Election to the United States House of Representatives in 1922

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On November 7, 1922, the House of Representatives in the United States was elected. In the state of Maine , the elections took place on September 11th. The election was part of the general election for the 68th Congress of the United States that year, in which a third of the US Senators were also elected. Since the elections took place around the middle of the term of office of Republican President Warren G. Harding ( 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 48 states. The number of MPs to be elected was 435. The distribution of seats was based on the 1910 census . (Due to a lack of political majorities, the actual adjustment was not made based on the figures from the 1920 census . The next adjustment was not made until 1932 with the data from the 1930 census ).

In the election there was a landslide victory for the Democrats, who were able to compensate for their electoral debacle of 1920. The party gained 76 seats and now had 207 congressmen. However, that was not enough to wrest an absolute majority from the Republicans. Although they lost 77 seats, with the remaining 225 MPs they were just able to maintain the absolute majority of 218 seats. Two MPs belonged to the Farmer Labor Party active in Minnesota and one represented the Socialist Party of America in the House of Representatives. The reason for the turnaround in favor of the Democrats was, on the one hand, a general recovery of the party from the problems of 1920. The discussion about future American foreign policy, which had decisively shaped the election of 1920, was no longer in the foreground. Another reason for the defeat in 1920 had been the unpopular policies of then President Woodrow Wilson . His term of office was now a little behind (1922). Many voters who gave the Democrats a political lesson in 1920 and voted the Republicans have now returned to the Democrats. Another reason was the Republican-run 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution , which banned the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. In addition, there was a renewed internal division of the Republicans into a conservative and a progressive wing. The latter was led by Robert La Follette , who two years later founded a second Progressive Party , but it was not as successful as its 1912 predecessor . This split damaged the appearance of the Republicans and also caused voters to switch to the Democratic camp.

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 68th 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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