1954 United States House of Representatives elections information
House elections for the 84th U.S. Congress
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.
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).
^Bullock, Charles S.; Rozell, Mark J. (2007). The New Politics of the Old South: An Introduction to Southern Politics. Rowman and Littlefield. p. 272. ISBN 0742553442.
^Davis, Michelle H. (2021). Dixiegops: The Untold Story of the Dixiecrat-Republican Coalition. p. 106. ISBN 9798546782238.
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