The Canadian General Election of 1958

• Date: 01 June 1960
• DOI: 10.1177/106591296001300205
• Author: Peter Regenstreif
• Published date: 01 June 1960
• Subject Matter: Articles

THE CANADIAN GENERAL ELECTION OF 1958
PETER REGENSTREIF
Cornell University
N
A COUNTRY in which British and American practices often seem to
t clash in a peculiar and distinctive environment, a general election can pro-
vide a valuable instrument for studying public opinion. However, even now,
little is known about the social and ecological characteristics of Canadian voters.
Research on voting behavior similar to that done in this country by such men as
Lazarsfeld, Berelson, Campbell and many others is still to be undertaken in
Canada.’
THE SETTING
After twenty-two years out of office, from 1935 to 1957, the Progressive Con-
servative party upset all expectations and succeeded in electing enough members
(112) on June 10, 1957, to form a minority government, despite the fact that its
percentage of the popular vote was 39.1 compared to the Liberal party’s 42.3.
The Liberals, virtually unbeatable for over two decades, elected 104 to form the
chief opposition party. The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), a
farmer-labor party founded on Fabian Socialist principles with 10.7 per cent of
the vote and the Social Credit party with 6.6 per cent both increased their rep-
resentation in the House of Commons to 25 and 19 respectively.
While the representation of the two major parties was distributed, although
not uniformly, across Canada, that of the CCF and Social Credit parties was not.
The bulk of CCF support came from the western farm provinces of Manitoba
and Saskatchewan and from the industrial areas of Ontario and British Colum-
bia. The one exception to this was a single representative who, from 1940 until
1957, held a seat in one of the easternmost points of the country, a coal mining
Cape Breton Island constituency in Nova Scotia. The Social Credit support was
confined to Alberta and British Columbia and it received all of its House of
Commons membership from these areas.
The prime factor in the Conservative surge to the front in 1957 was its
leader, John Diefenbaker, whose personal appeal is, even today, unparalleled in
Canada. Exploiting to the utmost the discontent arising from the public furor
1
The author made a 10,000 mile coast-to-coast tour of Canada during the election campaign and
immediately after the election itself during the months of February, March and April in
1958. An attempt was made to isolate as many of the "marginal" areas as possible so that
the interview technique could be used to maximum advantage. Because of the scattered
character of the country’s sparse population, the limitations of time, to say nothing about
the severe winter, it was impossible to visit as many of these areas as the author would have
desired. Generally, the urban concentrations were those most thoroughly investigated;
conclusions concerning the rural areas are based mainly on interviews with farmers and
workers "in town" from their inaccessible regions. Some 210 detailed interviews were
recorded by the author on the tour. While the sample is by no means accurate, some
numerical conclusions are possible from the data just the same.
It is obvious from the foregoing that the author has little statistical evidence upon
which he can support his "findings." However, the conclusions are based on an assumption
that should be stated here: namely, that while people in casting a ballot in an election are
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generated by the previous Liberal government’s mishandling of a Trans-Canada
Pipeline measure, Mr. Diefenbaker was able to dislodge the Liberals, who had
been returned to power with substantial majorities in the five elections previous
to this one.
Once in Parliament, the new Prime Minister increased old-age and disability
pensions, extended the benefit period for unemployment insurance, increased
financial assistance to the provinces, raised civil service and armed forces salaries
and provided cash advances for farm-stored grain. He further promised to divert
some 15 per cent of Canadian trade with the United States to Great Britain.
In the meantime, the Liberal party lost its leader. Louis St. Laurent retired
toward the close of 1957 and Lester B. Pearson, former External Affairs Minister
in the recently expelled Liberal administration and 1957 Nobel Peace Prize win-
ner, was elected in his stead at the party convention in Ottawa in January 1958.
Typical of the Canadian winter scene, the economic picture was not too
bright. Seasonal unemployment was at its highest since prewar days. In January,
out of a total of 4,261,400 people registered under the Unemployment Insurance
Act, 744,000 were claiming unemployment benefits.2
2
However, while this did
represent a substantial number of unemployed, no specifically new areas were
affected to contrast with the experience of other years. Essentially, the experience
of unemployment was not felt in new locales and areas of industry but in the
identical regions and areas of industry which had borne the brunt of seasonal
recessions in previous years.
.
&dquo;’
On the grounds that the Conservatives had fulfilled all their 1957 campaign
promises and thus needed a new mandate, Mr. Diefenbaker, by his own actions,
ended the shortest Parliament in Canadian history in February. In going to the
country, he asked for a working majority since he claimed that no controversial
legislation could be passed in view of the party standings in the House.
THE RESULTS
’
In an election in which a record number of people went to the polls, the
Progressive Conservatives gained 53.7 per cent of the popular vote and a record
208 out of 265 seats in the House of Commons. The Liberal party, progressively
on the downgrade since their own record-shattering 1949 successes, captured 33.7
per cent of the vote but only a meagre 49 seats.3 While the CCF popular vote
engaged in a purely individual act, voting cannot be seen as an isolated incident or as an
insulated phenomenon, but rather as part of a greater chain of connecting and causal events
which have their explanation in both the history and special environment of the Canadian
scene. While this paper may tend to be impressionistic, the absence of reliable statistical
data make this necessary.
The author wishes to thank Professor Andrew Hacker of Cornell University for his
helpful criticisms and to express his gratitude to the Cornell University Social Science
Research Center for the timely aid rendered during the course of the survey.
2
Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Report on the Operation of the Unemployment In-
surance Act, Queen’s Printer, Ottawa, February 1958, pp. 2-4.
3
The well-known "cube rule" is approximately applicable in this case. The calculations are
complicated by the existence of "third" and "fourth" parties.

