1938 United States elections

The 1938 United States elections were held on November 8, 1938, in the middle of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt's second term. The Democratic Party lost 72 seats, mostly to the Republican Party, in the House of Representatives. The Democrats also lost seven seats to the Republicans in the U.S. Senate.[3]

1938 United States elections
Midterm elections
Election dayNovember 8
Incumbent presidentFranklin D. Roosevelt (Democratic)
Next Congress76th
Senate elections
Overall controlDemocratic Hold
Seats contested36 of 96 seats
(32 Class 3 seats + 6 special elections)[1]
Net seat changeRepublican +8[2]
1938 Senate election results

  Democratic gain   Democratic hold
  Republican gain   Republican hold

House elections
Overall controlDemocratic Hold
Seats contestedAll 435 voting seats
Popular vote marginDemocratic +1.2%
Net seat changeRepublican +81
Gubernatorial elections
Seats contested33
Net seat changeRepublican +12
1938 gubernatorial election results

  Democratic gain   Democratic hold
  Republican gain   Republican hold

The election was a defeat for Roosevelt, as the conservative coalition (an alliance of Republicans and Southern Democrats) took control of Congress and stymied Roosevelt's domestic agenda. Roosevelt had campaigned openly against members of his own party who had not supported the New Deal, but Roosevelt's preferred candidates met with little success across the country. The election took place in the aftermath of the recession of 1937–38 and the defeat of the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 ("the court-packing plan"), and President Roosevelt was at the nadir of his popularity. Republicans picked up Congressional seats for the first time since the start of the Great Depression, and few new major domestic programs became law until the advent of the Great Society in the 1960s.[4]

See also

References
  1. Two Class 3 seats held both a regularly-scheduled election and a special election in 1938. These two seats are not double-counted for the total number of seats contested.
  2. Republicans picked up seven seats in the regularly-scheduled elections and won an additional seat in the special elections.
  3. "Statistics of the Congressional Election of November 8, 1938" (PDF). U.S. House of Reps, Office of the Clerk. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
  4. Busch, Andrew (1999). Horses in Midstream. University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 122–126.

Further reading
  • Carson, Jamie L. "Electoral and Partisan Forces in the Roosevelt Era: The US Congressional Elections of 1938." Congress & the Presidency 28#2 (2001) 161–183 https://doi.org/10.1080/07343460109507751
  • Dunn, Susan (2010). Roosevelt's Purge: How FDR Fought to Change the Democratic Party. ISBN 978-0674057173. (Excerpt and text search)
  • Plesur, Milton (1962). "The Republican Congressional Comeback of 1938". Review of Politics. 24 (4): 525–562. doi:10.1017/S0034670500012419. JSTOR 1405361.
  • Price, Charles M.; Boskin, Joseph (1966). "The Roosevelt 'Purge': A Reappraisal". Journal of Politics. 28 (3): 660–670. doi:10.2307/2128161. JSTOR 2128161.
  • Savage, Sean J. (1991). "Chapter 6". Roosevelt, the Party Leader, 1932-1945. pp. 129–158. ISBN 0813130794. (Excerpt and text search); also in JSTOR


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