# 1934 Midterm Elections First-term [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] administration midterm — and one of the most analytically unusual midterms in American history: **Democrats gained 9 House seats and 9 Senate seats** while holding the presidency, a rare violation of the "presidential party loses midterm seats" pattern. The result was a popular ratification of the **First Hundred Days** [[New Deal]] legislative blitz and substantially enabled the Second New Deal (1935-1938). ## Result - **House:** Democrats gained ~9 seats; expanded supermajority (~322 of 435 Democrats vs. ~103 Republicans in the 74th Congress) - **Senate:** Democrats gained ~9 seats; expanded supermajority (~69 of 96 Democrats vs. ~25 Republicans) - **Chambers flipped:** None — Democratic dominance consolidated - **Net change:** **Sitting-president-party gain in both chambers** — historically rare ## Notable - The 1934 result is one of only three midterms in modern American history in which the presidential party gained both House and Senate seats (1934, 1998, 2002 — the latter two had narrower contexts) - The 74th Congress (1935-1937) — operating with the supermajorities this election produced — passed the **Second New Deal** legislative program including the **[[Social Security Act]]**, the **[[National Labor Relations Act]]**, the **Works Progress Administration**, and the **Banking Act of 1935** - The Republican-Supreme-Court resistance to New Deal legislation began producing major rulings during the 74th Congress, prefiguring FDR's 1937 court-packing proposal ## Connections - [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] — Sitting president. - [[New Deal]] — The legislative-mandate ratified by the election.