cameron Rutherford	1905-1910	1905-1910
Arthur Sifton	1910-1917	1910-1917
Charles Stewart	1917-1922	1917-1921
John R. Boyle	1922-1924
Charles R. Mitchell	1924-1926
John Campbell Bowen	1926
Joseph Tweed Shaw	1926-1930
George H. Webster	1930-1932
William R. Howson	1932-1936
Edward Leslie Gray	1937-1941
James Prowse	1947-1958
Grant MacEwan	1958-1960
David Hunter	1962-1964
Michael Maccagno	1964-1969
John T. Lowery	1969-1970
Robert Russell	1971-1974
Nicholas Taylor	1974-1988
Laurence Decore	1988-1994
Bettie Hewes (interim)	1994
Grant Mitchell	1994-1998
Nancy MacBeth	1998-2001
Ken Nicol	2001-2004
Don Massey (interim)	2004
Kevin Taft	2004-2008
David Swann	2008-2011
Raj Sherman	2011-2015
David Swann (interim)	since 2015

Web links

Alberta Liberal Party (English)

Individual evidence

^ Elections in Alberta - Elections Alberta

[1] Elections in Alberta - Elections Alberta