n.
An election involving all or most constituencies of a state or nation in the choice of candidates.
general election
| Dictionary: general election |
n.
| British History: general elections |
General elections have changed over the years. Until the 17th cent., there was no statutory requirement about their frequency, and the Triennial Act of 1694, which laid down that a general election must be held every three years at most, was the first effective legal provision. In 1716 the Septennial Act lengthened the period to seven years, an interval which lasted until the Parliament Act of 1911 reduced it to five years.
Many seats were uncontested right up until the end of the 19th cent. Even in 1900, 165 candidates in Great Britain were returned unopposed, and a further 69 in Ireland. Today it is normal for every seat to be contested.
In the 17th and 18th cents. general elections scarcely merited the term ‘general’. They were essentially struggles between magnates and other interests for local paramountcy, and national factors played little part. Indeed, as late as 1830 it was not clear whether the Whigs or the Tories had won the general election, since many MPs sat loose to party. Elections in the 18th cent. did not choose governments, which, with heavy powers of patronage, could normally expect to carry any election. The decline of patronage made this increasingly hard and also created a vacuum which was filled by organized parties. Nowadays, general elections are held to choose a government and the choice of MPs is usually incidental to that decision.
| WordNet: general election |
Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.
The noun has one meaning:
Meaning #1:
a national or state election; candidates are chosen in all constituencies
| Wikipedia: General election |
A general election is an election in which all or most members of a given political body are up for election. The term is usually used to refer to elections held for a nation's primary legislative body, as distinguished from by-elections and local elections.
The term originates in the United Kingdom general elections for the House of Commons.
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In the United States of America
General election is also a term used to differentiate from a primary election. In the United States, primary elections serve to narrow down a field of candidates, and general elections actually elect candidates to offices. The general election is usually held on Election Day, Tuesday after the first Monday in November of even-numbered years.
It meets the above definition of "general election" because the entire United States House of Representatives is elected on Election Day, though not the entire United States Congress. Before passage of the 17th Amendment, members of the United States Senate were not directly elected by the people but rather by their state's legislatures. Though Senators have been directly elected since then, only one-third of them are available for election on any given General Election Day. The U.S. President is also chosen during a November General Election that follows primaries.
In the United Kingdom
The General elections in United Kingdom refer to the election of Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons; these must be held 5 years after the first session of the new parliament, (usually within 5 years and 1 month of the last one to due to the time it takes for parliament to assemble and the election campaign), but are often held before that time as it is up to the parties in government when to call a general election. The current Labour Party government have held general elections every four years since coming to power in May 1997 and thereafter in June 2001 and May 2005. Therefore another election is not legally obliged to occur until June 2010, although there is significant public support behind calling an election sooner, in 2009, via Number 10's official website: http://www.number10.gov.uk/ under the petitions section, called "GoToCountryNow".
General elections in Britain traditionally take place on a Thursday; the last general election not on a Thursday was that of 1931.
The five year limit on the time of a Parliament can be varied by an Act of Parliament. This was done during both World Wars; the Parliament elected in December 1910 was prolonged to November 1918, and that elected in November 1935 lasted until June 1945. The House of Lords has an absolute veto on any Bill to extend the life of a Parliament.
In India
General Elections in India is the largest exercise of democracy in the World. In 2004, Indian elections covered an electorate larger than 670 million people—over twice that of the next largest, the European Parliament elections—and declared expenditure has trebled since 1989 to almost $300 million, using more than 1 million electronic voting machines[1]. The Election Commission of India coordinates the elections, which owing to the huge size of the electorate is conducted in a phased manner.
Japan
Footnotes
- ^ Indian General Election Expenditure, from ECI website accessed 14 May 2006.
External links
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| British History. A Dictionary of British History. Copyright © 2001, 2004 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "General election". Read more |
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