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1865 United Kingdom general election

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Field	Value
election_name	1865 United Kingdom general election
country	United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
type	parliamentary
ongoing	no
previous_election	1859 United Kingdom general election
previous_year	1859
previous_mps	outgoing members
next_election	1868 United Kingdom general election
next_year	1868
turnout	854,856
seats_for_election	All 658 seats in the House of Commons
majority_seats	330
elected_mps	elected members
election_date
<!-- Liberal -->	image1	[[File:Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston.jpg	160x160px]]
leader1	Viscount Palmerston
leader_since1	12 June 1859
party1	Liberal Party (UK)
leaders_seat1	Tiverton
last_election1	356 seats, 65.8%
seats1	369
seat_change1	13
popular_vote1	508,821
percentage1	59.5%
swing1	6.3 pp
<!-- Conservative -->	image2	[[File:Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby (cropped).jpg	160x160px]]
leader2	Earl of Derby
leader_since2	July 1846
party2	Conservative Party (UK)
leaders_seat2	House of Lords
last_election2	298 seats, 34.2%
seats2	289
seat_change2	9
popular_vote2	346,035
percentage2	40.5%
swing2	6.3 pp
title	Prime Minister
posttitle	Prime Minister after election
before_election	Viscount Palmerston
before_party	Liberal Party (UK)
after_election	Viscount Palmerston
after_party	Liberal Party (UK)
map_image	1865_UK_general_election_map.svg
map_caption	Colours denote the winning party—as shown in
map2_image	File:1865 UK GE Composition diagram.svg
map2_caption	Composition of the House of Commons after the election

The 1865 United Kingdom general election was held 7 July 1865 to 24 July 1865 to elect 658 members of the House of Commons. It saw the Liberals, led by Lord Palmerston, increase their large majority over the Earl of Derby's Conservatives to 80.

Palmerston died in October the same year and was succeeded by Lord John Russell as Prime Minister. Despite the Liberal majority, the party was divided by the issue of further parliamentary reform, and Russell resigned after being defeated in a vote in the House of Commons in 1866, leading to minority Conservative governments under Derby and then Benjamin Disraeli.

This was the last United Kingdom general election until 2019 where a party increased its majority after having been returned to office at the previous election with a reduced majority.

Corruption

The 1865 general election was regarded by contemporaries as being a generally dull contest nationally, which exaggerated the degree of corruption within individual constituencies. In his PhD thesis, Cornelius O'Leary described The Times as having reported "the testimony is unanimous that in the General Election of 1865 there was more profuse and corrupt expenditure than was ever known before". As a result of allegations of corruption, 50 election petitions were lodged, of which 35 were pressed to a trial; 13 ended with the elected MP being unseated. In four cases a Royal Commission had to be appointed because of widespread corrupt practices in the constituency.

As a result, when he became Prime Minister in 1867, Benjamin Disraeli announced that he would introduce a new method for election petition trials, which were then determined by a committee of the House of Commons, resulting in the Parliamentary Elections Act 1868, whereby two Judges of the Court of Common Pleas, Exchequer of Pleas or Queen's Bench would be designated to try election petitions with full judicial salaries.

Constituencies

Many new constituencies were used for this election:

Northern West Riding of Yorkshire
Southern West Riding of Yorkshire

Results

Main article: List of MPs elected in the 1865 United Kingdom general election

|votes % = 59.52 |seats % = 56.08 |plus/minus = −6.2 |votes % = 40.48 |seats % = 43.92 |plus/minus = +6.2 |- class="sortbottom" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: right; background: #f2f2f2;" ! colspan="2" style="padding-left: 1.5em; text-align: left;" | Total | | 658 | | | +4 | 100 | 100 | 854,856 | |}

Voting summary

Seats summary

Regional results

Great Britain

Party	Candidates	Unopposed	Seats	Seats change	Votes	%
	433	133	311	5	457,289	60.0
	347	115	244	1	304,538	40.0
780	248	555		761,827	100

England

Party	Candidates	Unopposed	Seats	Seats change	Votes	%
	359	88	251		406,978	59.0
	308	94	213	4	291,238	41.0
667	182	464	4	698,216	100

Scotland

Party	Candidates	Unopposed	Seats	Seats change	Votes	%
	51	30	42	2	43,480	85.4
	17	7	11	2	4,305	14.6
68	37	53		47,785	100

Wales

Party	Candidates	Unopposed	Seats	Seats change	Votes	%
	21	15	18	3	4,565	74.0
	16	12	14	3	1,600	26.0
37	27	32		6,165	100

Ireland

Main article: United Kingdom general election, 1865 (Ireland)

Party	Candidates	Unopposed	Seats	Seats change	Votes	%
	83	28	58	8	51,532	55.6
	59	27	45	8	41,497	44.4
142	55	103		93,029	100

Universities

Party	Candidates	Unopposed	Seats	Seats change	Votes	%
	6	2	6		7,395	76.5
	2	0	0		2,266	23.5
8	2	6		9,661	100

Source:

Notes

References

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

1865-united-kingdom-general-election 1865-elections-in-the-united-kingdom 1865-in-the-united-kingdom general-elections-to-the-parliament-of-the-united-kingdom july-1865 edward-smith-stanley,-14th-earl-of-derby henry-john-temple,-3rd-viscount-palmerston

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