1880 presidential election results. Red denotes states won by Garfield, blue denotes states won by Hancock. Numbers indicate the electoral votes won by each candidate.
1880 House of Representatives election results on election day. (The results in the black-majority SC-5 and MS-6 were contested and later awarded to Robert Smalls and John R. Lynch by the Republican-majority House.[4])
Democratic seat Republican seat
Independent seat
The 1880 United States elections occurred during the Third Party System, and elected the members of the 47th United States Congress. Republicans retained the presidency and took control of the House. An unclear partisan situation prevailed in the Senate. As the first presidential election after the end of Reconstruction, this election saw the first occurrence of the Democratic Party sweeping the Southern United States; the party would carry an overwhelming majority of Southern states well into the 20th century.
Republicans picked up several seats in the House, taking a majority of the chamber for the first time since the 1874 elections.[6]
In the Senate, Republicans made small gains at the expense of the Democrats, but neither party had a majority due to the presence of an independent Senator and a Readjuster Senator.[7] The Republicans and Readjusters ultimately agreed to share power, along with the Republican Vice President.[8]
^ abCongressional seat gain figures only reflect the results of the regularly-scheduled elections, and do not take special elections into account, or elections later contested.
^Republicans gained a majority after the Senate elections, but lost it in September 1881 when Vice President Chester A. Arthur assumed the presidency. The two major parties shared power in the Senate for the remainder of the 47th Congress.