Help filling in the blank spots in this table (or correcting errors) will be appreciated. Especially appreciated will be reports of ballot-totals. We attempt to provide stories about all the pope-elections and their balloting on this separate page and our conclusions from them summarized here; the system used to elect them and how it came about is described here.
| YEAR | #Voters (#factions) | Election Duration (days) | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1621 | 51 | 2 | Gregory XV by "adoration." |
| 1605 | 59-61 (4) | 22 | Paul V |
| 1605 | 60-62 | 19 | Leo XI. Ballot approval-counts include: 62+three candidates with majority support each (including Tosca with 38)+23 for 5 of the top candidates. |
| 1592 | 52 | 21 | Clement VIII. Ballot approval-counts: 62+34+30+others. Two factions. Another account has these peak votes for Clement's top rivals: Santori=28, Madruzzo=21. |
| 1591 | 56-57 | 2 | Innocent IX. Got 23 votes on first and 28 on second ballot, growing with time as he negotiated for more votes, until he eventually gained the necessary 2/3 supermajority. |
| 1590 | 52 | 28 | Gregory XIV (unanimous or nearly) |
| 1590 | 53 or 54 | 9 | Urban VII |
| 1585 | 42 | 4 | Sixtus V "unanimously" |
| 1572 | 53 | 2 | Gregory XIII (unanimous) |
| 1566 | 53 | 23 | Pius V. (Unanimous.) Later declared a saint. |
| 1559 | 44-47 | 112 | Pius IV by almost-unanimity. A large number of factionalist candidates got majority support but not enough to be elected; finally Medici who was a rich non-factionalist acquired enough votes to be two short; then got over that hump with promises and a 300,000-scudi bribe. Thereupon he was near-unanimously elected. |
| 1555 | 44-46 | 11 | Paul IV by "adoration." In the first two ballots, first Pole and then Morone were two votes shy of election; then an attempt to elect Este fell short. When the factions of King Henry II and Farnese realized they could not get their way they switched to electing Carafa by "adoration" and the attempt succeeded. His wrath was greatly feared, inspiring a unanimous vote. Later as Paul IV he created the Inquisition and had his chief rival Morone jailed for heresy, and tried unsuccessfully to do the same to Pole. |
| 1555 | 36-39 | 8 | Marcellus II by "adoration" |
| 1549 | 49-51 | 71 | Julius III. Approval counts achieved by the top 5 candidates were 32, 26 or 27, 26, 24, 18, unknown tallies for others. |
| 1534 | 33 | 3 | Paul III |
| 1523 | 35-39 | 50 | Clement VII. The final ballot's approval-counts were 23, 15-16, 10, 9, 7, and 4 or fewer for others. |
| 1522 | 39 | 14 | Adrian VI (almost unanimous vote). Later declared a saint. |
| 1513 | 31 or 32 / 25 | 2 / 5 | Leo X. An early ballot was 14+8+7+7+6+6+2+1 where the 1 was for the eventual winner. |
| 1503 | 38 | 1-2 | Julius II in a rapid and highly simonized election. Paid substantial bribes and offered many promises of ecclesiastical advancement (not all of which he kept). As Pope, he turned around and declared simony to be illegal. (Later declared a saint.) |
| 1503 | 37 | 7 | Pius III |
| 1492 | 23 | 6 | Alexander VI. First ballot: 9+7+5+0. Second ballot: 9+8+7+5. (The red votes are for the eventual winner.) The fourth ballot was "unanimous" thanks to massive simony. |
| 1484 | 25 | 4 | Innocent VIII. |
| 1471 | 18 | 3 | Sixtus IV |
| 1464 | 19 | 4 | Paul II elected in 1st ballot by 14 |
| 1458 | 18 | 4 | Pius II |
| 1455 | 15 | 5 | Callixtus III |
| 1447 | 18 | 3 | Nicholas V |
| 1439 | 12 | 1 | Antipope Felix V |
| 1431 | 13 | 2 | Eugene IV |
| 1425 | 1 | 1 | Antipope Benedict XIV |
| 1423 | 3 | 1 | Antipope Clement VIII |
| 1417 | 23+30 | 4 | Martin V (healing the "great schism") |
| 1406 | 14 or 15 | 13 | Gregory XII. |
| 1406 | 17 | 4 | Second Pisan antipope "John XXIII" |
| 1406 | 23 | 11-12 | Pisan antipope "Alexander V" |
| 1404 | 9 | 7? | Innocent VII |
| 1384 | 21 | 3 | Avignon antipope "Benedict XIII" |
| 1389 | 13 | 9 | Boniface IX |
| 1378 | 15-16 (13 voting) | 1 | First Avignon antipope "Clement VII" |
| 1378 | 16 | 3 | Urban VI. Conclavists fled Rome in fear for lives after election; later declared election void and elected "antipope" Clement VII, triggering "great schism." |
| 1370 | 19 | 1 | Gregory XI |
| 1362 | 20 (3) | 6 | Urban V |
| 1352 | 25-28 | 3 | Innocent VI |
| 1342 | 17 | 3 | Clement VI (unanimous) |
| 1334 | 24 | 8 | Benedict XII elected on 1st ballot |
| 1314-1316 | 23-24 (3) | months (but 2-year interregnum) | John XXII |
| 1305 | 15 | 11 months | Clement V |
| 1305 | 17 | 2 | Benedict XI |
| 1294 | 22 | 1 | Boniface VIII. |
Evidently there were two kinds of elections: the essentially uncontested ones where the vote was supposedly (or it was pretended to be) unanimous, and the contested ones. Presumably the voting system was essentially irrelevant in most or all of the uncontested elections. In the contested elections it was not true that the approval voting was "plurality style" since even during the 1500s, two centuries after approval voting was enacted, the number of approvals exceeded the number of voters by a factor of 1.23 to 2.45 (or more; in some cases I do not have all counts hence am underestimating). This fact would seem to refute the fears of some that approval voting would, after enough time elapsed for the voters to become familiar with it, "degenerate" into plurality voting. (Actually, even in the short unanimous elections, there may well have been great approval of other candidates, although in those cases it is unlikely this information would have "leaked.")
As far as "two party domination" is concerned, there were often powerful factions, but the number of them was not necessarily "two." Sometimes it was 1, 2, or 3, in roughly descending order of frequency, but 2 and 3 were comparably common. Unfortunately there is no clear definition of a "faction" and their number thus grows the sharper your eyesight. Thus the Colomer-McLean paper on page 19 claims "six or seven" factions was a "normal occurrence."
Pope Leo XIII opened the Vatican Archives to scholars around the world (whether Catholic or not) in about 1900.
Frederic J. Baumgartner: Behind locked doors, a history of the Papal Elections, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Michael Walsh: The Conclave, a sometimes secret and occasionally bloody history of papal elections, Sheed & Ward, Lanham MD 2003.