1956 Nova Scotia general election

The 1956 Nova Scotia general election was held on 30 October 1956 to elect members of the 46th House of Assembly of the Province of Nova Scotia, Canada. It was won by the Progressive Conservatives led by Robert Stanfield.

This was the first election the Liberals had fought after the death of their longtime charismatic leader, Angus L. Macdonald. Public Health Minister Harold Connolly became interim leader and premier following Macdonald's death in 1954, but was defeated at a leadership convention by Education Minister Henry Hicks. The convention exposed a sharp religious divide in the Liberal Party; Hicks was a Protestant and Connolly was a Catholic. Hicks was unable to heal the breach, and the Liberals were narrowly defeated, ending 23 years of Liberal rule.

	Party	Leader	1953	Seats won	% change	Popular vote	(%)
	Progressive Conservative	Robert L. Stanfield	13	24	+85%	162,678	48.6%
	Liberal	Henry D. Hicks	22	18	-18%	159,666	48.2%
	Co-operative Commonwealth	Michael James MacDonald	2	1	-50%	9,878	3.0%
	Other		0	0	0%	812	0.1%
Totals			37	43		333,034	100%

Popular vote PC   48.85% Liberal   47.94% CCF   2.97% Others   0.24%

Seats summary PC   55.81% Liberal   41.86% CCF   2.33%

References

• Government of Nova Scotia. "Election Summary From 1867 - 2006" (PDF). Elections Statistics. Elections Nova Scotia. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-09-12. Retrieved 2006-12-02.