Election to the United States House of Representatives in 1920

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A total of 435 seats
  • Dem .: 131
  • GOP : 302
  • Otherwise: 2

On November 2, 1920, the United States ' House of Representatives was elected. In the state of Maine , the elections took place on September 13th. The election was part of the general election for the 67th Congress of the United States that year, in which a third of the US Senators were also elected. The presidential election of 1920 , won by Republican Warren G. Harding , took place at the same time .

At the time of the election, the United States consisted of 48 states. The number of MPs to be elected was 435. The distribution of seats was based on the 1910 census .

The election resulted in a landslide Republican victory. They gained 62 seats and now have a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives with 302 seats. It was the fourth straight election for the Democrats in which they suffered losses. With 61 seats, they lost massively and now only had 131 seats. The party could only defend its mandate in the south. Outside the southern states, over 90 percent of the seats went to Republicans. The reason for this result was the increasing criticism of the policies of President Wilson and his Democratic Party. This raised the question of future American foreign policy. Wilson and the Democrats wanted active United States politics on the world stage. They advocated American membership of the League of Nations founded by Wilson . On the other hand, the Republicans wanted to stay out of non-American affairs in accordance with the Monroe Doctrine. You advocated American isolationism . Her focus was on trade and economic policy. Another campaign topic was prohibition . It is noteworthy that the Democrats who formed the federal government during World War I failed to benefit from the American victory. Most voters followed the Republican line of argument and advocated an American withdrawal from world politics. This trend continued in the other elections of 1920, including the presidential election. For the first time since the passing of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, women nationwide voted .

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 the right to vote. These restrictions lasted until the 24th Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed in 1964.

Election result

Total: 435 (435)

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 67th 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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