After Blair abruptly left the province to join Wilfrid Laurier's cabinet in 1896, the Liberals had a leadership vacuum.

Mitchell was replaced by Henry Emmerson, who showed some promise but lost the confidence of the house when he tried to introduce women's suffrage in 1900.

The party was saved electoral disaster when Lemuel J. Tweedie, a federal Conservative, replaced Emmerson, and won two large majorities at general elections.

His replacement, Clifford W. Robinson was able but the electorate grew weary of the ever-changing face at head of their government, and the Conservatives swept to power in 1908.

The Conservatives were an easy choice for many New Brunswickers in the 1908 provincial election as they had been led since 1899 by John Douglas Hazen, a man with whom they had become familiar.

Hazen served only briefly, leaving in 1911 to join the federal cabinet of Robert Borden, and was replaced by the charismatic and popular James Kidd Flemming.

During the 1960s, the Liberals under Louis Joseph Robichaud were instrumental in bringing Acadians into the mainstream of life in New Brunswick, declaring the province to be officially bilingual.

Robichaud's government modernized the province's hospitals and public schools and introduced a wide range of social reforms.

[4] He also expanded the government and sought to ensure that the quality of health care, education and social services was the same across the province—a programme he called Equal Opportunity, which is still a political buzz phrase in New Brunswick.

McKenna, a young lawyer representing Chatham in the legislature in his first term, ran as the underdog candidate in a leadership campaign against party stalwart Ray Frenette.

Notably, McKenna instituted a publicly funded kindergarten program—something that had been promised by the Hatfield-led Progressive Conservatives in the previous four elections.

In the 1999 election, the Liberals suffered their worst ever defeat, winning only 10 seats despite having begun the campaign with a double-digit lead in opinion polls.

Early candidates included former cabinet minister Paul Duffie, former McKenna adviser Francis McGuire, and Moncton lawyer Mike Murphy.

After the campaign had already begun in earnest, Shawn Graham, a rookie MLA in his early 30s, announced his candidacy in January 2002.

Graham led the Liberals to a narrow victory in the 2006 provincial election winning 29 of 55 seats and losing the popular vote 47.2% to 47.5% for the Progressive Conservatives.

Chris Collins captured the seat in the riding of Moncton East on March 5, 2007, which was vacated when former Premier Bernard Lord stepped down as leader of the Progressive Conservatives.

On September 27, 2010, Shawn Graham lost his bid to be re-elected as Premier (13 to 42) to provincial PC leader David Alward, but remained MLA for Kent riding.

[14] The Gallant government eliminated the unconstitutional two doctor rule that was hindering a women's right to choose for decades in New Brunswick.

[16] The Gallant government also advanced women's equality by moving pay equity forward to the point of New Brunswick having the second lowest gender wage gap of all the Canadian provinces in 2017;[17] by having over 50% of government appointments to agencies, boards, and commissions go to women;[18] and by providing the first gender parity on New Brunswick's provincial court.

With this in mind, the Gallant government took concrete action to protect the environment including by creating the “Transitioning to a Low Carbon Economy” plan which commits to historic measures to fight climate change.

[20] The Gallant government also placed a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing and a ban on the disposal of fracked wastewater in municipal systems.

The 2018 provincial election resulted in Gallant's Liberals winning only 21 seats compared to Blaine Higgs and the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick who won 22.

[24] Gallant resigned as premier on November 2, 2018 and was replaced by Higgs, leading a Progressive Conservative minority government with support from the People's Alliance.