1906 North Galway by-election
Higgins, originally from Monivea, who was chairman of Tuam Board of Guardians and a member of Galway County Council, was selected as the Irish Parliamentary Party candidate by the United Irish League (UIL) convention on 5 January 1906 to contest the 1906 general election.As was widely expected, Higgins topped the poll at the election count, which was held later on the day of his death, beating the incumbent MP, John Philip Nolan, who had stood as an Independent Nationalist.Higgins, who received 2,685 votes (Nolan took 1,064), was posthumously declared elected by the county sheriff, the returning officer.The 25-year-old Richard Hazleton, a Blackrock District councillor[3] who had unsuccessfully contested South Dublin in the 1906 election,[4] was selected as the Irish Parliamentary Party candidate.[6] This circumstance occurred again to Noel Skelton in 1935, and to Sir Edward Taswell Campbell and Leslie Pym in 1945; however, all of them were candidates for re-election.