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1960 United States House of Representatives elections

House elections for the 87th 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 revisionSep 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ4450690 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 1960 United States House of Representatives elections were held on November 8, 1960, to elect members to serve in the 87th United States Congress. They coincided with the election of President John F. Kennedy. This was the first house election to feature all 50 current U.S. states.

There were 437 seats, the most in U.S. history: 435 from the reapportionment in accordance with the 1950 census, and one seat for each of the new states of Alaska and Hawaii.

Although Democrats retained control, it was the last time until 1988 that a victorious presidential candidate lost seats in the House.

This is the last House election cycle in which no new female representatives were elected to the House. Since the death of 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole in 2021, this is also the latest House election cycle where all first-elected members are deceased.

Overall results

405 incumbent members sought reelection, but 5 were defeated in primaries and 25 defeated in the general election for a total of 375 incumbents winning.

Source: Election Statistics - Office of the Clerk

Special elections

In these special elections, the winner was seated during 1960 or before January 3, 1961; ordered by election date, then state, then district.

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Delaware

Florida

Georgia

Hawaii

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

See also

1960 United States elections

1960 United States Senate elections

86th United States Congress

87th United States Congress

Notes

References

Works cited

Abramson, Paul; Aldrich, John; Rohde, David (1995).

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1960 United States House of Representatives elections” is house elections for the 87th U.S. Congress. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through United, States and House, not as a finished interpretation.

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—1960, 1950, 1988, 1996—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, United, States and House is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “house elections for the 87th U.S. Congress” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

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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 Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4450690. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1960, 1950, 1988 and 1996.

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This entry incorporates text from “1960 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.