Elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1964

Elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1964
3rd November 1964
Previous election 1962 ← Next election → 1966
Party leader	John W. McCormack	Gerald Ford
Political party	Democratic Party	Republican Party
Sit before the election	258	176
Seats after the election	295	140
Profit loss	+37	−36
Total votes	37,643,960	27,912,576
Share of votes	57.1%	42.4%
Election spokesman John W. McCormack Democrat		Election spokesman John W. McCormack Democrat

Distribution of seats in the 116th Congress

  

A total of 435 seats

• Dem .: 295
• Rep .: 140

The 1964 House election in the United States took place on Tuesday, November 3, 1964. All 435 seats in the Congress Chamber were up for election, with the Democrats able to expand their majority. The Republicans lost numerous seats. The election to the Senate and the presidential election in 1964 took place at the same time . Before the elections in 1964, in the southern states in particular, the right to vote was still 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 were increasingly criticized and more and more due to the adoption of the24. Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1964, abolished. Those previously excluded were allowed to take part in the elections for the first time in 1964.

Choice and outcome

The election took place a year after the assassination of John F. Kennedy and was generally unfavorable for opposition Republicans. The Democrats were able to expand their already clear majority from 258 seats to 295 seats in the 435-member Congress Chamber. The Democrats received a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, too, they had increased their number of seats to 68 of the 100 seats.

The newly elected House of Representatives was constituted as provided by the constitution on the third day of the following January, i.e. on January 3, 1965. Thereupon, with a democratic majority, John W. McCormack was elected again as Speaker of the House. The future US President Gerald Ford from Michigan became the new leader of the opposition and leader of the Republican parliamentary group .

The result of the election meant that President Lyndon B. Johnson , who was confirmed in office in the parallel presidential election , had a large majority to implement his Great Society reform program.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Details of the election results (PDF; 2.2 MB)
2. ^ Robert Dallek : Lyndon B. Johnson. Portrait of a President. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2004, ISBN 0-19-515921-7 , p. 180 ff.