The 1976 Progressive Conservative leadership election was held at the Ottawa Civic Centre in Ottawa on February 22, 1976, to elect a leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada to replace Robert Stanfield, who had resigned after losing the 1968, 1972, and 1974 elections. It unexpectedly elected Joe Clark, a 36-year-old, little-known PC Member of Parliament from Alberta as the party's new leader. Clark defeated Claude Wagner on the fourth ballot of the convention by a margin of 65 votes.
The convention's delegates were elected by the party's riding associations, along with the party's youth, campus and women's associations. There were also numerous "ex officio" delegates, including PC Members of Parliament, defeated candidates from the previous election, members of provincial legislatures, members of the party's national executive and the executives of provincial parties affiliated to the federal party. Delegates cast secret ballots, so their votes were not "tied" to any candidate. After each ballot, the candidate winning the fewest votes was removed from the ballot for the next round. Several candidates withdrew voluntarily when it became clear that they would not be able to win.
Candidates.
Richard Quittenton, president of St. Clair College in Windsor, had also been a candidate but withdrew before the first ballot and endorsed Wagner.
Results.
The first ballot was widely expected to be a close contest between Wagner and MacDonald, though it was thought unlikely that either of them would have a decisive lead. The result proved a shock to everyone at the convention, as while Wagner did about as well as had been expected, MacDonald did far worse than even the most pessimistic predictions had indicated, coming in sixth place; the phenomenon of delegates promising their votes to one candidate and then voting for another has become known in Canadian politics as the "Flora Syndrome". Mulroney was slightly ahead of the rest of the chasing pack, but still over seven percentage points behind Wagner, who was now the clear front-runner. Grafftey was automatically eliminated after finishing in last place, with Gillies and Stevens dropping out of their own accord; all three endorsed Clark.
While Wagner extended his delegate count on the second ballot, Clark saw the most dramatic improvement in his delegate count, nearly doubling it from the first round. Mulroney dropped down to third place and made only minimal gains. MacDonald, having remained on the second ballot in the hope that she might pick up some Red Tory delegates from the candidates who dropped out, likewise earned only a small number of extra delegates; realizing that the situation was hopeless and that she would most likely be eliminated next if she remained on the ballot, she withdrew and threw her support behind Clark, as did Fraser, who was automatically eliminated in this round. Nowlan withdrew and initially intended to endorse Horner, but the latter, sensing that the momentum was with Clark, persuaded Nowlan that they should both endorse Wagner to prevent a split in the right-wing vote. Hellyer followed their lead and also endorsed Wagner.
The third round had Wagner continuing to lead, but only barely, with both he and Clark having picked up large numbers of delegates since the previous round, albeit Clark having done slightly better in that regard. Conversely, any momentum that Mulroney had completely stalled, causing him to actually lose delegates and be automatically eliminated. While it was now clear that Mulroney was in a position to be the kingmaker, he simply left the convention after his elimination was announced and did not endorse either Wagner or Clark; this created an unpredictable scenario, as about half of Mulroney's delegates were favourable to Wagner because he was a fellow Quebecer, while the remaining half were favourable to Clark due to his political positions being closer to Mulroney's.
Ultimately, Mulroney's delegates were sufficiently favourable to Clark to afford him a narrow victory on the final ballot. Clark's majority over Wagner was just 2.8%, making this the most closely contested election for the leadership of a major Canadian political party until that point, surpassed in the years since only by Andrew Scheer's victory over Maxime Bernier (with a majority of 1.9%) in the 2017 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election.
References.
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