Acadia Senate

The Acadia Senate is the lower chamber of the Acadia National Assembly. The Senate has 181 members (senators), who are proportionally distributed among the 38 counties. Every six years, the Census is taken and Senate seats are reapportioned in the following year.

Historical composition
In the history of the Senate, 10 political parties have held seats, not including independent politicians.

1st Period= This was the first election that resulted in a Hung senate, where no party received a majority. The Progressives, Christian Socialists, and half of the independents formed a coalition to reach a majority. The Conservative Party had the largest seat increase in history, adding a net 24 seats. This allowed for the formation of the Right Coalition, despite the Progressives having a plurality of seats. The Conservative Party took over as the 1st Party, breaking the Progressives' eight-year streak. The Progressive Party regained a majority, their first lead since 1984 and the first majority party in the Senate since 1982. The National Evangelical Party appeared in the Senate for the first time since 1984, winning 7 seats. The number of Green Party senators narrowly surpassed the number of independent senators for the first time. After a scandal in 1995, the Progressive Party suffered the largest decrease in seats in Acadian history, losing 33 seats. 1996 was dubbed "Year of the Third Party," as the seats lost by the major parties allowed for dramatic increases by smaller parties.
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In response to public distrust of the Progressive Party, a far-left party called the "New Liberals" was formed. Winning 15 seats, it had the best performance of any new Acadian political party.

Progressive Speaker of the Senate Mark Walls from Edward, who had intended to run for a third term as Speaker, lost his Senate seat in the "year's biggest upset." Out of Edward's 19 available seats, Walls came in 24th place. He later called the 1996 elections a "genocide." Walls had be a central figure of the 1995 Progressive Party scandal, and had a 11% approval rating in his county.

On January 30, 1996, two-term moderate Indepedent Senator Joan Harris was elected Speaker of the Senate. Harris was the first Speaker to not be from the Progressive or Conservative Parties.
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