Electoral history of Jean Chrétien
This article is the Electoral history of Jean Chrétien, the twentieth Prime Minister of Canada.
He was the first prime minister to win three consecutive majority governments since Sir Wilfrid Laurier.
He served continuously in the House from 1963 to 1986, when he resigned over disagreements with Liberal leader John Turner.
After winning the Liberal leadership in 1990, he re-entered the Commons by a by-election, and was re-elected three more times, until he retired in 2004.
Chrétien ranks fifth out of twenty-three prime ministers for time in office, serving one term of ten years and thirty-eight days.
[1] Chrétien was the sixth of eight prime ministers from Quebec, the others being Sir John Abbott, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Louis St. Laurent, Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, Paul Martin and Justin Trudeau.
He was appointed to Cabinet by Prime Minister Lester Pearson in 1967 and remained in Cabinet until 1984 under Prime Ministers Pierre Trudeau and John Turner (except for the short Clark government (1979–80)).
He is the first prime minister since Sir Wilfrid Laurier to win three back-to-back majority governments.
Chrétien stood for election to the House of Commons twelve times, all but once for the riding of Saint-Maurice, which included his home town of Shawinigan.
Chrétien was a Member of Parliament from 1963 to 1986, when he resigned over disagreements with Liberal leader John Turner.
[3] In 1990, after winning the Liberal leadership, he was elected to the Commons in a by-election for the riding of Beauséjour in New Brunswick.
In 1990, after Turner's resignation, he won the leadership against his principal opponent, Paul Martin.
[3] Chrétien remained a Member of Parliament until the 2004 general election, when he retired from politics.
In his second general election, Chrétien again won a majority government, albeit with a reduced number of seats, against a fractured set of opposition parties.
Turner retired after the loss in the 1988 general election, and Chrétien won the leadership convention held in 1990.
At the leadership convention held in 1990, Chrétien won on the first ballot, defeating his principal opponent, Paul Martin.
