| Election Name: | 1978 Yukon general election |
| Country: | Yukon |
| Type: | parliamentary |
| Ongoing: | no |
| Party Colour: | no |
| Party Name: | no |
| Previous Election: | 1974 Yukon general election |
| Previous Year: | 1974 |
| Next Election: | 1982 Yukon general election |
| Next Year: | 1982 |
| Seats For Election: | 16 seats of the Yukon Legislative Assembly |
| Majority Seats: | 9 |
| Election Date: | November 20, 1978 |
| Turnout: | 70.43%[1] |
| Leader1: | Hilda Watson |
| Leader Since1: | 1978 |
| Leaders Seat1: | Kluane (lost re-election) |
| Last Election1: | pre-creation |
| Seats1: | 11 |
| Seat Change1: | 11 |
| Popular Vote1: | 2,869 |
| Percentage1: | 37.10% |
| Leader2: | Iain MacKay |
| Leader Since2: | 1978 |
| Leaders Seat2: | Ran in Whitehorse Riverdale South (won) |
| Last Election2: | pre-creation |
| Seats2: | 2 |
| Seat Change2: | 2 |
| Popular Vote2: | 2,201 |
| Percentage2: | 28.46% |
| Image3: | NDP |
| Leader3: | Fred Berger |
| Leader Since3: | 1978 |
| Leaders Seat3: | Klondike (lost re-election) |
| Last Election3: | pre-creation |
| Seats3: | 1 |
| Seat Change3: | 1 |
| Popular Vote3: | 1,568 |
| Percentage3: | 20.27% |
| Map Size: | 360px |
| Premier | |
| Posttitle: | Premier after election |
| Before Election: | None (position established) |
| After Election: | Chris Pearson |
The 1978 Yukon general election was held on November 20, 1978, was the first conventional legislative election in the history of Canada's Yukon Territory. Prior elections were held to elect representatives to the Yukon Territorial Council, a non-partisan body that acted in an advisory role to the Commissioner of the Yukon. Following the passage of the Yukon Elections Act in 1977, the 1978 election was the first time that voters in the Yukon elected representatives to the Yukon Legislative Assembly in an election organized along political party lines.
Hilda Watson, the first woman ever to lead a political party into an election in Canada, was the leader of the Progressive Conservatives. Although the party won the election, Watson herself was defeated in Kluane by Liberal candidate Alice McGuire, and thus did not become government leader. The position of government leader instead went to Chris Pearson.
New Democratic leader Fred Berger was also defeated in his own riding. He remained leader of the party until 1981, when he was succeeded by the party's sole elected MLA, Tony Penikett. Under Penikett's leadership, an MLA who had been elected as an independent in 1978 joined the NDP, and the party won a by-election. With its caucus increased to three members, the NDP had thus supplanted the Liberals as the official opposition by the time of the 1982 election.
