At the party's first electoral contest, Jenkins narrowly failed to win a by-election at Warrington in July 1981, describing it as his " first defeat, but by far ( his ) greatest victory ".

The party's Roh Tae-woo became the first president who was elected through direct election.

At the 1888 Republican National Convention, Douglass became the first African American to receive a vote for President of the United States in a major party's roll call vote.

The party's first electoral outing was when 7 candidates contested the November 1982 general election under the Ecology Party banner, winning 0. 2 % of the vote.

Although the party's share of first preference votes increased by some 22 % from 3. 84 % to 4. 69 % nationally in the 2007 general election, held on 24 May 2007, the party failed to increase the number of TDs returned.

In 1838, the political situation in Tennessee — where, in 1835, Democrats had lost the governorship for the first time in their party's history — persuaded Polk to return to help the party at home.

In the meantime, after a period of secret police repression and internal confusion that followed the first party Congress in 1898, Iskra succeeded in convening the party's 2nd congress in London in August 1903.

The 1832 Democratic National Convention, the party's first and held in May, had nominated him for vice-president on the Jackson ticket, despite the strong opposition to him which existed in many states.

Joseph Stalin, who was the first general secretary of the party, also was known as " Comrade File Cabinet " ( Tovarishch Kartotekov ) for his assiduous attention to the details of the party's appointments.

Meighen stepped down as Tory leader, and Bennett became the party's leader in 1927 at the first Conservative leadership convention.

Before the election, he founded the Young Nationalists as his party's youth wing and served as its first president.

She easily won her party's nomination, and eventually got 40 % of the votes in the first round of the presidential elections, and 51. 6 % in the second, thus defeating the Centre Party's Esko Aho and becoming the 11th president of Finland.

Crane, who in the 1970s had been the party's first Executive Director, and some of his allies resigned from the Party in 1983 when their preferred candidates for national committee seats lost in the elections at the national convention.

** Prime Minister of Cape Verde Pedro Pires resigns following his party's loss in the January 13 Cape Verdean parliamentary election, the first ever multiparty election in an African nation.

The party's first presidential ticket appeared on the ballot in 32 states and drew 39, 000 votes ( 0. 04 % of the popular vote ).

Although Daley and Taylor declined at first, at Partee's insistence, Washington was slated for the seat and received the party's support.

Clay, the party's most prominent congressional leader, was chosen on the first ballot despite having lost two prior presidential elections: in 1824 to John Quincy Adams as a Democrat-Republican, then in 1832 to Andrew Jackson as a National Republican.

General Ulysses S. Grant announced he was a Republican and was unanimously nominated on the first ballot as the party's standard bearer at the Republican convention in Chicago, Illinois, held on May 20-21, 1868.

Dubček and most of the reformers were returned to Prague on 27 August and Dubček retained his post as the party's first secretary for a while.

This would void someone convincing another party to travel back to kill the people without knowing who they are and making the time line stick, because by being successful, they would void the first party's influence and therefore the second party's actions.

Deborah Grey, the deputy leader of Reform, was chosen as the new party's interim leader, becoming the first female Leader of the Opposition in Canadian history.

Subsequently, at the new party's first leadership convention, Manning was defeated in favour of the younger, Stockwell Day, longtime treasurer ( finance minister ) of Alberta.

Her low score of 1. 57 % in the first round was the party's worst electoral result, and the French ecologist's worst showing since René Dumont in the 1974.

Teeven, who had gained some recognition as MP, withdrew his candidacy for the position when a motion of no confidence was not supported by the party's congress.

Hägglund has been criticized for not being controversial enough by MP Ebba Busch, and it has been suggested that around a third of the party's representatives would like him to resign.

Michael Meacher MP, then strongly aligned with Tony Benn, had written in the Labour Party's Labour Weekly that John Golding, one of those prominent in pursuing the expulsions of Militant supporters, was " bleeding the party's election prospects to death ".

The party's president was Robert Cunninghame-Graham, the first socialist MP, and later founder of the National Party of Scotland, forerunner to the Scottish National Party.

In July, MacKay struck up a " Blue Ribbon PC Policy Review Panel ", made up of Tory MPs, Senators, and Orchard himself, that was to be chaired by Tory MP Bill Casey, in order to reexamine the party's policies on NAFTA.

A major blow came in 1946 when the party's best known public spokesman, James Maxton MP, died.

* in the UK and Ireland, a party's endorsement of a member of parliament ; to ' withdraw the whip ' is to expel an MP from his political party.

Activity declined greatly after Gerry Fitt, then the party's sole Stormont MP, left the party to form the Republican Labour Party in 1964, with the party's last known contest being two seats on Newry and Mourne District Council at the 1973 local elections.

Solange Gemayel remained the party's only MP, since Pierre Gemayel's seat was lost to the Free Patriotic Movement of Michel Aoun in a special election in August 2007.

In the early months following the merger, MP Rick Borotsik, who had been elected as Manitoba's only PC, became openly critical of the new party's leadership.

In 2003 she was selected as the party's candidate in the Brent East by-election, which was called after death of the Labour MP Paul Daisley.

In July, MacKay struck up a " Blue Ribbon PC Policy Review Panel ", chaired by Tory MP Bill Casey, in order to reexamine the party's policies on NAFTA.

After his friend and council ally, Nick Lalich approached Federal MP Ted Grace for Ngo to join the ALP, Grace arranged a meeting with Senator Graham Richardson and Leo McLeay, Federal MP for Watson and Speaker of the House of Representatives, who decided that if promoted to be a member of Legislative Council ( MLC ), Ngo could be a potential " counter " to the Liberal party's Asian MLC Helen Sham-Ho.

Until his departure from Labour in 1989, Anderton had been the most vocal Labour MP in his criticism of his party's new direction.

This has caused dismay among the party's left-wing supporters, and in 2004 MP George Galloway defected from the party to form the Respect Party, which won a London based Labour seat at the 2005 general election.

Mikuláš Dzurinda has been a regular MP in the National Council of the Slovak Republic since his party's defeat in the 2006 parliamentary elections.

Although the party's vote share dropped to 3. 2 % in the early elections in 1997, it gained an additional MP, winning four seats.

One of the rare exceptions of a pure conservative in this party was former party member and MP Vasco Pulido Valente, who is highly elitist and a cultural purist ( unlike most of the party's partisans, who have various degrees of populism or meritocratism ), highly conservative and traditionalist.

In September 2006, several of the party's top leaders, including Saber Hossain Choudhury MP and Asaduzzaman Nur MP, were hospitalized after being critically injured by police beatings while they demonstrated in support of electoral-law reforms.

The party currently has six elected seats in Parliament, with the party's Secretary-General Low Thia Khiang, Chairman Sylvia Lim, Chen Show Mao, Muhamad Faisal Manap and Pritam Singh serving as Members of Parliament ( MPs ) for the Aljunied Group Representation Constituency ( GRC ), and Png Eng Huat as the MP for the single-member constituency of Hougang.