Election to the United States House of Representatives in 1848

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From August 7, 1848, House representatives were elected on various election days in the United States . The election was part of the general election for the 31st United States Congress that year, in which one-third of the US Senators were also elected. The 1848 presidential election , won by General Zachary Taylor of the Whig Party, also took place at the same time .

At the time of the election, the United States consisted of 30 states ( Wisconsin was now a new member). The number of MPs to be elected was 232. The distribution of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the 1840 census .

In the elections, the Democrats won 3 seats. On the other hand, the United States Whig Party lost eight seats. Since there were three other smaller parties (see below), neither of the two large parties had an absolute majority. That made choosing leadership in the House of Representatives difficult. Only after many ballots was the Democrat Howell Cobb elected speaker. The dominant election theme was still the now-ended Mexican-American War . After the American victory in this war, the mood, which was still negative in 1846, turned in favor of the Democrats, who had supported this war from the beginning. The election of the new President Zachary Taylor, who was a candidate for the Whig Party, is also understood against this background. Taylor had been a successful general in that war and benefited from his military successes. It is also worth mentioning that the new Free Soil Party has moved into the House of Representatives with 9 seats. Among other things, this campaigned against the expansion of slavery in the areas that came to the United States after the war.

Women and slaves were neither eligible nor eligible to vote. Free African Americans were also excluded from voting in many states .

Election result

Total: 232

The results of the last election two years earlier are in brackets. Changes in the course of the legislative period that do not affect the elections themselves are not included in these figures, but are noted in the article on the 31st Congress in the section on the members of the House of Representatives under the corresponding names of the representatives. The same applies to elections in states that did not join the Union until after the beginning of the legislative period. As a result, the sources sometimes contain different information, as changes during the legislative period were sometimes incorporated into the figures and sometimes not.

See also

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