In off-year elections the party of the incumbent president customarily loses seats in Congress. In 1962 Republicans went after Kennedy's record — charging that he had fumbled on foreign policy and failed to win support for his domestic programs. This strategy was neutralized, however, by Kennedy's successful resolution of the Cuban missile crisis just before the election. For the first time since the 1934 off-year election, the president's party gained seats in the Senate, giving the Democrats a 68-32 majority. (They lost one seat when Democratic senator Dennis Chavez of New Mexico died less than two weeks after the election and Republican Edwin L. Mechem was appointed to serve the last two years of Chavez's term.) Reapportionment had made the House of Representatives two seats smaller than it had been in 1960, and the Democrats lost four seats, well below the average of thirty-eight losses for.....
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