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1956 United States House of Representatives elections

House elections for the 85th U.S. Congress

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ4450433 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 1956 United States House of Representatives elections was an election for the United States House of Representatives to elect members to serve in the 85th United States Congress. They were held for the most part on November 6, 1956, while Maine held theirs on September 10. They coincided with the re-election of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

With no major national issues and the economic upswing of the 1950s in full force, voters generally chose to uphold the status quo, keeping the Republican president and the Democratic Congress.

Overall results

410 incumbent members sought reelection, but 6 were defeated in primaries and 15 defeated in the general election for a total of 389 incumbents winning.

Special elections

In these special elections, the winner was seated during 1956 or before January 3, 1957; ordered by election date.

Alabama

Arizona

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Delaware

Florida

Georgia

Idaho

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Kansas

Kentucky

Louisiana

Maine

Maryland

Massachusetts

Michigan

Minnesota

Mississippi

Missouri

Montana

Nebraska

Nevada

New Hampshire

New Jersey

New Mexico

New York

North Carolina

North Dakota

Ohio

Oklahoma

Oregon

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

South Carolina

South Dakota

Tennessee

Texas

Utah

Vermont

Virginia

Washington

West Virginia

Wisconsin

Wyoming

Non-voting delegates

Alaska Territory

Hawaii Territory

See also

1956 United States elections

1956 United States Senate elections

1956 United States presidential election

1956 United States gubernatorial elections

84th United States Congress

85th United States Congress

Notes

References

Works cited

Abramson, Paul; Aldrich, John; Rohde, David (1995). Change and Continuity in the 1992 Elections. CQ Press. ISBN 0871878399.

Editorial summary

“1956 United States House of Representatives elections” enters the record as house elections for the 85th U.S. Congress. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what United, States and House can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1956, 1957, 1995, 1992—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around United, States and House.
Editorial analysis

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“1956 United States House of Representatives elections” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, United, States and House provides the most credible route into that argument.

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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4450433. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1956, 1957, 1995 and 1992.

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This entry incorporates text from “1956 United States House of Representatives elections” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.