1859 Riograndense general election (RRG)

The 1859 Riograndense general election was held on October 2, 1859 to elect the president, one third of the Senate, all members of the Chamber of Deputies and all municipal councils. The election marked another victory for the Radical Party as it retained the presidency and the legislative supermajority that it had won two years prior. The opposition Party of Order became the sole party with any representation in the General Assembly as it established itself as the unifying force of the conservative electorate.

Electoral system
The president was elected via universal male suffrage through a single-round plurality voting system. This was the first election where an incumbent president could be re-elected.

The 5 out of 13 members of the Senate were elected using a new system of open-list proportional representation from a single nationwide district. The members of the Chamber of Deputies were elected from 27 geographical constituencies using a first-past-the-post system.

Background
The four years of President Netto's second term proved to be a period of remarkable economic growth as the country continued to open itself to the outside world, leading to a dramatic rise in European immigration and foreign investment. The mass arrival of Europeans allowed for a sharp increase in the country's agricultural exports as more and more of its land was now exploited, including by the thousands of migrants who were granted plots of land under advantageous lending conditions. The arrival of British investors into the country resulted in the rapid construction of railways in order to transport the country's agricultural exports to its ports for shipment to Britain and Brazil.

The policies encouraging immigration and foreign investment were supported by both of the two major parties, reducing their disagreements to questions about the role of the Church in education and social life. However, the Radical Party anti-clerical efforts were limited to the creation of a secular state as the large majority of its members remained Catholics and possessed numerous socially conservative views.