New Brunswick general election, 2003

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June 9, 2003

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55 seats of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick
28 seats needed for a majority

	First party	Second party	Third party
			NDP
Leader	Bernard Lord	Shawn Graham	Elizabeth Weir
Party	Progressive Conservative	Liberal	New Democratic
Leader since	1997	2002	1988
Leader's seat	Moncton East	Kent	Saint John Harbour
Last election	44	10	1
Seats won	28	26	1
Seat change	16	16	0
Popular vote	174,092	170,028	36,989
Percentage	45.4%	44.4%	9.7%
Swing	7.6%	7.1%	0.9%

Map of New Brunswick's ridings coloured in based on the winning parties and their popular vote

Premier before election

Bernard Lord
Progressive Conservative

Premier-designate

Bernard Lord
Progressive Conservative

The 35th New Brunswick general election was held on June 9, 2003, to elect 55 members to the 55th New Brunswick Legislative Assembly, the governing house of the province of New Brunswick, Canada. Starting out as a predicted landslide for Bernard Lord's Progressive Conservatives, the election quickly turned around when Shawn Graham, leader of the Liberal Party of New Brunswick, took on auto insurance rates as a cause.

People in the province had seen their car insurance rates skyrocket, and the Liberal Party of New Brunswick focussed their campaign on three points:

The Liberals ran a virtually flawless campaign, whereas Lord and his PC Party faced a number of problems, especially with their position on the key issue of auto insurance which changed several times during the 30-day campaign.

The results were very close, and for most of election night as the results came in, the winner was unclear. Shawn Graham was even heard to remark on television as the night was drawing to a close that "Up to 5 minutes ago, I thought I was Premier".

New Democratic Party of New Brunswick leader, Elizabeth Weir, was the only member of her party to win a seat. The party ran 55 candidates throughout the province.

The newly founded but short-lived New Brunswick Grey Party which was a branch of the Grey Party of Canada also ran 10 candidates, including party leader Jim Webb.

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Wikipedia