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In the 2006 and 2010 New Brunswick provincial elections, power changed hands as control of the government went from Progressive Conservative to Liberal (2006) and back to Progressive Conservative (2010). The 2014 election found Premier David Alward attempting to return an incumbent party to the government benches for the first time since Bernard Lord in 2003. Alward faced three new party leaders in Liberal Brian Gallant, New Democrat Dominic Cardy and the Green's David Coon. Early polls predicted a Liberal landslide but the margin would close as Election Day approached with the Liberal earning a small 27 to 21 seat majority over the PC Party with Coon winning the first Green seat in the province and Cardy's NDP being shutout. With the results, New Brunswick would find itself with another under-forty premier, Gallant was 32 years old when sworn-in, and a vacancy in the Progressive Conservative leadership as Alward swiftly stepped down after his party's defeat. The election reflected another example of New Brunswick's current turnstile party system with the two major parties differing on few issues and struggling to find electoral momentum in a stubborn provincial economy stymied by structural demographic challenges.

For the first time in New Brunswick history, a government was defeated after its first term in power. David Alward, leader of the Progressive Conservatives, defeated Shawn Graham and his Liberal government on 27 September 2010, winning 42 of 55 seats. The Liberals won the remaining 13. Despite boasting a small lead in the public opinion polls, the Liberals were in serious electoral trouble going into the election campaign. A series of misfires and policy reversals, culminating with the disastrous proposal to sell the province's publicly-owned power utility NB Power to Hydro Quebec, had destroyed the Liberal government's credibility. Indeed, its low credibility might well have been what motivated the Liberals to try to sell NB Power in the first place: running out of time in its four-year mandate, the Graham government was desperate to find a single "quick-fix" which would reverse party fortunes. However, the gamble backfired, and the 37th General Election provided the Liberals with its lowest vote percentage (34.4%) in their history.

Coming just three years and a few months after one of New Brunswick's closest elections ever (2003), the 2006 election saw the Liberals and the PCs tiptoe through a campaign in which the smallest shift in votes would mean the difference between winning and losing. And this is precisely what happened: a very small shift of votes - some from the NDP, some because of riding reapportionment, gave the Liberals and their young leader Shawn Graham the victory, although the incumbent PCs under Bernard Lord received the most votes overall.

THE AUTHOR BRIEFLY SUMMARIZES THE HISTORY AND FUNCTIONS OF NEW BRUNSWICK'S LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY.

New Brunswick's 2018 election produced a minority legislature, the first in a century. The major parties continue to decline in voter support, and two new parties now have a presence in the Assembly. The election brings New Brunswick's electoral politics increasingly into the modern Canadian mainstream; one new caucus is the Greens. In other respects, the election made the old new again. The populist People's Alliance gained three seats partly on the basis of criticism of bilingualism policy. The Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives, in an informal alliance to govern, are all but confined to the anglophone parts of the province, while the defeated Liberals have all their strength in the Acadian north-east. The campaign mattered, as did constitutional conventions. The Liberals squandered a large lead in the polls, and the parties struggled to sort out the conventions of government formation.