New Zealand general election, 1896

1896 general election

← 1893

4 (general) & 19 December (Māori) 1896

1899 →

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All 74 seats in the New Zealand House of Representatives
38 seats were needed for a majority

Turnout

76.1%

	First party	Second party

Leader	Richard Seddon	William Russell
Party	Liberal	Conservative
Leader since	1893	1894
Leader's seat	Westland	Hawke's Bay
Last election	51 seats	13 seats
Seats won	39	26
Seat change	12	13
Popular vote	184,650	114,574
Percentage	54.78	33.99
Swing	3.02%	9.50

Prime Minister before election

Richard Seddon
Liberal

Prime Minister-designate

Richard Seddon
Liberal

The New Zealand general election of 1896 was held on Wednesday, 4 December in the general electorates, and on Thursday, 19 December in the Māori electorates to elect a total of 74 MPs to the 13th session of the New Zealand Parliament. A total number of 337,024 (76.1%) voters turned out to vote.

1896 was the year the limit of £200 was placed on each candidate's campaign spending.

The Liberal government campaigned on a platform that the election was between the people and the "selfish few". The economy stagnated, raising unemployment, which caused support for the Liberals to fall in the cities and they lost many seats, though not enough to be removed from office by the Conservatives. In rural areas, the swing in support was not as large due to the public works and land settlement programmes helping to support the regions. In June 1896 Seddon had replaced Joseph Ward as Finance Minister whilst the latter had resigned after being declared temporarily bankrupt. As such Seddon himself took on the workload of the treasury making him more susceptible to opposition attacks over the economy. He proved to be a cautious financier, budgeting for surpluses while maintaining the spirit of self reliance his predecessor John Ballance had advocated.

The following table gives party strengths and vote distribution according to Wilson (1985), who records Maori representatives as Independents prior to the 1905 election.

The table below shows the results of the 1896 general election:

Key

Liberal Conservative Independent Liberal Liberal-Labour Independent

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