In the end, the GOP won four of those 10 seats - three of which were in deeply red states like Indiana, Missouri and North Dakota (the other was traditionally swingy Florida) - while still losing swing-state seats in Arizona and Nevada. Take the 2018 midterms: Democrats had to defend 24 of the 35 seats up in 2018 (26 if you count two independents who caucused with the party 6), and 10 of those were in states that Trump carried in the 2016 election. Why the asymmetry? In many cases, the president’s party flipped seats in states the president had carried handily two years earlier. In fact, the House and Senate have moved in opposite directions three times over the past 75 years, most recently in 2018. Moreover, Senate elections are statewide contests where incumbents have sometimes had a larger edge than their House counterparts, in part because a distinct personal brand can still somewhat override trends running against the incumbent’s party. 5 As such, the partisan makeup of those Senate seats can more strongly influence the electoral chances of the two parties. This is, in part, because all 435 seats are up in each House election, whereas only about one-third of Senate seats (and roughly two-thirds of states) are up. This might sound counterintuitive given how often the president’s party loses ground in the House, but House elections are simply more susceptible to the national electoral environment than Senate elections. Since World War II, the president’s party has either gained seats on net or at least avoided losing ground in six out of 19 midterms.
Parties in the approximate situation in which Democrats now find themselves have done as well as a six-seat gain (Republicans in 2002) and as poorly as a 47-seat loss (Republicans in 1958).Īlthough the president’s party almost always loses seats in the House in a midterm, the pattern is a bit more inconsistent in the Senate. Now, Democrats may be able to minimize their 2022 losses because they won’t go into the election with a huge majority (fewer seats means fewer seats to lose), but there historically hasn’t been a strong correlation 4 between the size of a party’s majority and their seat losses. If this happens to Democrats this November (who will probably go into the midterms with 222 House seats, 3 just four more than a majority), they would easily lose the House. In the average midterm election during this time period, the president’s party has lost 26 House seats. Since the end of World War II, the president’s party has lost House seats in all but two midterms: 20, when Republicans were seen as overreaching with their impeachment inquiry into President Bill Clinton. Therefore, since Democrats won the House popular vote by 3.0 points in 2020, Republicans can roughly expect to win it by 4.4 points in 2022 if history is any guide.īecause of the way the House map is drawn, the House popular vote doesn’t translate perfectly to the number of seats the president’s party loses, but as a general rule, the drop in support for the president’s party does cost it seats in Congress - at least in the House. Overall, in the post-World War II era, the president’s party has performed an average of 7.4 points worse in the House popular vote in midterm elections than it did two years prior. At this point, though, history isn’t on the Democrats’ side.
And some theories for why the “midterm curse” exists may contain some hints that Democrats may be able to hold their losses to a minimum. But as with any rule, there are exceptions. House and gain seats there - although their prospects in the Senate are less certain. History certainly seems adamant that they will win the national popular vote for the U.S. Are Republicans really a lock to sweep the 2022 midterms? It’s worth digging into the data behind this rule, though, and the reasons why it so often holds true. And the results out of Virginia and New Jersey last November suggest that a red wave might hit President Biden’s Democrats in 2022. President Donald Trump’s Republicans were buried under a blue wave in 2018. President Barack Obama’s Democrats received a “ shellacking” in 2010. Bush’s Republicans took a “ thumping” in 2006. One of the most ironclad rules in American politics is that the president’s party loses ground in midterm elections.
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