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206 seats in the House of Commons 104 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 69.6% [1] ( 0.7pp) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 1874 Canadian electoral map | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 The Canadian parliament after the 1874 election | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The 1874 Canadian federal election was held on January 22, 1874, to elect members of the House of Commons of Canada of the 3rd Parliament of Canada. Sir John A. Macdonald, who had recently been forced out of office as prime minister, and his Conservatives were defeated by the Liberal Party under their new leader Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie. Macdonald's government had been forced to resign on November 5, 1873, because of allegations of corruption relating to the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway (see the Pacific Scandal). The Tories were unable to recover from the scandal and lost the next election.
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The Liberals under Mackenzie had formed a government on November 7 and then called an election for January.
The election was the first general election after Prince Edward Island's entry into Confederation.
Mackenzie was a reformer, and the 1874 election was the first Canadian election to use secret ballots. He promised to reform election laws in other ways too, including the introduction of simultaneous voting (all seats filled at once instead of successively in a long-drawn-out election period), judicial consideration of contested elections, and extension of the franchise. He also made most important pledges concerning railway projects. [2]
