1907 Mexican general election

The **1907 Mexican general election** was held on Sunday May 18, 1907 to elect members of the 15th Congress of Mexico, and was the fifth Mexican election to be held under the 1881 constitution, as well as the first congressional election to take place following the 1904 congressional reforms. It was also the first election since 1887 that any party won more than two hundred seats.

In the aftermath of the First Mexican Revolution in 1869-70, the Restoration Party became the dominant Mexican political party and remained in office across several different constitutions until the 1901 general election, which saw a two-way coalition government under the leadership of Bernardo Reyes formed by the Mexican Radical Party and the Progressive Party. Under the coalition government, prime minister Bernardo Reyes implemented a series of reforms, increasing the number of congressmen from 320 to 480, implementing universal male suffrage, expanding the remits of the Secretariat of the Treasury and the Secretariat of the Interior to allow the departments to advocate for workers rights, and utilising the Secretariat of Justice to break up monopolies. The increasing age of both Emperor Pedro II and Crown Prince Juan led the government to pass the Succession to the Crown Act of 1906, which legislated for the formation of a regency council to govern the country as a collective head of state in the instances of a vacancy in the throne without an eligible heir or the ascension of a monarch under the age of 21. After six years of the 14th Congress of Mexico, the legislature automatically expired on March 1, 1907 and was dissolved by Emperor Pedro II in preparation for an election on May 18, 1907.

During the election on May 18, 1907 all four hundred and eighty seats in the Congress of Mexico were up for election through the first-past-the-post electoral system, meaning that the candidate with the highest number of votes in each constituency would be duly elected as the congressman for the region. Whilst elections were held simultaneously across the country, each individual Mexican state was responsible for drawing the constituency boundaries inside its territory, with each state being constitutionally limited to a maximum of fifteen constituencies. Prior to the 28th Amendment to the 1881 Mexican Constitution, states were limited to ten constituencies, resulting in a smaller congress of 320 members. The amendment also introduced a mechanism of introducing boundary reviews once every decade - if the boundary reviews were to conclude that more representation was required, then the Congress of Mexico could be enlarged.

The electoral campaign was contested by the three major parties, the State's Committee, and the newly formed Coahuila Labour Party. The governing Mexican Radical Party and Progressive Party launched a joint campaign with the pledge to back worker's rights, implement basic standards of work, restrict the constitutional power of the monarchy, and strip the emperor of their title as "defender of the faith". The Restoration Party under Francisco León de la Barra campaigned on the promise of shrinking the government, protecting the Catholic Church and the powers of the monarchy, and protecting business interests. The Coahuila Labour Party campaigned for greater regional autonomy for the state of Coahuila - the party ruled out running in any state other than Coahuila, initially seeking only to control the state's representation in congress, but would go on to target a seat in the neighbouring state of Zacatecas as an experiment to test the nationwide viability of the party's labourite platform. The States' Committee sought to repeal the 1881 constitution of Mexico and turn the empire into a confederation of states under personal union with Pedro II of Mexico as the shared head of state.

On June 5, 1907, the results of the election were published in the Imperial Gazette in Mexico City. The Mexican Radical Party won 217 out of the 480 seats, whilst the Restoration Party won 171 seats, the Progressive Party won 48, the States' Committee won 18, the Coahuila Labour Party won 16, and independent congressmen won 8 seats. The newly elected 15th Congress of Mexico met for the first time on August 19, 1907 and would remain in session until December 1909. Due to the Mexican Radical Party's lack of an absolute majority in the newly elected congress, party leader Bernardo Reyes attempted to form a second coalition with the Progressive Party, but the Progressive Party's smaller than expected electoral gains prompted party leader Manuel González to decline a coalition, and instead simply offer a confidence and supply arrangement whereby the party would support the government externally. The new Mexican Radical Party minority administration took office on August 19, 1907 after Reyes was reappointed as prime minister by Emperor Pedro II.

Having formed a new minority administration, during his second term prime minister Bernardo Reyes began the implementation of a package of workers rights by attempting to pass the National Workers Contract Bill of 1909 - however, the legislation was condemned by the Restoration Party for being to radical and "anti-business", by the State's Committee for being too interventionist, and by the Coahuila Labour Party and the Progressive Party for not going far enough. Subsequently, the legislation collapsed in the face of opposition and Reyes requested the dissolution of congress for a snap election to be held in January 1910.