General election
election in which all or most members of a given political body are chosen
A general election is an electoral process to choose most or all members of a governing body at the same time. They are distinct from by-elections, which fill individual seats that have become vacant between general elections. General elections typically occur at regular intervals as mandated by a country's constitution or electoral laws, and may include elections for a legislature and sometimes other positions such as a directly elected president. In many jurisdictions, general elections can coincide with other electoral events such as local, regional, or supranational elections. For example, on 25 May 2014, Belgian voters simultaneously elected their national parliament, 21 members of the European Parliament, and regional parliaments.
In the United States, "general election" has a slightly different, but related meaning: the ordinary electoral competition following the selection of candidates in the primary election.
United Kingdom
The term general election in the United Kingdom often refers to the elections held on the same day in all constituencies of their members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons.
Historically, English and later British general elections took place over a period of several weeks, with individual constituencies holding polling on different days. However, from the 1918 election onwards, the elections in all constituencies have been held on the same day. There has been a convention since the 1930s that general elections in Britain should take place on a Thursday; the last general election to take place on any other weekday was that of 1931.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “General election” as election in which all or most members of a given political body are chosen. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as election in which all or most members of a given political body are chosen. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1076105. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2014, 1918 and 1931.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “General election”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow General election primary sources, General election archive and General research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “General election”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “General election” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.