United States House elections, 1940

United States House of Representatives elections, 1940

← 1938

November 5, 1940

1942 →

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

	Majority party	Minority party	Third party

Leader	Sam Rayburn	Joseph Martin	Merlin Hull
Party	Democratic	Republican	Progressive
Leader's seat	Texas-4th	Massachusetts-14th	Wisconsin-9th
Last election	262 seats	169 seats	2 seats
Seats won	267	162	3
Seat change	5	7	1
Popular vote	24,227,821	21,490,392	477,435
Percentage	51.4%	45.6%	1.0%
Swing	2.7%	1.9%

	Fourth party	Fifth party

Leader	Vito Marcantonio	Rich T. Buckler
Party	American Labor	Farmer–Labor
Leader's seat	New York-20th	Minnesota-9th
Last election	1 seat	1 seat
Seats won	1	1
Seat change
Popular vote	338,770	298,250
Percentage	0.7%	0.6%
Swing		0.3%

Speaker before election

Sam Rayburn
Democratic

Elected Speaker

Sam Rayburn
Democratic

The 1940 United States House of Representatives elections coincided with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's re-election to an unprecedented third term. His Democratic Party narrowly gained seats from the opposition Republican Party, cementing their majority. However, the election gave firm control of the US House of Representatives and Senate to the New Dealers once again, as Progressives dominated the election.

The upswing in the economy that occurred following the Recession of 1937-38 encouraged voters that the New Deal plan had been working. This allowed the Democrats to stabilize their support.

Source: Election Statistics - Office of the Clerk

Three special elections were held apart from those in November. The elected winner would serve only the remainder of the incumbent Congress.

Several close allies of former governor Huey Long were defeated in primaries by reform candidates.

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Wikipedia