1877 Mexican general election

The **1877 Mexican general election** was held on Sunday November 24, 1877 to simultaneously elect the President of Mexico for the 1878-82 presidential term and to elect members of the 9th Congress of Mexico. The election was the second to be held under the 1873 constitution and was the last presidential election in Mexican history, as well as the last combined election to be held under the Republic of Mexico.

Following the First Mexican Revolution, a new constitution was implemented and the formerly defunct Congress of Mexico was revived in preparation for general elections in November 1873. In the aftermath of the election, Pedro de Iturbide and his Restoration Party were swept into government with a wave of popular support winning Iturbide the presidency and granting his party control over congress. During the Iturbide administration, the government's domestic policy was largely focused on agrarian and industrial policy - amid a growing global industrial revolution, President Iturbide sought to create the economic conditions for the establishment of a major industrial sector in Mexico, and subsequently revoked many of the radical labour laws implemented by his predecessor. For agrarian policy, Iturbide implemented protectionist tariffs on the import of foreign grain, sugar, and tropical fruits in a bid to preserve the Mexican agricultural industry against increasingly cheap foreign imports from the British Caribbean.

After being term limited and prevented from immediate re-election, in July 1877, incumbent president Pedro de Iturbide was nominated by the Restoration Party as the vice presidential candidate, whilst former president Juan Almonte became the presidential nominee - however, Almonte was widely regarded to be a figurehead leader to facilitate Iturbide's continued rule. Despite having previously supported Iturbide in all elections since 1864, the Mexican Radical Party announced Manuel Robles Pezuela and Benito Juárez as their own presidential ticket after splitting with the government over policy disagreements in 1876. Presidential elections were held in each of the thirty two federal states of the Republic of Mexico, with each state independently holding an election for the presidency, and the electoral ticket which won seventeen or more state elections would be elected as president and vice president. If no ticket was able to win seventeen states, then the two tickets with the highest share of states would progress to a second electoral round, where the ticket with the most states won would be elected to office.

During the congressional election on November 24, 1877, all three hundred 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. The congressional election occurred concurrently with the presidential election, and voters were given two ballot papers for the separate elections. During the election campaign, the Restoration Party pledged to introduce a liberal economic policy and decriminalise support for monarchism, whilst the Mexican Radical Party campaigned on a platform of free trade, minority rights for indigenous and black Mexicans, and the dismantling of several government institutions.

On December 9, 1877, the Secretariat of the Interior announced that Juan Almonte had been elected as president of Mexico and released the results of all 300 congressional elections. Pedro de Iturbide's Restoration Party also retained its supermajority in the Congress of Mexico and gained twenty six seats, whilst the Mexican Radical Party lost thirty four seats. On January 1, 1874, Juan Almonte and Pedro de Iturbide were inaugurated as president and vice president respectively, whilst the newly elected 9th Congress of Mexico began its first session the same day after all elected members were sworn into office - in the new congress, Iturbide's brother Juan de Iturbide became the chairman of the congress and the most senior legislative official. During the Second Almonte administration, the 9th Congress voted almost exclusively in favour of government legislation, with the Restoration Party supporting the president's policy platform. In early 1881, the Restoration Party published a manifesto for the upcoming general elections; the manifesto's support for reinstating the monarchy caused a political crisis, leading to President Almonte threatening to ban the party. In response, the Restoration Party impeached Almonte, allowing Pedro de Iturbide to assume the presidency. Under Iturbide's second administration, snap elections were held to grant the government a mandate for constitutional reforms, and in November 1881, the Republic of Mexico became the Second Mexican Empire.