Elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1954
The elections for the United States House of Representatives in 1954 took place on November 2, 1954 in the middle of the first term ( midterm election ) of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the then 48 states . Eisenhower's Republican Party lost 18 seats and the Democratic Party gained the majority in the House of Representatives, which it was able to maintain for 40 years until the 1994 election .
One reason for the electoral defeat was the actions of the Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy , who had suspected many public figures of communist sympathy in numerous hearings . These accusations had mostly proven to be baseless, but they created a climate of uncertainty, mistrust and denunciation.
The distribution of the majorities showed a clear division between North and South : in the southern former slave-holding Confederate States the Democrats had the majority, in the northern "Union States" the Republicans.
The election results
Parties | Seats | be right | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1952 | 1954 | +/- | Strength | be right | % | modification | ||
Republican Party | 221 | 203 | −18 | 46.7% | 20,034,763 | |||
Democratic Party | 213 | 232 | +19 | 53.3% | 22.177.088 | |||
Independent | 1 | 0 | −1 | 74,486 | ||||
Liberal Party of New York | - | - | - | - | 251.290 | |||
Socialist Labor Party | - | - | - | - | 1,652 | |||
Prohibition Party | - | - | - | - | 8,591 | |||
Other parties | - | - | - | - | 35,055 | |||
total | 435 | 435 | 0 | 100.0% | 42,582,927 | 100.0% | - | |
Source: Election Statistics - Office of the Clerk |