1240 Ardunan General Election

The 1240 General Election was a contentious election held for the Ardunan Parliament which saw the end of the Liberal majority in the House of Commons, and the official rise of the Labour Party of Ardun as a major institutional player. With no clear majority elected and a hung parliament, this election would see a complete institutional gridlock take over an already tense governmental structure, and these tensions would play a large part in the road towards the Ardunan Civil War.

Background

After the previous general election in 1236, which saw the conservatives narrowly lose their majority to Donall Buchanan's Liberal Party, the public's opinion on the Liberals had soured extensively. Their government had not been able to contain the effects of the ongoing economic depression, and the response to the Black Fever epidemic of 1239 was widely considered insufficient. Beyond that, Buchanan's plans to increase the dole and help the lower classes had left most people ineligible for government aid.
Beyond that, the Labour Party of Ardun was ascendant since the previous election, with well-managed strategic funding and an extensive campaign infrastructure within trade union circles run by the United Labour Front, Labour was running stronger candidates than ever before. 
Tensions in the lead-up to the election were also higher than they had been in decades; the ULF itself was a topic of great debate, with the conservatives calling for government crackdown on their illegal activities. The Liberals were initially in agreement with the conservative line, but the left wing of the party, composed mostly of social democrats, was supportive of the ULF, causing the Liberal messaging on the matter to become muddled. Clashes between the ULF and nationalist groups such as the Runik League were spreading into the electoral field, with bribery and voter intimidation campaigns coming into the spotlight. King Brannen himself broke with tradition to support the Conservatives, calling the Liberals and Labour alike "dangerous, wretched socialists, who would use the gears of our political machine to bludgeon our children and threaten our traditions". This alarmist sentiment was echoed through parts of the military, with a handful of generals publically threatening to impose martial law should the government be overtaken by "anarchic saboteurs".

Party Platforms

The Liberal Party ran on a platform of modernizing the Ardunan political system ("A Road to Democracy") to increase the powers of Parliament. Since the beginning of the depression, the King's executive veto power and influence within the House of Lords had stood in the way of sorely needed legislation. King Brannen's open hostility towards reform had forced the party to join progressives and socialists in calling for the end of executive royal power, a motion supported by a faction in the government referred to as Finalists. The campaign made strong efforts to attack the "executive bureaucracy" of the House of Lords and royal cabinet, so as to separate them from the public figure of King Brannen. The emphasis of the campaign was on how the end of crown authority would allow for reforms to end the depression.
The Labour Party ran on a platform of nationalization and welfare reform, with the "End the Hunger, Beat the Rot" program. It proposed to nationalize key industries such as mining and rail, and levy a tax on financial capital. They promised a better standard of living for workers, with higher wages, better housing, and a constitutionally enshrined right to organize. Their biggest proposal was the National Recovery Plan, which would establish a minimum wage, a social security net, a shorter workday, and a wave of public works projects.
The Conservative Party ran on a platform of law and order, to crack down on organized crime, and a plan of "Austerity Through the Storm". It also ran on a protectionist policy for trade to allow national industries to recover. Their biggest proposal was a spending reform that would cut both welfare spending and bureaucratic positions, placing more power back in the hands of the House of Lords.  They were supported by a relative newcomer to the electoral scene, the New Nationalist Party. The NNP stood by some conservative proposals, but it also ran on a platform of massively restricting the powers of Parliament and re-introducing elements of autocracy into the political system.

Results

The general election saw a significant loss for the Liberal Party, as well as minor losses for the Democratic-Progressive Party and the Farland Nationalist Movement.

Party	Leader	Prior	Elected	Net Gained	Net Unseated	% of total
Liberal	Donall Buchanan	254	168	0	86	34.3%
Conservative	Bernard Graves	150	154	4	0	31.4%
Labour	Jack Lennon	22	94	72	0	19.2%
New Nationalist	Carrow Trevane	6	35	29	0	7.1%
Democratic-Progressive	Thomas Shaw	38	20	0	18	4.1%
Farland Nationalist	Arvo Kotka	16	11	0	5	2.2%
Independent	N/A	4	8	4	0	1.6%
Independent Liberal	N/A	0	0	0	0	N/A
Independent Conservative	N/A	0	0	0	0	N/A
Independent Labour	N/A	0	0	0	0	N/A
Independent Socialist	N/A	0	0	0	0	N/A
Faelund Separatist	Ervan Poldark	0	0	0	0	N/A
Prohibitionist	Kobi Read	0	0	0	0	N/A
Chancelist	Corey Hart	0	0	0	0	N/A