Louis St. Laurent - Defeat in The 1957 Election

Defeat in The 1957 Election

In the 1957 election, the Liberals won 200,000 more votes nationwide than the Progressive Conservatives (40.75% Liberals to 38.81% PC). However, most of those votes were wasted with huge majorities in Quebec. Largely due to dominating the rest of the country, the Conservatives took the greatest number of seats with 112 seats (42% of the House). to the Liberals' 104 (39.2%). Some ministers wanted St. Laurent to stay on and offer to form a minority government, following the logic that the popular vote had supported them and even though their Parliamentary minority was smaller than the Conservatives, the Liberals' more recent governmental experience would make them a more effective minority.

Another option circulated within the party saw the balance of power to be held by either the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and their 25 seats or Social Credit Party of Canada with their 15. St-Laurent was encouraged by others to reach out to the CCF and at least four of six independent/small party MPs to form a coalition majority government, which would have held 134 of the 265 seats in Parliament—50.1% of the total. St. Laurent, however, decided that the nation had passed a verdict against his government and his party, and did not want to be seen as clinging to office. However, the CCF and Socreds had pledged to cooperate with a Tory government, meaning that St. Laurent would have likely been defeated in the legislature in any event. Accordingly, St. Laurent resigned on 21 June 1957—ending what is still the longest uninterrupted run in government for a party at the federal level in Canadian history.