House Election 1894

[True Democrat]

Can someone explained what happened in this election?

The Republicans gained 130 seats and the Democrats lost 125.  Is this the largest change in history?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._House_election%2C_1894

[A18]

Economic depression is what happened

[True Democrat]

Economic depression is what happened

1930 or 1932 weren't even that big though.

[A18]

You can't measure the seriousness of a depression from the change in seats, but that's largely what made people 'switch horses.'

It was probably the worst financial crisis in American history up until that point. McKinley was, of course, lucky; the economy started rolling again when he got elected. He had nothing to do with it, but got credit.

[True Democrat]

Anyone else know anything about this?  I think Al specializes in this period.

[A18]

What do you want to know?

[Emsworth]

Republican gains in the Senate were much more modest. The Republicans gained (and the Democrats lost) only four seats.

[A18]

So in other words, very few state legislatures switched hands.

[J. J.]

You also had a strong and somewhat charismatic leader in Reed.

[Beet]

Uhh, there was a massive seats-to-votes shift ratio in the 1894-1896 elections, and it was almost entirely concentrated in the North. In the South, the Republicans didn't make any gains. The GOP vote increased only slightly, but because there were a lot of districts where they were just under the threshold, their seat count increased dramatically; also they got a lot more safe seats in what were previously competitive districts.

[minionofmidas]

This was in the pre-gerrymandering, pre-incumbent bias/vote-splitting days. Mood swings were much more likely to have massive effects in seats.