The Largest Midterm Election Gains/Losses in History
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American Congressional elections that occur in years in which a presidential election does not occur are called midterm elections. One thing that sometimes happens as a result of a midterm election is that a political party that has a majority in the House of Representatives or the Senate before the election does not have that majority after the election. In some cases, the gain or loss by one party as a result of a midterm election has been quite high. Below are the five highest gains/losses in American midterm election history.
1922
In 1922, the Republican Party controlled the Congress (both houses) and the presidency. President Warren G. Harding had been elected in 1920, amid a Republican wave that was, in part, a response to two successive terms by a Democratic President, Woodrow Wilson.
As a result of the 1920 Congressional elections, Republicans had 303 seats in the House and Democrats had 131. (Wisconsin's Victor Berger represented the Socialist Party.) A simple majority of the available 435 House seats was needed for one party to be the party in power, and so Republicans easily had more than the requisite 218 seats. In the Senate, which has 100 members, one party needs 51 seats in order to hold a majority. After the elections, Republicans held 59 seats, giving them a majority in the Senate as well as in the House.
Just two years later, a Democratic wave, coupled with a split in leadership of the Republican Party, led to a very large gain for Democrats at the expense of Republicans. In the Congressional elections of 1922, Republicans lost a record 77 seats in the House; however, they still held on to control of the House because their post-election total of seats was 225, eight more than they needed for a majority. In the Senate elections of 1922, Republicans lost three seats, giving them 56 and maintaining their majority.
1938
The presidential and Congressional elections of 1932 resulted in landslide victories for the Democratic Party, with Franklin D. Roosevelt winning the presidency and his party controlling both the House (with 313 seats) and the Senate (with 59 seats). Democrats had 117 seats in the House and 36 in the Senate. Minnesota sent five members of the Farmer-Labor Party to the House and one to the Senate in this election. (The party was successful in gaining representation in Congress from 1918 to 1942.)
The Democratic Party held on to both houses in Congress and the presidency in 1936, when Roosevelt was re-elected by a wide margin. In fact, the Democrats in 1934 became the first party since the Civil War to gain Senate seats in the midterm elections. They gained nine.
In the 1938 midterm elections, the Democrats lost 72 seats in the House but still easily retained their majority because their post-election total was 262 and lost seven seats in the Senate but had 68 seats after and so were still in charge. Rounding out the seat totals for 1938:
- Republicans had 23 in the Senate
- The Progressive Party had seven seats in the House and one in the Senate–all from Wisconsin
- The Farmer-Labor Party had five seats in the House and two in the Senate–all from Minnesota
- The American Labor sent one member to the House: Vito Marantonio from New York.
- One Senator was officially an Independent: George Norris of Nebraska.
2010
Barack Obama had been the first African-American President in 2008. The Democratic Party had taken control of the House of Representatives in 2006, in the middle of George W. Bush's second term as President. As a result of that election, the Democratic Party had 233 seats in the House and the Republican Party had 202. Riding a wave of voters who cast ballots for Obama at the top of the ticket, the Democratic Party won 257 seats in the House. A majority was 218, so the Democratic total of 257 was thought to be a comfortable margin going into the 2010 midterm elections. And yet, when the votes were counted, the GOP once again controlled the House, having won 242 seats, a gain of 63.
1914
Democrat Woodrow Wilson had been elected President in 1912. His party had taken control of the House in 1910, in the midterm election while William Howard Taft was President. In 1912, the Democrats increased their slight lead in the House totaling 291 seats (out of 435). That 61-seat gain is one of the largest seat gains in history. And yet, just two years later, the Democrats lost the same number of seats again, reducing their total to 230. They still retained control of the House, since they needed only 218 seats to do so. A total nine seats went to members of smaller political parties. The Progressive Party, which had claimed nine seats in the 1912 House elections, lost three in 1914 but still had six. The Independent Party retained the one seat it had from the previous election (William Kent in California). The Socialist Party gained a seat, when Meyer London was elected in California. And entering the House was the Prohibition Party, in the person of Charles H. Randall.
1910
William Howard Taft had won the Presidency in 1908. His Republican Party had control of the House, which at this time had 391 seats. The Republicans needed 196 seats to get a majority, and they had 219. In Taft's midterm election, however, things changed. The number of House seats by this time was 394, so a majority of 198 was needed. The Democratic Party won 230 seats, gaining 58. That was more than enough to give them control of the House. The only member of the House not a member of either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party at this time was Victor Berger, who was elected to represent the Socialist Party; this was his first time in Congress.
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