The U.S. midterm election that defied the usual pattern

In the United States, midterm elections are nationwide congressional elections held halfway through a president’s four-year term. Typically, the president’s party loses seats in Congress, the country’s national legislature. In 1934, however, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Democratic Party gained seats in both chambers—the House of Representatives and the Senate. Held during the Great Depression, the election was a striking exception to the usual pattern.

Election returns document the 1934 result, while newspaper coverage, government records and later legislation help researchers connect it to the Great Depression, support for Roosevelt’s New Deal and the choices facing voters.

The records also raise a more basic question: why are congressional elections held between presidential contests in the first place?

The U.S. Federal Elections module in the Trends and Policy Collection brings that research path together. On the Midterm Elections topic page, a timeline connects major events with historical and current election returns, reports, laws, hearings, statistics and newspaper coverage. Researchers and students can follow the development of election policy, while faculty can use the same sources to build readings, discussions and comparative assignments around the questions shaping debate today.

The Origins Of The Election Cycle

The U.S. Congress, the country’s national legislature, has two chambers with different election cycles. The House of Representatives has 435 voting members elected from districts based on population. The Senate has 100 members, with two representing each state. The U.S. Constitution gives House members two-year terms and senators six-year terms; roughly one-third of Senate seats are contested every two years. Because presidents serve four-year terms, congressional elections take place both alongside presidential elections and halfway between them. Those halfway contests became commonly known as midterm elections.

The familiar November voting date came later. A federal law passed in 1845 established a common day for choosing presidential electors, who formally cast each state’s votes for president through the Electoral College. The Apportionment Act of 1872 placed House elections on the same schedule beginning in 1876. Together, the laws show how Congress created a national election calendar within the constitutional system.

Changing How Voters Are Represented

U.S. voters did not always elect senators directly. State legislatures originally chose them. The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1913 and included in the module, transferred that choice to voters while retaining the six-year term.

The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 kept the House at 435 seats and established a process for redistributing them among the states after each census, conducted every ten years. Apportionment determines how many House seats each state receives; redistricting draws the boundaries of those electoral districts within each state. These records show how population shifts can change political representation.

From The 1934 Result To The 1935 Laws

By 1934, this system of staggered terms and regularly scheduled elections had been in place for decades. During the Great Depression, Democrats gained nine seats in the House and ten in the Senate—an unusual result for the president’s party in a midterm election. Their larger majorities gave the Roosevelt administration more support in Congress as lawmakers considered its New Deal program of economic relief, recovery and reform.

Official returns give candidate totals by state and district, while newspaper coverage shows how people understood the result at the time. Read together, they let researchers compare the voting record with the economic and political arguments surrounding the election. The Midterm Elections timeline sets 1934 against the longer history of congressional control, making the exception easier to see.

In 1935, the new Congress enacted two major New Deal laws: the Social Security Act, which created a federal system of retirement benefits, and the National Labor Relations Act, which protected employees’ rights to organize and bargain collectively. Laws, hearings and related documents show how each proposal moved through Congress and how the political setting shaped the debate around it.

When Election Rules Come Under Review

Debate over election timing did not end in 1872. A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), Elections: Views on Implementing Federal Elections on a Weekend, examined a proposal to move federal elections from the customary Tuesday to a weekend. It considered polling-place availability, staffing, costs, ballot security and whether the change might affect voter participation. Read alongside the 1845 and 1872 laws, the report connects the origins of U.S. Election Day with the practical questions involved in changing it.

Researching Beyond The Result

The 1934 result shows that midterms are more than a verdict on a president. Within the U.S. system of staggered terms, apportionment rules and regularly scheduled elections, they can shift the balance of power and influence what Congress does next.

The Trends and Policy Collection also covers Civil Rights, Criminal Justice, Environment, Healthcare, Immigration, and Taxes and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The collection is included in the U.S. Executive Branch Policy Documents Collection, available through ProQuest Government Documents.

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