In the 1944 election, the CCF received 24% of the vote but won only 2 seats, due to the way the constituency boundaries were drawn, the single transferable vote system and the dominance of the Social Credit government, which received over 50% of ballots cast. Roper was joined in the legislature by Aylmer Liesemer, a Calgary schoolteacher. The rise of support for the CCF after 1942 mobilized the business community to pull out of efforts to build an anti-Social Credit party and instead back the Social Credit government, now led by Ernest Manning, after William Aberhart's death in 1943, as a bulwark against the socialists. Unlike the Saskatchewan CCF, which won office in the 1944 Saskatchewan election on a platform calling for social programs, the Alberta CCF was more radical and campaigned on provincial ownership of the province's resources and utilities. Irvine also advocated an alliance with the communist Labor-Progressive Party under Alberta's single transferable vote electoral system.