1880 United Kingdom general election

1880 United Kingdom general election

← 1874 31 March – 27 April 1880 (1880-03-31 – 1880-04-27)[1] 1885 →
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All 652 seats in the House of Commons 327 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	3,359,416
First party Second party Third party   HRL Leader Spencer Cavendish The Earl of Beaconsfield William Shaw Party Liberal Conservative Home Rule Leader since January 1875 27 February 1868 May 1879 Leader's seat North East Lancashire House of Lords County Cork Last election 242 seats, 52.0% 350 seats, 44.3% 60 seats, 3.7% Seats won 352[a] 237 63 Seat change 110 113 3 Popular vote 1,836,423 1,426,349 95,528 Percentage 54.7% 42.5% 2.8% Swing 2.7 pp 1.8 pp 0.9 pp
Colours denote the winning party
Composition of the House of Commons after the election
Prime Minister before election Earl of Beaconsfield Conservative Prime Minister after the election William Gladstone Liberal

The 1880 United Kingdom general election was held from 31 March to 27 April 1880. It saw the Liberal opposition triumph with 352 seats.

Its intense rhetoric was led by the Midlothian campaign of the Liberals, particularly the fierce oratory of Liberal leader William Gladstone.^[2] He vehemently attacked the foreign policy of the government of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, as utterly immoral. The endeavours of the Disraeli government in Africa, India, Afghanistan and Europe, which were only partially successful and often accompanied by early, humiliating defeats, gave a good deal of fodder to Gladstone for his attacks. Further, Disraeli's favoured dealing with the Turks, who were responsible for horrendous atrocities against Balkan Christians also laid him open to religious attacks, especially in Gladstone's pamphlet “The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East” (1876). Gladstone's campaign was a synthesis of the two approaches in a populist manner adapted towards liberalism.

Liberals secured one of their largest-ever majorities, leaving the Conservatives a distant second. As a result of the campaign, the Liberal Commons leader, Lord Hartington and that in the Lords, Lord Granville, stood back in favour of Gladstone, who thus became Prime Minister a second time. It was the last general election in which any party other than the Conservatives won a majority of the total votes (rather than a mere plurality), as well the only time (except for 1906) until 1945 in which any party other than the Conservatives won a majority.

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