U.S. Congressional Majorities

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The chart below shows the number of seats in the House of Representatives held by the Democratic party and by the GOP, since the early 1900's. For most of this century, the Democratic party has had a majority of seats in the House (out of a total of about 435 seats).

The chart starts with a GOP majority, which changes after the stock market crash. During Roosevelt's term the Democrats take a huge lead, and they keep this lead (with two exceptions) all the way to 1994, even through Reagan's presidency. Finally, during Bill Clinton's time -- in 1994 -- the GOP gets the majority back and has held it except for two terms after the recent market crash. [Source: Numbers come from various articles on the Wikipedia.]






















I also wanted to understand what would happen if the house had something similar to the filibuster rules of the Senate. About 260 seats is 60% of the total -- see the grey shaded area running across the top. A lot of the time, the majority is below 60%. So, if 40% of Representatives could stop passage of a bill, we would have had many House terms where the minority party could have threatened a "veto". This likely would have been a good thing.

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