General Election

In a parliamentary system, a general election is an election in which all or most members of a given political body are chosen. The term is usually used to refer to elections held for a nation's primary legislative body, as distinguished from by-elections and local elections.

In presidential systems, the term refers to a regularly-scheduled election where both the president, and either "a class" of or all members of the national legislature are elected at the same time. A general election day may also include elections for local officials.

The term originates in the United Kingdom general elections for the House of Commons.

Read more about General Election:  In The United Kingdom, In Hong Kong, In India, Japan, American Usage

Famous quotes containing the words general and/or election:

    Towards him they bend
    With awful reverence prone; and as a God
    Extoll him equal to the highest in Heav’n:
    Nor fail’d they to express how much they prais’d,
    That for the general safety he despis’d
    His own: for neither do the Spirits damn’d
    Loose all thir vertue; lest bad men should boast
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    Or close ambition varnisht o’er with zeal.
    John Milton (1608–1674)

    He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.
    John Dos Passos (1896–1970)