Talk:1835 United Kingdom general election

Irish Parliamentary Party

Surely the figures for the Whigs are including those for the Irish Parliamentary Party's predecessory (whose name escapes me; 1835 predates the Home Rule League)? I'm not sure that they were officially a part of the Whigs at any point… — OwenBlacker 12:29, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

• The grouping were pretty fluid, and I can't find any sources which differentiate the Nationalist vote/seats from the Whig tallies - note that it also doesn't separate out the Radicals. If you can find a source which does, please add the information! Warofdreams talk 17:20, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland 1801-1922 explains that there was an electoral pact between the Whigs (who Walker calls Liberals from 1832) and the Repealers for this election. Although it would be possible to calculate totals for the candidates Walker designated Liberal (Repealer), it seems a bit pointless. I did use the seat totals for the Repeal Association article, but I did not bother with vote totals.

Craig's calculations, on which our general election results are based (which incorporates Walker's Irish figures), seem to me to be as good as we are going to get. Before 1859 there is a mass of more or less allied Whig, Radical, Reformer, Liberal and various Irish candidates, which compilers of election results combine in one category be it Whig or Liberal. I am not aware that anyone has undertaken the massive task of examining every individual in these categories to try to group them more precisely in aggregate tables. From about 1859 the most important single fact about a politician was which party he belonged to. Very few of them were not clearly associated with one organisation. This was not the way things worked in the more fluid politics before that time, so it seems to me that we should accept the traditional approach of having a category for a broad tendency and not trying to sub-divide further. --Gary J (talk) 12:01, 20 January 2008 (UTC)