The first general election in Georgeland as an independent dominion of the British Empire was held on Friday, September 4, 1891. While a limited form of self-government had been present in Georgeland for decades, the election was the first in which members of a new House of Commons and Senate were chosen and at which the winning party's leader became Prime Minister. Robert Pearce had been chosen as interim Prime Minister on July 1, and as leader of the governing Conservative Party, led the interim government into the election.
Pearce's main opponents were the Protectionists, whose policies and party structure were much more loosely defined than that of the Conservatives, but had loosely organised around trade protectionism, as opposed to the Tories who broadly supported free trade and abolition of tariffs. The Protectionists had no leader in the formal sense, but Alexander McGough was their chief spokesman and would presumably have been commissioned to form a government had the Protectionists won enough seats to do so.
The third party, which would gain much more prominence later, was the United Islands Labour Party, led by Robert McClutcheon. Though it had a (mostly) binding caucus and federal structure, the Labour Party was chiefly composed of various trade union groups. It did not contest the elections under the same name in every state, and while McClutcheon had been chosen as the party's chief spokesman at a special conference in late July, several other people had contradicted and campaigned almost completely separately from McClutcheon.
With the other two parties in disarray, it was no surprise when Pearce's Conservatives won a majority of Commons seats. However, the margin of victory was much smaller than had been anticipated, with the Tories winning 64 out of 120 seats, a majority of only eight. The Protectionists won 35 seats, and thus became the official opposition, while Labour's nineteen seats gave it a significant presence in the Commons. Two independents - Jacob Byrnes and Sir William Mitchell were elected.
House of Commons | |||||||||||||||||||
| Registered Voters | 1,713,577 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Votes Cast | 1,124,106 | Turnout | 65.6% | NA | |||||||||||||||
| Informal Votes | 59,465 | Informal % | 5.29% | NA | |||||||||||||||
| Party | Leader | Seats contested | Primary Votes | % | Swing | Seats won | Change | ||||||||||||
| Conservative Party of Georgeland | Robert Pearce | 120 | 516,351 | 48.5% | NA | 64 | NA | ||||||||||||
| Protectionist Party of Georgeland | Alexander McGough | 120 | 333,233 | 31.3% | NA | 35 | NA | ||||||||||||
| Georgeland Labour Party | Robert McClutcheon | 120 | 174,601 | 16.4% | NA | 19 | NA | ||||||||||||
| Other | Various | 59 | 40,456 | 3.8% | NA | 2 | NA | ||||||||||||
| Total | 1,064,641 | 120 | |||||||||||||||||
| Previous election None |
General Elections in Georgeland 1891 |
Next election 1895 |