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declined by a single per cent, its representation in the House of Commons was
drastically reduced from 25 to 8. The Social Credit party declined 4 per cent
from its 1957 showing and its parliamentry representation was completely ob-
literated. No independents were elected
4
Even more phenomenal than the astounding number of seats won by the
Conservatives was the fact that they swept the slate clean in four provinces -
Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Manitoba, and Alberta -
attracting over 56
per cent of the popular vote in each case. In these four provinces, no other party
was able to elect a single member to Parliament. Equally astonishing was the
Conservative victory in the province of Quebec, the bastion of the Liberal party
for over seventy years. The reversal was made doubly noteworthy by the fact
that the Conservatives increased their parliamentary representation in the prov-
ince from 8 to 50 while reducing the Liberals’ overwhelming 62-seat total to 25.
Ontario was the sole province running relatively true to form. While it is true
that from 1935 to 1953 (a range of five general elections), with the exception of
1945, the Liberals had been obtaining the majority of the vote in that province,
historically this area is the Conservative stronghold.5
5
What happened in 1958
bears this out: The Conservatives polled 56.8 per cent of the vote to the Liberals’
31.9 per cent and thereby obtained 67 of the province’s 85-seat allotment in the
House. The Liberals garnered 15 leaving the CCF with a paltry 3.
4
The following tabulation represents the distribution of the popular vote and the number of
members of parliament among the parties for the last three general elections. The extent
of the electoral turn-over in the short time of five years is remarkable.
5
The following is a percentage breakdown of the vote in Ontario beginning with 1935:
From Confederation in 1867 (except for the elections of 1872 and 1874 — the reasons
for this deviation are not germane to this study) until 1935, Ontario served as the bastion
of Conservatism in Canada. The foundations for this steadfast adherence to one party can
be traced back to the time of the American Revolution when the Loyalists in considerable
numbers poured into the province (then Upper Canada) to form the bulk of the population
there. There is no need to point out that these "immigrants" were staunchly devoted to
the Mother Country across the Atlantic. Since the Conservatives have always been con-
sidered as the party most loyal to Great Britain, it is not surprising that the descendants
of these Loyalists should adhere to the Tory cause. In essence, then, there is a latent pre-
disposition in favor of the Conservatives in the province.

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Out on the prairies, in Manitoba and...