The Canadian social credit movement first contested the 1935 federal election in order to capitalize from the Alberta Social Credit League's surprise victory in Alberta's August 1935 provincial election. Social Credit supporters ran as the Western Social Credit League and John Horne Blackmore was appointed the movement's parliamentary leader following the election although Alberta Premier William Aberhart was generally regarded as the unofficial national leader of the movement.
Aberhart and the Social Credit movement supported William Duncan Herridge as leader of the national New Democracy movement for the 1940 election – Herridge failed to win a seat in Parliament, however, and Blackmore remained leader of the group in parliament. In 1944, at its first national convention, the Social Credit Association of Canada was formed and elected its first official national leader.