Elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1902
On November 4, 1902, the United States ' House of Representatives was elected. Elections in three countries took place between June and September. The election was part of the general election for the 58th 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 first term of office of Republican President Theodore Roosevelt , who came into office in September 1901 ( 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 386. The distribution of seats was based on the 1900 census . This also justified the increase in seats from 357 to 386.
Both major parties benefited from the increase in the number of MPs. The Democrats had a slight lead. But they could not endanger the already existing Republican majority. By and large, the 1902 election, like the 1900 election, did not represent a trend reversal in any particular direction. The voters wanted to see the status quo maintained. It is worth mentioning the dissolution of the Populist Party , whose members mostly joined the Democrats. For the first time in 1902 the later Speaker and Vice-President John Nance Garner was elected to the House of Representatives.
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
- Democratic Party 176 (151) seats
- Republican Party 207 (200) seats
- Populist Party 0 (5) seats
- Other: 3 (1) seats
Total: 386 (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 58th 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
- 58th United States Congress including a list of all MPs.