1920 United States Senate elections

The 1920 United States Senate elections were elections for the United States Senate that coincided with the presidential election of Warren G. Harding. The 32 seats of Class 3 were contested in regular elections, and special elections were held to fill vacancies. Democrat Woodrow Wilson's unpopularity allowed Republicans to win races across the country, winning ten seats from the Democrats and providing them with an overwhelming 59-to-37 majority. The Republican landslide was so vast that Democrats lost over half of the seats that were contested this year and failed to win a single race outside the South.

1920 United States Senate elections

November 2, 1920
34 of the 96 seats in the United States Senate 49 seats needed for a majority
Majority party Minority party   Leader Henry Cabot Lodge[lower-alpha 1] Oscar Underwood Party Republican Democratic Leader since March 4, 1919 April 27, 1920 Leader's seat Massachusetts Alabama Seats before 49 47 Seats after 59 37 Seat change 10 10 Seats up 15 19 Races won 25 9
Results of the elections:      Democratic hold      Republican gain      Republican hold      No election
Majority Leader before election Henry Cabot Lodge[lower-alpha 1] Republican Elected Majority Leader Henry Cabot Lodge[lower-alpha 1] Republican

Since the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment, these elections were the closest when the winning party in almost every Senate election mirrored the winning party for their state in the presidential election, with Kentucky being the only Senate race to not mirror their presidential result. No other Senate election cycle in a presidential year would come close to repeating this feat until 2016, in which the result of every Senate race mirrored the corresponding state's result in the presidential election. Coincidentally, that election cycle involved the same class of Senate seats, Class 3.[1]

This is one of only five occasions where 10 or more Senate seats changed party in an election, with the other occasions being in 1932, 1946, 1958, and 1980.

As of 2023, the 59 seats held after this election remains the highest number of seats that the Republican Party has held as the result of an election. This number rose to 60, the highest number of seats the Republicans have ever held, after Democrat senator Josiah O. Wolcott of Delaware accepted an offer from Republican governor William D. Denney to become Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery, allowing Denney to name Republican T. Coleman du Pont to replace Wolcott, a seat du Pont held until the next election, in which both a special election was held for the remainder of the term and a regular election was held as the seat was normally up then, both of which du Pont lost narrowly to Democrat Thomas F. Bayard Jr. In addition, the 22 seat majority is the largest majority that the Republicans have achieved in any election since.