The 1927 Manitoba general election was held on 28 June 1927 to elect Members of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Manitoba, Canada. The result was a second consecutive victory for Manitoba farmers, following its 1922 win.
This was the first election in Manitoba history to elect MLAs through casting of ranked ballots in all districts. Ten MLAs were elected in Winnipeg through Single transferable vote, as they had done since 1920. The other districts now began to elect MLAs through Instant-runoff voting.
The Progressive Party of Manitoba, led by PremierJohn Bracken, won a second consecutive majority government in 1927. Progressive candidates won twenty-nine seats out of fifty-five to win their second majority government. During the campaign, the Progressives stressed that they were not a party in the traditional sense and promised "A business (not a party) government". Many Progressive candidates simply described themselves as Bracken supporters. The Progressive Party was supported by the powerful United Farmers of Manitoba organization.
The Conservatives won fifteen seats under the leadership of Fawcett Taylor, an improvement from seven in the election of 1922. This election re-established the Conservatives as the leading opposition party in Manitoba, and made the party a credible challenger for government in the next election.
The Manitoba Liberal Party was unable to regain the support it had lost to the Progressive Party in the previous election. The Liberals won seven seats under the new leadership of Hugh Robson, down one from their 1922 total. After the election, many senior Liberals began to work for an electoral alliance with the Progressives. Robson, who opposed this plan, was persuaded to resign as leader in 1930. The alliance was formalized in 1932.
The Independent Labour Party fell to three seats, down from six in the previous election. All three members, including party leader John Queen, were elected in the city of Winnipeg. Candidates of four separate parties - Liberal, Conservative, ILP and Progressive - plus an Independent - were elected to fill that city's ten seats. Winnipeg seats were filled using a form of proportional representation, Single transferable voting.
Jacob Penner ran in Winnipeg as a Communist candidate, but was not successful. He lasted 19 rounds of transfers but picked up very few votes so was eliminated.
The proportion of the vote received by the Progressive Party (based on first-preference votes) was enough to assure a functioning government, but it was one of lowest in Canadian history.[1]
The Legislature experienced a significant turnover of members, with 23 seats electing new MLAs. Twelve incumbents (one in Winnipeg, and 11 more in other ridings) went down in defeat, six failed to be renominated, and five chose not to stand for reelection.[2]
Under the instant-runoff voting used to elect 45 MLAs, the leader in the first count of the district's votes was the one elected in all but three districts,so the final results in the districts outside Winnipeg were almost the same as under First-past-the-post voting .
Of the 45 single-member ridings, two MLAs were returned by acclamation. Twenty-one were decided solely on first-preference votes, with no vote transfers conducted. The remainder (22) went to runoff counts. There were only three "turn-overs" where the first count leader did not win due to vote transfers - in Minnedosa, Morden & Rhineland and Springfield. The Progressive candidate was leading on the first count in all three districts but after vote transfers, Conservatives won two of them and Liberals won one.
Seventeen seats in the single-member districts went to parties different from the previous election. Eleven rural incumbents running for re-election under their old party label were defeated. Three other incumbents changed their party label and were re-elected. Three open seats flipped to another party.
= won on first-preference votes, by receiving majority of valid votes in the first count.
The candidate in the winning position in the first count won in the end in every district, except in the Minnedosa, Morden and Springfield districts, where the winner is indicated with vote tally in bold.
Elected: 2 Progressive Party, 3 Conservatives, 2 Liberals, 3 ILP (listed in same order as in above table)
Rogers and Ivens passed quota in Round 21. Their surpluses were not transferred as they could not possibly have bridged the gap between the least-popular remaining candidate and the other two remaining contenders. With their election, there were only three remaining candidates and two remaining open seats. Downes was then declared defeated - his votes were not transferred as Tobias and Montgomery were the only ones still standing and there were two seats left to be filled Tobias and Montgomery were elected with partial quota, as the field of candidates had been thinned to the number of remaining open seats.[4]
Transfers of surplus votes belonging to elected Conservatives Haig and Evans went in large numbers to Tobias, helping him take a seat although he was not in top ten in the first count. Communist candidate Penner's vote tally was not large enough for him to win a seat and he received few vote transfers, but many of his votes were transferred to help elect Ivens, the last ILP member to be elected. The Independent-Moderationist candidate Downes received some vote transfers from supporters of candidates running under other labels, but not enough to maintain a lead over party candidates (Rogers and Ivens) who although initially lower ranking compared to Downes, received many vote transfers from elected or eliminated candidates of the same party. In each party the most popular candidates maintained their position visa vis other candidates of the same party all the way through. The question was how many quota each party had at the start (taking all the party candidates together) and how many they would pick up from cross-party transfers - this set up how many seats each party would take. The seats were filled by the candidates in popularity order set by the voters. Party lists, if they had been used as in Party-list proportional representation, might have dictated that different persons would have filled the seats that were indirectly allocated to each party than were the choice of voters in this election.
Sources
The first ballot results for Winnipeg and results for all other constituencies are taken from an official Manitoba government publication entitled "Manitoba elections, 1920–1941", cross-referenced with the 1928 Canadian Parliamentary Guide, and an appendix to the Manitoba government's report of the 2003 provincial election.
All ballot results for Winnipeg after the first count are taken from reports in the Winnipeg Free Press newspaper. It is possible that some errors appeared in the original publication.
Post-election changes
Birtle (John Pratt leaves the government side, early in the parliament).
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