Italian general election, 1870

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20 and 27 November 1870

1874 →

All 508 seats to the Italian Chamber of Deputies

	Majority party	Minority party

Leader	Giovanni Lanza	Urbano Rattazzi
Party	Historical Right	Historical Left
Leader's seat	Vignale	Alessandria
Seats won	233	195
Seat change	82	30
Popular vote	110,525 (est.)	92,499 (est.)
Percentage	45.9%	38.4%

Prime Minister before election

Giovanni Lanza
Historical Right

Elected Prime Minister

Giovanni Lanza
Historical Right

General elections were held in Italy on 20 November 1870, with a second round of voting on 27 November. They were a snap election, called by Prime Minister Giovanni Lanza to take advantage by the Capture of Rome and to give parliamentary representation to the future capital of Italy.

Only 530,018 men of a total population of around 26 million were entitled to vote. They were largely aristocrats representing rentiers from the north of the country, and held moderate political views including loyalty to the crown and low government spending.

The Historical Right was led by the Prime Minister of Italy, Giovanni Lanza, a conservative politician from Piedmont.

The bloc of the Historical Left was led by Urbano Rattazzi, a liberal politician and former Prime Minister, who led the left-wing for more than a decade.

The electoral result was controversial; in terms of percentages, Prime Minister Giovanni Lanza fully exploited the prestige of the Capture of Rome against his parliamentary opponents. However, the turnout further declined after the Non expedit of Pope Pius IX, so that less than 1% of the total population of the country took part to this election. The newly completed Italian State so revealed itself as a strict oligarchy with a deep fracture with its same population, creating a damage which was never really repaired.

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