1905 Alberta general election

1905 Alberta general election
← outgoing members members →
25 seats in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta ; 13 seats were needed for a majority
Premier before election; Alexander C. Rutherford; Liberal	Premier after election ; Alexander C. Rutherford; Liberal

The 1905 Alberta general election was the first general election held in the Province of Alberta, Canada, shortly after the province entered Canadian Confederation on September 1, 1905. The election was held on November 9, 1905, to elect twenty-five members to the 1st Alberta Legislative Assembly.

The Alberta Liberal Party, led by the recently appointed Premier Alexander C. Rutherford, received a majority of the votes cast and took twenty-three of the twenty-five seats in the new legislature, defeating the Conservative Party.

The Conservatives were led by young lawyer Richard Bennett, who later served as prime minister of Canada. The Conservatives had no strong leader to rally around at the time as the North-West Territories defacto-Premier Frederick Haultain had moved to the province of Saskatchewan.

The election was held using the first past the post system. The number of seats won by the Liberals was far above its portion of the popular vote. The Liberals received 57.6 per cent of the vote and 92 per cent of the seats.

The election took place just after the formation of the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, composed of parts of the North-West Territories. Numerous high profile issues rose prior to the election, including education rights for French Catholics through separate schools with public funding, the federal government retaining rights to public lands and minerals, and the competition between the cities of Edmonton and Calgary to be selected as the capital of the new province.