The CCF also emerged as the official opposition in British Columbia during the election of 1941 and in Ontario during the province's 1943 election. At the federal level, opinion polls initially indicated a dramatic surge in support for the CCF prior to the 1945 federal election. Although in the end it only translated into modest gains for the party, it is widely believed to have influenced the early steps taken by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King in introducing the welfare state.[weasel words] The CCF and the early democratic socialist movement is seen, by some political scientists (such as Gad Horowitz), as mainly a Christian and European Canadian movement.