1954 United States House of Representatives elections

1954 United States House of Representatives elections

← 1952 November 2, 1954[a] 1956 →
All 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives 218 seats needed for a majority
Majority party Minority party   Leader Sam Rayburn Joseph Martin Party Democratic Republican Leader since September 16, 1940 January 3, 1939 Leader's seat Texas 4th Massachusetts 14th Last election 213 seats 221 seats Seats won 232 203 Seat change 19 18 Popular vote 22,366,386 20,016,809 Percentage 52.5% 47.0% Swing 2.7% 2.3%
Results:      Democratic hold      Democratic gain      Republican hold      Republican gain
Speaker before election Joseph Martin Republican Elected Speaker Sam Rayburn Democratic

The 1954 United States House of Representatives elections was an election for the United States House of Representatives to elect members to serve in the 84th United States Congress. They were held for the most part on November 2, 1954, in the middle of Dwight Eisenhower's first presidential term, while Maine held theirs on September 13. Eisenhower's Republican Party lost eighteen seats in the House, giving the Democratic Party a majority that it would retain in every House election until 1994. This was nonetheless the first occasion when a Republican won a seat from Florida since 1882,^[1] and the first when the GOP won a seat from Texas since 1930.^[2]

Perhaps the major reason for the Republican defeat was the backlash against the Army–McCarthy Hearings, in which prominent Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy accused countless political and intellectual figures of having communist ties, usually with no evidence. Another issue was the Dixon–Yates contract to supply power to the Atomic Energy Commission.

Sam Rayburn of Texas became Speaker of the House, exchanging places with new Minority Leader Joseph W. Martin Jr. of Massachusetts; they went back to what they had been before the 1952 elections.

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