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The 1942 Congressional Elections*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

John Harding
John Harding
Affiliation:
Office of Public Opinion, Research Princeton University
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Extract

In 1942 the Democrats elected 222 candidates to the House of Representatives, while the Republicans elected 209. It was the most successful election for the Republicans since they lost control of the House in 1930, and marked a tremendous resurgence in their power from its nadir in the 1936 election. The change in the popular vote was not great; in 1936, 41.3 per cent of the major party vote went to Republican congressmen, while in 1942 they received 51.6 per cent of the major party popular vote. Yet clearly we have been witnessing a Republican trend; and the problem of this article is to discover the basis on which it rests.

I

It is well known that the majority of people in any election vote on party lines. Yet there are always a number of people not affiliated with either major party, and a number of “mavericks” who vote for the opposition candidate. If “issues” are involved in any election, their influence can be detected only in the votes of such people. Our first analysis will be directed to discovering what national issues, if any, were involved in the 1942 congressional elections.

Type
American Government and Politics
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , February 1944 , pp. 41 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1944

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References

1 Our discussion thus far has rested upon the evidence of our whole sample of 230. Since the following argument applies to only a portion of that sample, selected a posteriori as showing the greatest differences on various questions, it is necessary to adopt a more rigid criterion of significance for these differences. We took the one per cent level of significance as our criterion for differences within a single political party.

2 The influence of differential turnout on the election is shown in detail in Cantril and Harding, op. cit.

3 These figures show the total vote cast for Presidential candidates. In 1932, the total Congressional vote was 2.3 million less than the Presidential, and in 1936 it was 2.7 million less.

4 These figures are taken from Associated Press dispatches printed in the New York Times, Dec. 17, 1934, and Dec. 25, 1942.

5 Students and housewives were classified according to the occupations of their fathers or husbands.

6 This over-estimation of the Roosevelt vote (i.e., 57 per cent in 1940, not counting the Southern states) has been characteristic of all AIPO surveys taken after the 1940 election. It may be interpreted as a belated “band-wagon effect.” Cf. Cantril and Harding, op. cit.

7 It would be desirable to study Republican gains in the various religious and ethnic groups of the country; unfortunately, this is impossible, since religious and ethnic data were not secured in the 1938 surveys.

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