were the democrat's majorities inflated?

[freepcrusher]

I always wondered why the democrats had a house majority for forty straight years. But a lot of the dem districts were held by rural conservative/moderate white democrats like Phil Gramm, Kent Hance, or Charlie Stenholm. One thing I noticed, was that if one was to take out the eleven confederate states, that the 111th congress had the largest democratic majority in the house since the 75th congress of 1937-1939.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Short answer is yes. Long answer is that it's much more complicated than that. In many respects practical political control had relatively little to do with formal political control until the early 1960s when a process of incremental change began.