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All670 seats in theHouse of Commons 336 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 3,572,439 78.4% (  1.0pp) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Colours denote the winning party | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Diagram showing the composition of the House of Commons following the election | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The1895 United Kingdom general election was held from 13 July to 7 August 1895. The result was a Conservative parliamentary majority of 153.
William Gladstone had retired as prime minister the previous year, andQueen Victoria, disregarding Gladstone's advice to nameLord Spencer as his successor, appointed theEarl of Rosebery as the new prime minister. Rosebery's government found itself largely in a state of paralysis due to a power struggle between him andWilliam Harcourt, the Liberal leader in the Commons. The situation came to a head on 21 June, when Parliament voted to dismissSecretary of State for WarHenry Campbell-Bannerman; Rosebery, realising that the government would likely not survive amotion of no confidence were one to be brought, promptly resigned as prime minister.Conservative leaderLord Salisbury was subsequently re-appointed for a third spell as prime minister, and promptly called a new election.
The election was won by the Conservatives, who continued their alliance with theLiberal Unionist Party and won a large majority. The Liberals, in contrast, went down to what at the time was their worst result since the party's foundation, winning just 177 seats. TheIrish Parliamentary Party was split at this time; most of its MPs (the"Anti-Parnellites") followedJohn Dillon, while a rump (the"Parnellites") followedJohn Redmond. TheIndependent Labour Party, having only previously existed as a loose grouping of left-wing politicians, formally organized into a party led byKeir Hardie in 1893 and contested their first election. They earned relatively little attention at this election, winning slightly less than one per cent of the popular vote and no seats, but would enjoy greater success five years later, when they ran under the banner of theLabour Representation Committee.
This was the last United Kingdom general election where neither the incumbent prime minister nor leader of the main opposition party sat in the House of Commons, with Rosebery and Salisbury both sitting in the House of Lords, andWilliam Harcourt andArthur Balfour respectively acting as the Commons leaders for the Liberals and Conservatives.
| Candidates | Votes | ||||||||||
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| Party | Leader | Stood | Elected | Gained | Unseated | Net | % of total | % | No. | Net % | |
| Conservative and Liberal Unionist | Lord Salisbury | 588 | 411 | 114 | 17 | +97 | 61.34 | 49.25 | 1,759,484 | +2.2 | |
| Liberal | Lord Rosebery | 447 | 177 | 18 | 112 | −94 | 26.42 | 45.58 | 1,628,405 | +0.2 | |
| Irish National Federation | John Dillon | 77 | 70 | −2 | 10.45 | 2.59 | 92,556 | −2.6 | |||
| Irish National League | John Redmond | 26 | 12 | +3 | 1.79 | 1.34 | 47,698 | −0.2 | |||
| Ind. Labour Party | Keir Hardie | 28 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.96 | 34,433 | N/A | |||
| Independent Liberal | N/A | 3 | 0 | −1 | 0 | 0.10 | 3,733 | ||||
| Social Democratic Federation | H. M. Hyndman | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.09 | 3,122 | +0.1 | |||
| Independent Lib-Lab | N/A | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.07 | 2,348 | ||||
| Independent Labour | N/A | 1 | 0 | −3 | 0 | 0.02 | 608 | ||||
| Independent | N/A | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 52 | ||
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