The 1966 United States elections were held on November 8, 1966, and elected the members of the 90th United States Congress. The election was held in the middle of Democratic President

Lyndon B. Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...

's second (only full) term, and during the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...

. Johnson's Democrats lost forty-seven seats to the Republican Party in the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...

. The Democrats also lost three seats in the

U.S. Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...

to the Republicans. Despite their losses, the Democrats retained control of both chambers of Congress. Republicans won a large victory in the gubernatorial elections, with a net gain of seven seats. This was the first election held after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which led to a

surge Surge means a sudden transient rush or flood, and may refer to: Science * Storm surge, the onshore gush of water associated with a low-pressure weather system * Surge (glacier), a short-lived event where a glacier can move up to velocities 100 ...

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...

voter participation. The Republican Party had risked sliding into irrelevance after the disastrous 1964 elections, and the GOP's victory in this election invigorated the party, strengthening the conservative coalition. The GOP made inroads into the South and among

blue collar A blue-collar worker is a working class person who performs manual labor. Blue-collar work may involve skilled or unskilled labor. The type of work may involving manufacturing, warehousing, mining, excavation, electricity generation and power ...

workers, foreshadowing Nixon's

Southern strategy In American politics, the Southern strategy was a Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans. As the civil rights movement and dismantling o ...

and the rise of

Reagan Democrats A Reagan Democrat is a traditionally Democratic Party (United States), Democratic voter in the Northern United States, referring to working class residents who supported Republican Party (United States), Republican presidential candidates Ronald R ...

, respectively. Among the newly elected Republicans were future presidents Ronald Reagan (who soon became the leader of the right-wing of the Republican Party) as Governor of California and George H. W. Bush as a

representative Representative may refer to: Politics * Representative democracy, type of democracy in which elected officials represent a group of people * House of Representatives, legislative body in various countries or sub-national entities * Legislator, som ...

from Texas, and future vice president

Spiro Agnew Spiro Theodore Agnew (November 9, 1918 – September 17, 1996) was the 39th vice president of the United States, serving from 1969 until his resignation in 1973. He is the second vice president to resign the position, the other being John ...

Governor of Maryland The Governor of the State of Maryland is the head of government of Maryland, and is the commander-in-chief of the state's National Guard units. The Governor is the highest-ranking official in the state and has a broad range of appointive powers ...

. The election also helped establish former vice president

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

(who campaigned heavily for Republicans) as a front-runner for the 1968 Republican nomination. President Johnson was mostly unable to pass major expansions to the

Great Society The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The term was first coined during a 1964 commencement address by President Lyndon B. Johnson at the Universit ...

in the 90th Congress. After the smashing reelection victory of President Johnson in 1964, the Democratic Congress had passed a raft of liberal legislation. Labor union leaders claimed credit for the widest range of liberal laws since the New Deal era, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Voting Rights Act of 1965; the War on Poverty; aid to cities and education; increased Social Security benefits; and Medicare for the elderly. The 1966 elections were an unexpected disaster, with defeats for many of the more liberal Democrats. According to Alan Draper, the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Action (COPE) was the main electioneering unit of the labor movement. It ignored the white backlash against civil rights, which had become a main Republican attack point. The COPE assumed falsely that union members were interested in issues of greatest salience to union leadership, but polls showed this was not true. The members were much more conservative. The younger ones were much more concerned about taxes and crime, and the older ones had not overcome racial biases. Furthermore a new issue--the War in Vietnam-- was bitterly splitting the New Deal coalition into hawks (led by Johnson and Vice-President

Hubert Humphrey Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. (May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978) was an American pharmacist and politician who served as the 38th vice president of the United States from 1965 to 1969. He twice served in the United States Senate, representing Mi ...

) and doves (led by Senators Eugene McCarthy and

Robert Kennedy Robert Francis Kennedy (November 20, 1925June 6, 1968), also known by his initials RFK and by the nickname Bobby, was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 64th United States Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, a ...

).John L. Sullivan, and Robert E. O'Connor. "Electoral choice and popular control of public policy: The case of the 1966 house elections." ''American Political Science Review'' 66.4 (1972): 1256-1268.

References

1966 United States midterm elections November 1966 events in the United States {{US-election-stub

See also

References