How the 1930 Midterm Winners Changed After Election Day

U.S. midterm elections are almost always a referendum on the president and the economy, and that was certainly the case for the 1930 midterms. A year earlier, the disastrous stock market crash of October 1929 sent the U.S. and global economies spiraling into the Great Depression. By Election Day, the U.S. unemployment rate exceeded 10 percent, Prohibition was increasingly unpopular, and American voters were poised to punish President Herbert Hoover’s Republican Party at the polls.  

Entering the 1930 midterms, Republicans held large majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. On Election Day, Republicans lost 52 seats in the House and eight seats in the Senate but managed to hold onto slim majorities in both chambers. The House tally was especially tight, with 218 Republicans and 216 Democrats.  

Back then, a new Congress didn’t go into session until December of the following year—a full 13 months after Election Day. Usually, it wasn’t a big deal, but there was nothing usual about what happened in 1930 and 1931. Between the midterm elections in November 1930 and the start of Congress in December 1931, a total of 14 House members-elect died. Seven Republicans and seven Democratic congressmen all died in the same cursed year.  

“To my knowledge, it is unprecedented,” says Andrew Busch, a historian of U.S. elections at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. “I would have to look back in the 1800s to see if there was a case where there was a cholera epidemic or something. But in the 20th or 21st centuries, it is unprecedented.” 

The rash of deaths in Congress meant that special elections needed to be held to fill the vacant House seats. By the time the 72nd Congress finally convened on December 7, 1931, the Democrats had flipped the House, reversing the results of the 1930 midterms.  

The first congressional death occurred just three weeks after Election Day. On November 27, 1930, 61-year-old Democrat John F. Quayle of New York died from pneumonia. A special election was held in February 1931 to fill Quayle’s seat, and it was won by fellow Democrat Matthew O’Malley. But before O’Malley could even be sworn in, he also died.

Two more House members died between Election Day and the end of the 71st Congress in March 1931: New York Democrat David O’Connell in December 1930 and Republican Representative Henry Allen Cooper of Wisconsin on March 1, 1931. The 80-year-old Cooper, at least, had been the oldest and longest-serving member of the House.

Three days after Cooper’s death, Republican House Speaker Nicholas Longworth of Ohio stood before the chamber to adjourn the 71st Congress.  

“Perhaps this is the last time I will address you from this rostrum,” Longworth said, meaning that the Democrats could regain control of the House in December and install a new speaker. “I do not mean to insinuate that I regard it as a probability, but I must admit it is a possibility. . . . It is only an All-Wise Providence who is going to determine which of the two great political parties will organize the next House of Representatives.” 

Providence, it turned out, had other ideas. A month later, Longworth was also dead.  

By May 1931, after a string of special elections, the party breakdown among surviving House members-elect was dead even (pardon the pun) at 216 Republicans and 216 Democrats, with one Farmer-Labor Party member.  

Then came July, a particularly cruel month. Over the course of just three weeks, four more congressmen died, two Republicans and two Democrats. After more special elections were held in late summer and early fall 1931, the tally stood at 215 Republicans and 214 Democrats. But there was still time before the 72nd Congress went into session in December, enough for five more congressional funerals.  

In total, 14 House members-elect died in the 13-month period between the 1930 midterms and the start of the 72nd Congress on December 7, 1931. The special elections couldn’t have come at a worse time for congressional Republicans. While Congress was out of session, the U.S. economy continued to freefall, unemployment climbed past 15 percent, and American voters increasingly blamed the Depression on Hoover, the Republican president.  

“There was growing concern about the Depression through 1931, but Congress had not even met,” says Busch, author of Horses in Midstream: U.S. Midterm Elections and Their Consequences, 1894-1998. “They hadn’t helped Hoover. They hadn’t obstructed Hoover. They were a nonfactor. So the question in all these congressional vacancy elections was, do you want to send Hoover message about the Depression?” 

When the dust settled after the final vacancy election on December 1, the Democrats completed their reversal of the 1930 midterm results. By flipping three formerly Republican seats in Michigan, Texas and New Jersey, Democrats now held 219 seats in the 72nd Congress, a solid majority.  

The fact that congressional Democrats were able to flip the House in 1931 after a bizarrely high number of vacancies had lasting political consequences. Although Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt wasn’t elected president until November 1932, the 72nd Congress used its Democratic majority in 1931 and 1932 to help lay the groundwork for some of FDR’s signature New Deal programs.  

For example, when unemployment approached 25 percent in 1932, congressional Democrats and progressive Republicans passed the Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932, which expanded federal lending for public works projects and relief efforts. Hoover vetoed the legislation but later signed a compromise relief bill. Still, for Americans hit hardest by the Depression, the Democrats emerged as the party most concerned with social welfare.

Next, the 72nd Congress passed the 1932 Norris-LaGuardia Act, which strengthened the position of labor unions by limiting the power of federal courts to intervene in labor disputes. Congress also passed legislation raising income tax rates and estate tax rates for the wealthiest Americans.  

“Democrats took the opportunity to stake out a position that they’re in favor of labor unions and of taxing the wealthy, not the average man,” Busch says. “Those were some of the issues that were very important in the New Deal, and you could say that the foundation was laid in the 72nd Congress.” 

The 72nd Congress also proposed the 20th Amendment, which, among other things, shortened the waiting period between Election Day and the start of a new Congress from 13 months to about two months. The amendment was ratified in 1933.