November 3, 1942 Washington DC
The aide put down the phone.
“Good news, sir, Connecticut is fully reporting.’
“Did we hold?”
“Barely, Downs is going down in the 4th. The rest of the delegation looks like it will be holding on. Not by much, but by enough. We’ll get a recount in at least two districts but we’re ahead going to bed.”
Six more markers were moved on the big board. Four went into the majority’s column, one stayed in the minority while one flipped from the majority to the minority column. By now, the results of the election were becoming clear. The Democratic majority was getting thinner and thinner. Speaker Rayburn had started the day with effectively 282 seats backing him between Democrats and allied, minor parties. He knew that he would be losing some of that majority.
Now as the vote counts were coming in, he was looking at losing thirty seats. Yankee seats were not flipping. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Michigan were holding on, some of them by the thinnest margin for staunch New Dealers while the Midwest was a bloodbath. The Republican core of Ohio saw a seven seat swing to the right while other states in the Ohio-Mississippi Valley swung almost twenty more seats to the Republicans.
The Speaker tipped his whiskey. He probably had a three to five seat working majority even as he had a thirty seat figurative majority.