1873 Mexican general election

The **1873 Mexican general election** was held on Sunday November 23, 1873 to simultaneously elect the President of Mexico for the 1874-78 presidential term and to elect members of the 8th Congress of Mexico. The election marked the first congressional elections since 1850, the first elections under the 1873 constitution, and the first time that presidential and congressional elections were held simultaneously.

Following the fraudulent 1869 presidential election, political demonstrations and strikes in protest against the re-election of President José Mariano Salas spiralled into open revolt, which in turn became the First Mexican Revolution. In response, Salas initially attempted to remain in office but resigned after three months of protest, leaving Vice President Félix María Zuloaga to assume the presidency - however, after only six months in office, Zuloaga also resigned from office and transferred the presidency to general Juan Almonte in April 1870. Under Zuloaga, the government reached a settlement with the rebel forces and brought rebel leader Pedro de Iturbide and his Restoration Party into government in February 1872. This coalition government reinstated the former Congress of Mexico via the provisional Committee Representing the Congress of Mexico, which was comprised of 167 members of the Mexican Radical Party, the successor party to the liberal faction which was deposed by Salas in 1852. The Mexican Radical Party's control over the CRCM allowed it to become an equal member of the coalition government, and in 1873 the CRCM was formally recognised as a full session of congress in order to grant it the legitimacy to pass a new constitution. The 1873 constitution prohibited the president and vice president belonging to a political party whilst in office and transferred powers to congress.

In July 1873, Pedro de Iturbide and Miguel Miramon were nominated as the presidential ticket of the Restoration Party for a third run at the presidency, and were also supported in their campaign by the Mexican Radical Party. Incumbent president Juan Almonte also launched a presidential bid as an independent candidate, with José Ignacio Pavón as his vice presidential candidate. 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 23, 1873, 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 10, 1873, the Secretariat of the Interior announced that Pedro de Iturbide had been elected as president of Mexico and released the results of all 300 congressional elections. Iturbide's Restoration Party also gained a supermajority in the Congress of Mexico, whilst the Mexican Radical Party lost sixty seats. On January 1, 1874, Pedro de Iturbide and Miguel Miramon were inaugurated as president and vice president respectively, whilst the newly elected 8th Congress of Mexico began its first session the same day after all elected members were sworn into office. During the Iturbide administration, the 8th Congress voted almost exclusively in favour of government legislation, with both major parties (Restoration Party and Mexican Radical Party) supporting the president's policy platform. However, during the 1874-78 legislative term, relations between the two parties soured significantly and the two cut off cooperation during the run-up to the 1877 general election, with the Mexican Radical Party running a separate presidential campaign.