Election to the United States House of Representatives 1850

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The election to the 1850 House of Representatives of the United States took place from August 5, 1850. The House of Representatives was elected on various election days in the United States . The election was part of the general election to the 32nd United States Congress that year, which also elected a third of US Senators . The elections were so-called ( midterm elections ) because they lay between two presidential elections and were therefore also considered a vote on the previous policy of the federal government. President Zachary Taylor , elected in 1848, had died in July 1850, and Vice President Millard Fillmore had subsequently assumed office.

At the time of the elections, the United States consisted of 31 states ( California had since been added). The number of MPs to be elected was 233. The distribution of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the 1840 census .

In the elections, the Democrats won 14 seats. On their side, the United States Whig Party lost 23 seats. The Unionist Party, based in the southern states, won 10 seats and the Free Soil Party , which stood up against slavery , lost 5 seats and now had four members of Congress. The reason for the poor election results of the Whig Party was the unpopularity of the recently elected President Millard Fillmore, who belonged to that party. An election campaign topic that became more and more present in the years up to and including 1860 was the question of slavery and the rights of the individual states.

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

Election result

Total: 233

The results of the last election two years earlier are in brackets. Changes during the legislative period that do not affect the elections themselves are not included in these figures, but are noted in the article on the 32nd Congress in the section on the members of the House of Representatives under the relevant 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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