United States House election, 1938

United States House of Representatives elections, 1938

← 1936

November 8, 1938

1940 →

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

	Majority party	Minority party

Leader	William B. Bankhead	Joseph Martin
Party	Democratic	Republican
Leader's seat	Alabama-7th	Massachusetts-14th
Last election	334 seats	88 seats
Seats won	262	169
Seat change	72	81
Popular vote	17,715,450	17,274,585
Percentage	48.7%	47.5%

	Third party	Fourth party	Fifth party

Party	Wisconsin Progressive	Farmer–Labor	American Labor
Last election	8 seats	5 seats	0 seats
Seats won	2	1	1
Seat change	6	4	1
Popular vote	350,346	342,530	250,796
Percentage	1.0%	0.9%	0.7%

Speaker before election

William Bankhead
Democratic

Elected Speaker

William Bankhead
Democratic

The 1938 United States House of Representatives elections was an election for the United States House of Representatives in 1938 which occurred in the middle of President Franklin Roosevelt's second term. Roosevelt's Democratic Party lost a net of 72 seats to the Republican Party, who also picked up seats from minor Progressive and Farmer-Labor Parties.

Multiple factors contributed to the Democratic decline. One main reason was the Recession of 1937. Unemployment soared, undercutting the Democrats' claim that the New Deal had ended the Great Depression. Democrats fought among themselves, especially over Roosevelt's "Court Packing" plan. In addition, there was backlash against Roosevelt's intervention in the Democratic primaries which angered conservative Democrats. The labor unions, which were emerging as a powerful grass-roots factor in the New Deal Coalition, split bitterly as the AFL and CIO fought over membership.

Internal Democratic strains were exacerbated by an effort led by Roosevelt to purge certain conservative senators for defeat in Democratic primaries, including Walter George of Georgia, Millard Tydings of Maryland and Ellison Smith of South Carolina, along with the chairman of the House Rules Committee, John J. O'Connor of New York. All but the last were reelected.

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