1899 New Zealand general election
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The 1899 New Zealand general election was held on 6 and 19 December in the European and MÄori electorates, respectively, to elect 74 MPs to the 14th session of the New Zealand Parliament. The election was again won by the Liberal Party, and Richard Seddon remained Prime Minister.
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
6 (general) & 19 December (MÄori) 1899
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
All 74 seats in the New Zealand House of Representatives 38 seats were needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turnout | 77.6% | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Results of the election. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1896 electoral redistribution
The last electoral redistribution was undertaken in 1896 for the 1896 election, and the same electorates were used again.[1] 34 seats were located in the North Island, 36 were in the South Island, and the remaining four were MÄori electorates.[2] Since the 1890 electoral redistribution, the four main centres had electorates with three seats each.[3]
The election
The 1899 election was held on Wednesday, 6 December in the general electorates, and on Tuesday, 19 December in the MÄori electorates to elect a total of 74 MPs to the 14th Parliament.[4] A total number of 373,744 (77.6%) voters turned out to vote.[5][6] In three electorates there was only one candidate, and they were thus returned unopposed.[5] Two of those were Liberal candidates: Richard Seddon in the Westland electorate, and John McKenzie in the Waihemo electorate. The third was an opposition representative, William Russell, who stood in the Hawke's Bay electorate.[7]
Two candidates died during the election campaign. A third, Henry Augustus Field, died two days after having been re-elected in the Otaki electorate.[8]
Results
Party totals
The following table gives party strengths and vote distribution according to Wilson (1985), who records Maori representatives as Independents prior to the 1905 election.[9]
 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Election results | ||||||
| Party | Candidates | Total votes | Percentage | Seats won | Change | |
| Liberal | 86 | 204,331 | 52.71 | 49 | +10 | |
| Conservative | 69 | 141,758 | 36.67 | 19 | -7 | |
| Independent | 43 | 41,540 | 10.72 | 6 | -3 | |
Votes summary
Electorate results
Seventy-four MPs were elected across sixty-two single-member, and four three-member electorates. The table below show the results of the 1899 general election:
Key
Liberal Conservative Independent Liberal LiberalâLabour Independent
Table footnotes:
- Note that in many newspapers, Keith is labelled as belonging to the opposition
- Not to be confused with James Whyte Kelly, who was defeated that election in the Invercargill electorate
- Note that the affiliation of many MÄori candidates is not known.