1872 French legislative election (Vive la Commune!)

Legislative elections were held in France on September 15, 1872 in order to elect the 1st National Assembly of the French Fourth Republic. These were the first elections held under a first-past-the-post system. Held in the context of the end of the year-long mandate of the Constituent Assembly and the continuing decentralization of France, the election proved to be highly divisive. Indeed, as many left-wing communes adopted a de facto constitution in the Manifesto of a Democratic and Social Republic, the text conceived by the Congress of Communes in March of 1872, many saw the oncoming of a full communist revolution and the end of the French state. This document included large-scale social and political reforms, leading to a growing division between the urban centers that had adopted the Manifesto and the rural communes that held on to their conservative values.

The election resulted in a landslide victory for the Republicans, who were simultaneously opposed to the Manifesto and supportive of greater autonomy for France's communes, thus positioning themselves as moderates to the urban bourgeoisie and social conservatives to the voters in rural areas. Thanks to the first-past-the-post system, the Republicans managed to gain a significant majority. The Socialists and Jacobins, while more than doubling their popular vote percentage, failed to get a significant majority in the legislature. Conservative monarchists were decimated as they lost many voters over their opposition to any decentralization of the country, which included revoking all autonomy gained by their rural voter base.