|- style="background:#ccc;"! rowspan="2" colspan="2" style="text-align:left;"|Party! rowspan="2" style="text-align:left;"|Party leader!rowspan="2"|
Candidates! colspan="4" style="text-align:center;"|Seats!colspan="3" style="text-align:center;"|Popular vote|- style="background:#ccc;"| style="text-align:center;"|1974| style="text-align:center;font-size: 80%;"|Dissol.| style="text-align:center;"|1978| style="text-align:center;"|Change| style="text-align:center;"|#| style="text-align:center;"|%| style="text-align:center;"|Change|align=left|Hilda Watson|align="right"|15|align="right"|0|align="right"|0|align="right"|11|align="right"|+11|align="right"|2,869|align="right"|37.10%|align="right"|N/A|align=left|Iain MacKay|align="right"|14|align="right"|0|align="right"|0|align="right"|2|align="right"|+2|align="right"|2,201|align="right"|28.46%|align="right"|N/A| colspan="2" style="text-align:left;"|Independent|align="right"|9|align="right"|12|align="right"|12|align="right"|2|align="right"|-10|align="right"|1,096|align="right"|14.17%|align="right"|N/A|align=left|Fred Berger|align="right"|14|align="right"|0|align="right"|0|align="right"|1|align="right"|+1|align="right"|1,568|align="right"|20.27%|align="right"|N/A|-| style="text-align:left;" colspan="3"|Total| style="text-align:right;"|52| style="text-align:right;"|12| style="text-align:right;"|12| style="text-align:right;"|16| style="text-align:right;"|+4| style="text-align:right;"|7,734| style="text-align:right;"|100.00%| style="text-align:right;"||}The following MLAs had announced that they would not be running in the 1978 election:
Independent
Bold indicates party leaders
† - denotes a retiring incumbent MLA|-| style="background:whitesmoke;"|Campbell||Don McIntosh
61||Blake Stirling Macdonald
120||Margaret Thomson
65|||Robert Fleming
184|||New District|-| style="background:whitesmoke;"|Faro||||||Stuart McCall
231|||Maurice Byblow
361|||New District|-| style="background:whitesmoke;"|Hootalinqua|||Al Falle
209||Mike Laforet
83||Max Fraser
159||Mack Henry
44|||Robert Fleming|-| style="background:whitesmoke;"|Klondike|||Meg McCall
152||||Fred Berger
130||Eleanor Millard
114|||Fred Berger|-| style="background:whitesmoke;"|Kluane||Hilda Watson
150|||Alice McGuire
188||||John Livesey
49|||Hilda Watson|-| style="background:whitesmoke;"|Mayo|||Swede Hanson
95||Gordon McIntyre
84||Alan McDiarmid
82||David Harwood
85|||Gordon McIntyre|-| style="background:whitesmoke;"|Old Crow|||Grafton Njootli
62||Edith Tizya
29||Robert Bruce
19|||||New District|-| style="background:whitesmoke;"|Tatchun |||Howard Tracey
109||Hugh Netzel
71||Jerry Roberts
83|||||New District|-| style="background:whitesmoke;"|Watson Lake|||Don Taylor
226||Grant Taylor
188|||||||Don Taylor|-| style="background:whitesmoke;"|Whitehorse North Centre|||Geoff Lattin
153||Dermot Flynn
83||Doug Stephenson
131||Ken McKinnon
141|||Ken McKinnon|-| style="background:whitesmoke;"|Whitehorse Porter Creek East|||Dan Lang
322||Bill Webber
202||Paul Warner
84|||||New District|-| style="background:whitesmoke;"|Whitehorse Porter Creek West|||Doug Graham
188||Clive Tanner
142||Kathy Horton
60|||||New District|-| style="background:whitesmoke;"|Whitehorse Riverdale North|||Chris Pearson
358||Richard Rotondo
194||Dave Dornian
59|||||New District|-| style="background:whitesmoke;"|Whitehorse Riverdale South||Margaret Heath
354|||Iain MacKay
420||Jim McCullough
113|||||New District|-| style="background:whitesmoke;"|Whitehorse South Centre|||Jack Hibberd
245||Bert Law
197||Ken Krocker
122|||||Jack Hibberd|-| style="background:whitesmoke;"|Whitehorse West||Anthony Fekete
185||John Watt
200|||Tony Penikett
230||Al Omotani
81
Guy Julien
37|||Flo Whyard†|}
After the election, four of the elected members in the Progressive Conservative Party, including Chris Pearson, were added to the Executive Committee headed by Commissioner Art Pearson. In October 1979, at the instruction of Jake Epp, Federal Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, the Commissioner withdrew from direct government administration; Chris Pearson became Government Leader (equal to Premier), added a fifth member of the PC Party caucus, and formed the Executive Council of Yukon, thus beginning responsible government with an elected head of government in The Yukon. Art Pearson would later resign as Commissioner after pleading guilty to charges related to improper mining claim transfers and was replaced with Frank Fingland.[2]