Italian general election, 1880

Italian general election, 1880
All 508 seats to the Chamber of Deputies of the Kingdom of Italy
Prime Minister before election; Benedetto Cairoli ; Historical Left	Subsequent Prime Minister ; Benedetto Cairoli ; Historical Left

Last updated April 10, 2019

General elections were held in Italy on 16 May 1880, with a second round of voting on 23 May.^[1]

Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and the enclaved microstates San Marino and Vatican City. Italy covers an area of 301,340 km² (116,350 sq mi) and has a largely temperate seasonal and Mediterranean climate. With around 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous EU member state and the most populous country in Southern Europe.

Electoral campaign

The Historical Left was led by the Prime Minister of Italy, Agostino Depretis, long time Prime Minister of Italy.

The Left group, later called Historical Left by historians to distinguish it from the left-wing groups of the 20th century, was a liberal and reformist parliamentary group in Italy during the second half of the 19th century. The members of the Left were also known as Democrats or Ministerials. Differently by his Right counterpart, the Left was the result of coalition who represented Northern and Southern middle class, urban bourgeoisie, small businessmen, journalists and academics. It also supported a right to vote and the public school for all children. Moreover, the party was against the high taxation's policies promoted by the Right. Since the 1890s, the Left showed conservative tendencies, breaking strikes and protests and promoting a colonialist policy in Africa.

The President of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic, commonly referred to in Italy as Presidente del Consiglio, or informally as Premier and known in English as the Prime Minister of Italy, is the head of government of the Italian Republic. The office of Prime Minister is established by Articles 92 through to 96 of the Constitution of Italy. The Prime Minister is appointed by the President of the Republic after each general election and must have the confidence of the Italian Parliament to stay in office.

Agostino Depretis was an Italian statesman and politician. He was the Prime Minister of Italy for several times between 1876 and 1887 and leader of the Historical Left parliamentary group for more than a decade. He is the fourth-longest serving Prime Minister in Italian history, after Benito Mussolini, Giovanni Giolitti and Silvio Berlusconi. Depretis is widely considered one of the most powerful and important politicians in Italian history.

The bloc of the Historical Right was led by Marco Minghetti, a conservative politician and former Prime Minister, from Bologna.

The Right group, later called Historical Right by historians to distinguish it from the right-wing groups of the 20th century, was an Italian parliamentary group during the second half of the 19th century. Since 1876, the Historical Right constituted the Constitutional opposition toward the left governments. Since 1882, its members were usually labeled as Constitutionals or Liberal-Conservatives, especially during the leadership of Rudinì and Sonnino. Few prime ministers after 1852 were party men; instead they accepted support where they could find it, and even the governments of the Historical Right during the 1860s included leftists.

Marco Minghetti was an Italian economist and statesman.

Bologna is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna Region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy, at the heart of a metropolitan area of about one million people.

A third large parliamentary group was the Dissident Left, composed by former members of the Left, which were against the alliance with the Right. Also known as La Pentarchia (The Pentarchy), its main leader was Giuseppe Zanardelli, a jurisconsult from Brescia.

The Dissident Left, commonly named The Pentarchy like its five leaders, was a progressive and radical parliamentary group active in Italy during the last decades of the 19th century.

Giuseppe Zanardelli was an Italian jurisconsult, nationalist and political figure. He was the Prime Minister of Italy from 15 February 1901 to 3 November 1903. He was a distinguished jurist and eloquent orator, and Grand Master freemason. Zanardelli, representing the bourgeoisie from Lombardy, personified the classical 19th-century left liberalism, committed to suffrage expansion, anticlericalism, civil liberties, free trade and laissez-faire economics. Throughout his long political career, he was among the most ardent advocates of freedom of conscience and divorce.

Brescia is a city and comune in the region of Lombardy in northern Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, a few kilometres from the lakes Garda and Iseo. With a population of more than 200,000, it is the second largest city in the region and the fourth of northwest Italy. The urban area of Brescia extends beyond the administrative city limits and has a population of 672,822, while over 1.5 million people live in its metropolitan area. The city is the administrative capital of the Province of Brescia, one of the largest in Italy, with over 1,200,000 inhabitants.

The Historical Left group emerged as the largest in Parliament, although left-wing dissidents won 119 of the 508 seats, becoming the third parliamentary group.^[2] Only 621,896 men of a total population of around 29 million were entitled to vote.^[3] Benedetto Cairoli was confirmed Prime Minister by the king Umberto I.

The Italian Parliament is the national parliament of the Italian Republic. The Parliament is the representative body of Italian citizens and is the successor to the Parliament of the Kingdom of Sardinia (1848–1861) and the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946). It is a bicameral legislature with 945 elected members and a small number of unelected members (parlamentari). It is composed of the Chamber of Deputies, with 630 members (deputati) elected on a national basis, and the Senate of the Republic, with 315 members (senatori) elected on a regional basis, plus a small number of senators for life, either appointed or ex officio. The two houses are independent from one another and never meet jointly except under circumstances specified by the Constitution.

Parties and leaders

	Ideology	Leader
Historical Left	Liberalism, Centrism	Agostino Depretis
Historical Right	Conservatism, Monarchism	Marco Minghetti
Dissident Left	Progressivism, Social liberalism	Giuseppe Zanardelli

Results

← Summary of May 1880 Chamber of Deputies election results →
Party		Votes	%	Seats	+/−

	Historical Left	146,096	40.7	218	−196
	Historical Right	135,797	37.9	171	+77
	Dissident Left	70,479	19.7	119	New
	Others	6,147	1.7	0	0
Invalid/blank votes		11,245	–	–	–
Total		369,624	100	508	0
Registered voters/turnout		621,896	59.4	–	–
Source: Nohlen & Stöver

Popular vote

Historical Left			40.7%
Historical Right			37.9%
Dissident Left			19.7%
Others			1.7%

Parliamentary seats

Historical Left			42.9%
Historical Right			33.7%
Dissident Left			23.4%

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References

↑ Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p1047 ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7
↑ Nohlen & Stöver, p1082
↑ Nohlen & Stöver, p1049

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[NS-1] Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p1047 ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7

[2] Nohlen & Stöver, p1082

[3] Nohlen & Stöver, p1049

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