March 1927 Vierz general election
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All 447 seats in the Imperial Assembly 224 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout |  81.9% | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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General elections were held in the Vierz Empire on Saturday 5 March 1927 to elect all 447 members of the Imperial Assembly, the lower house of the Reichsthing, the national legislature. The election was the second of three general elections to be held in Vierzland that year. It was also the second national election in Vierz history to allow women to vote.
After the 8 January elections created a hung parliament, with no sole party holding enough seats to form a government and the failure of all coalition negotiations, emperor Victor II dissolved the imperial assembly and set another election for 5 March. The ensuing election campaign was defined by violence, paramilitarism, and propaganda via mass media. The election, as with the previous one, took place in the context of the Dark Months, a period of severe economic downturn that affected Vierzland and the rest of the world after the Tieradan credit default of 1925.
The Vierz Socialist Party led by Lars Hencke and the League of Communists led by Helmut Pasche secured a combined 49.7% of the seats on election day, forming a coalition minority government. Hencke was appointed chancellor on 11 March.
Hencke struggled to command authority over the legislature and his own government. This was complicated by the military and police's frequent refusal to cooperate with his government due to their own right-wing sympathies. After the abdication of Alexander II in June, emperor Victor II ordered military officer Hermann Eschau to restore order in the empire, resulting in the overthrow of Hencke's government on 15 June. Eschau became acting chancellor, and most socialist and communist MPs were arrested, detained, or forced to resign from their positions entirely.
Eschau would assume dictatorial control of the chancellery after a fraudulent election conducted in August, where most left-wing groups were barred from participation. It is for this reason that the March election was the last in Vierzland considered by historians to be "free and fair" until 1988—a period of 61 years.