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All670 seats in theHouse of Commons 336 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 2,758,151 74.2% (  7.0pp) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Colours denote the winning party | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Diagram displaying the composition of the House of Commons following the general election | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The1886 United Kingdom general election took place from 1 to 27 July 1886, following the defeat of theGovernment of Ireland Bill 1886. It resulted in a major reversal of the results of the1885 election as theConservatives, led byLord Salisbury, were joined in an electoral pact with the breakaway Unionist wing of the Liberals led byLord Hartington (later the Duke of Devonshire) andJoseph Chamberlain. The newLiberal Unionist party elected 77 members and gave the Conservatives their parliamentary majority, but did not join them in a formal coalition.
William Ewart Gladstone'sLiberals, who supported theIrish Home Rule movement, and their sometimes allies theIrish Parliamentary Party, led byCharles Stewart Parnell, were placed a distant second. The split in the Liberal Party ended the period of Liberal dominance. They had held power for 18 of the 27 years since 1859 and won five of the six elections held during that time, but would only be in power for three of the next nineteen years. Thepolitical realignment resulting from the Liberal Unionist split also meant that between this election and the end of theSecond World War, only one election (in1906) would result in a party other than the Conservatives forming a majority government (though the Liberals, and later theLabour Party, would form minority governments with support from smaller parties). This was also the first election since the1841 election in which the Conservatives won a plurality or majority of the popular vote. They would ultimately win at least a plurality of the popular vote in every general election until1945, again with the exception of the 1906 election.
Most of the MPs were elected throughfirst-past-the-post voting in single-member districts.Conversely, 54 MPs were elected in two-seat districts by the use ofplurality block voting, where each voter could cast up to two votes.
| Candidates | Votes | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Leader | Stood | Elected | Gained | Unseated | Net | % of total | % | No. | Net % | |
| Conservative and Liberal Unionist | Lord Salisbury | 563 | 393 | 161 | 14 | +146 | 58.66 | 51.40 | 1,417,627 | +8.7 | |
| Liberal | William Ewart Gladstone | 449 | 192[a] | 24 | 152 | −127 | 28.66 | 45.13 | 1,244,683 | −2.2 | |
| Irish Parliamentary | Charles Stewart Parnell | 100 | 85 | 1 | 2 | −1 | 12.69 | 3.41 | 94,050 | −3.4 | |
| Independent Liberal | N/A | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.05 | 1,247 | ||
| Ind. Liberal Unionist | N/A | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.02 | 544 | ||
| Conservative and Liberal Unionist | 51.40% | |||
| Liberal | 45.13% | |||
| Irish Parliamentary | 3.41% | |||
| Independent Liberal | 0.05% | |||
| Independent Liberal Unionist | 0.02% | |||
| Conservative and Liberal Unionist | 58.66% | |||
| Liberal | 28.66% | |||
| Irish Parliamentary | 12.69% | |||
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