U.S. House election, 1978

United States House of Representatives elections, 1978

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November 7, 1978

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All 435 seats to the United States House of Representatives
218 seats were needed for a majority

	Majority party	Minority party

Leader	Tip O'Neill	John Rhodes
Party	Democratic	Republican
Leader's seat	Massachusetts-11th	Arizona-1st
Last election	292 seats	143 seats
Seats won	277	158
Seat change	15	15
Popular vote	29,317,222	24,464,665
Percentage	53.7%	44.8%
Swing	2.2%	2.5%

Speaker before election

Tip O'Neill
Democratic

Elected Speaker

Tip O'Neill
Democratic

The 1978 United States House of Representatives elections was an election for the United States House of Representatives in 1978 which occurred in the middle of President Jimmy Carter's term, when the country was going through an energy crisis and facing rapid inflation. The President's Democratic Party lost seats to the opposition Republican Party, in this case a net of 15 meaning the loss of their two-thirds majority but the Democrats still retained a rather large majority. As of 2017, this was the last midterm election where the Democrats managed to maintain a majority under a Democratic president.

Notable freshmen included future Vice President Dick Cheney (R-Wy.), future Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), future Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), future U.S. Senator Olympia J. Snowe (R-Me.), and future vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro (D-N.Y.).

Future president George W. Bush was the Republican nominee for a seat in Texas, but lost.

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