1953 Canadian federal election

The 1953 Canadian federal election was held on August 10, 1953, to elect members of the House of Commons of Canada of the 22nd Parliament of Canada. Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent led his Liberal Party of Canada to its second consecutive majority government, although the party lost seats to the other parties.

The Progressive Conservative Party, led by former Premier of Ontario, George Drew, formed the official opposition, but for the last time until 1993, the party was unable to win the popular vote in any of Canada's provinces or territories.

This was the last election until 1988 in which any party won back-to-back majorities, and the last until 1997 in which the Liberals would accomplish this feat. This election is the last time that the Liberals would win more seats in Alberta than the largest right-of-centre party in Canada, and the last time they would win more seats than the Tories in Alberta until 1993.

Throughout the years since the previous federal election, St. Laurent had been an active and popular Prime Minister, increasing the country's autonomy from the United Kingdom, overseeing the construction of the Trans-Canada Highway, and introducing various welfare programmes. With the Liberals remaining well ahead in the polls, St. Laurent decided there was little to be gained by waiting out his whole mandate, and called an early federal election a year before his mandate was due to expire.

As with the previous election, the campaign was largely based around St. Laurent's personal image, and was light on any actual policies beyond a continuation of what his government had already been doing. While they would lose support in relatively equal measure to all the other three major parties, the majority that they had won four years earlier still held up, and delivered St. Laurent his second majority government.

While party leader George A. Drew had largely escaped blame for the poor showing at the previous election, the years ahead saw much debate about the party's future direction. Many believed that Ontario, where Drew remained personally very popular and his successor as Premier, Leslie Frost had maintained the party's heavy dominance of the provincial legislature, was key to any prospect of the Progressive Conservatives forming another government. Others within the party pointed out that even if they won every single seat in Ontario, it would leave them 48 seats short of a majority, and that they would need to make up the numbers elsewhere. Western Canada seemed the only realistic prospect of building a political base elsewhere in the country due to the Liberals' heavy domination of Quebec and (to a lesser degree) Atlantic Canada, but the party establishment largely dismissed this prospect, seeing the west as CCF and Socred territory. All the while, the party generally polled better than it had done in the 1945-1949 parliament, but there rarely looked to be any prospect of them forming the next government.

Ultimately, the election result would do little to settle these factional disputes, as the party made something of a recovery in Ontario, and won two extra seats apiece in Quebec and Manitoba, but saw a further drop in their popular vote share west of Manitoba.

For this election, the CCF scaled back the scope of their campaign. Having tried to win seats throughout the country in the previous two elections, this time the party's goal was to re-establish its political base in Western Canada and retake the seats that it had lost to the Liberals. The party therefore abandoned any pretence of trying to make a breakthrough in Ontario, nominating very few candidates east of Manitoba, and almost none in Quebec.