34 of the 96 seats in the United States Senate 49 seats needed for a majority
Majority party
Minority party
Leader
Joseph Robinson
James Watson (Lost re-election)
Party
Democratic
Republican
Leader since
December 3, 1923
March 4, 1929
Leader's seat
Arkansas
Indiana
Seats before
47[a]
48
Seats after
59[2]
36
Seat change
12
12
Seats up
17
17
Races won
28
6
Third party
Party
Farmer–Labor
Seats before
1
Seats after
1
Seat change
Seats up
0
Races won
0
Clickable imagemap for the 1932 US Senate elections
Results of the elections: Democratic gain Democratic hold Republican hold No election
Majority Leader before election
James Watson
Republican
Elected Majority Leader
Joseph Robinson
Democratic
The 1932 United States Senate elections coincided with Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt's landslide victory over incumbent Herbert Hoover in the presidential election. The 32 seats of Class 3 were contested in regular elections, and special elections were held to fill vacancies.
With the Hoover administration widely blamed for the Great Depression, Republicans lost twelve seats and control of the chamber to the Democrats, who won 28 of the 34 contested races (two Democratic incumbents, Duncan U. Fletcher of Florida and John H. Overton of Louisiana, were re-elected unopposed). Democrats gained another seat through an appointment in Nebraska, bringing their total number of seats up to 60.
Among the Republican incumbents defeated in 1932 were Senate Majority Leader James Watson and five-term Senator Reed Smoot, an author of the controversial Smoot-Hawley tariff.[3] This was the first of four elections in which a Senate leader lost re-election, and the only time they were a Republican. This election marked the first time a woman was elected to the Senate, that being Hattie Caraway of Arkansas. As of 2023, this is the last time Democrats won a Senate election in Kansas.
This is also one of only five occasions where 10 or more Senate seats changed hands in an election, with the other occasions being in 1920, 1946, 1958, and 1980.
^"THE CONGRESS: Democratic Senate". TIME. Retrieved September 4, 2023.
^"U.S. Senate: Party Division". U.S. Senate. Retrieved April 18, 2017.
^Whaples, Robert (March 1995). "Where Is There Consensus Among American Economic Historians? The Results of a Survey on Forty Propositions". The Journal of Economic History. 55 (1). Cambridge University Press: 144. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.482.4975. doi:10.1017/S0022050700040602. JSTOR 2123771. S2CID 145691938.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
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