Election to the United States House of Representatives 1890

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On November 4, 1890, the House of Representatives was elected in the United States . In five states these elections took place between June and October. The election was part of the general election to the 52nd United States Congress that year, in which a third of the US Senators were elected. Since the elections took place around the middle of the term of office of the Republican President Benjamin Harrison ( Midterm Election ), they were also considered a vote on the previous policy of the President.

At the time of the election, the United States consisted of 44 states. (The states of North Dakota , South Dakota , Montana , Washington , Idaho and Wyoming had now been added). The number of MPs to be elected was 332. The distribution of seats was based on the 1880 census .

Republicans suffered heavy losses in the elections. You lost 93 seats and now only have 86 seats. The Democrats, for their part, were able to win 86 seats and now have 238 seats. This gave them a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives. There were several reasons for this landslide Democratic victory. For one thing, the American economy stagnated. The economic crisis of 1890 added later. The ruling Republican Party was blamed for the economic weakness. In addition, President Harrison's government spending policy was viewed as wasteful. The Republicans' policy of promoting the exclusive use of English for some immigrants from other language areas also had a negative impact on the Republicans. The Democrats were more liberal in this regard. It was similar on the question of prohibition. The Republicans advocated tougher alcohol laws, while the Democrats were more tolerant of this issue. The sum of all these points ultimately led to the election result, which was disastrous for the Republicans.

Only men were entitled to vote and eligible for election. Women were still banned from voting at the federal level until 1920. In the southern states in particular, the right to vote was restricted by laws that linked the right to vote to a certain tax revenue. As a result, poor whites, but above all many African-Americans, were excluded from voting.

Election result

Total: 332 (332)

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 52nd 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 joined the Union 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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