Election to the United States House of Representatives in 1898

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On November 8, 1898, the House of Representatives in the United States was elected. Elections in three countries took place between June and September. The election was part of the general election for the 56th United States Congress that year, which also elected a third of US Senators . Since the elections took place around the middle of the term of office of Republican President William McKinley ( 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 45 states. The number of MPs to be elected was 357. The distribution of seats was based on the 1890 census .

In the elections, the Democrats were able to continue the upward trend that had begun two years earlier. They won another 37 seats and now have 161 seats. But that meant they remained in the opposition. The Republicans lost 19 seats but retained their absolute majority with 187 seats. The Populist Party lost 17 seats and only got 5 seats. Many voters in this party switched to the Democratic Party. A few years later the Populist Party became part of the Democratic Party. Despite the successful Spanish-American War and the associated gain in territory, the Republicans could not benefit from it. The reason for this was the program of the Democrats, which stood as the "party of the common man" and the social reforms against big business and the economic and industrial giants of that time and who fought the offensive American foreign policy. The party won a large number of votes, especially in the rural Midwest.

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: 357 (357)

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 56th 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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