110th Special Elections

[Padfoot]

So far we already have 3 special elections occurring for the 110th Congress and we still have a year and a half to go before the next real election.  If we continue at the current pace we'll be announcing the need for another special election nearly once every month.  With the current amount of scandals surrounding many representatives and the old ages of many members of Congress I think it is very likely that we could continue at our current pace due to resignations, early retirements, and deaths.  According to Wikipedia (which has some very large gaps in what I am sure is a highly inaccurate record)  the 101st (1989-1991) set the record for most special elections with 12.  Three of those resulted in a party change.  Does anyone else think that the 110th could be the one to break or tie the record?

[Padfoot]

After further investigation into the matter here is a breakdown of the causes for the 12 special elections held during the 101st Congess:  5 members left the House for new positions, 3 resigned amid scandals, 2 died of natural causes, and in some sort of strange unfortunate coincidence 2 congressmen died in separate plane crashes in the same week of August 1989.

[Padfoot]

I just found another instance in which we could be seeing a special election.  Two representatives from Pennsylvania are competing to be the Democratic nominee for the Philadelphia mayoral race.

[Padfoot]

According to Wikipedia (which has some very large gaps in what I am sure is a highly inaccurate record)  the 101st (1989-1991) set the record for most special elections with 12.

The 71st Congress (1929-1931) actually has the record, with 27 special elections.

As you and I both noted, wiki is less than comprehensive in it's information on this topic.  May I ask where you did manage to find that number?  Also 27 special elections seems like an extremely large number.  Why were there so many?

[Padfoot]

Thanks for the info Bacon King and jimrtex.