In the United States, midterm congressional elections take place every two years, dividing each president’s four-year term, and are often thought of as a referendum on the current administration’s performance. If that is the case, then voters over the past 80 years have generally not been impressed with their elected presidents, as results of past midterm elections show the party in power almost always loses seats in either the House of Representatives or Senate (and usually both).
Election 2022
How does the president's party fare in the midterms?
A look at the pattern of presidential party loss in midterm elections
House in flux
The U.S. House of Representatives has all of its 435 members up for election every two years. Green arrows show gains for the president’s party while yellow arrows show losses. The president’s party’s seat count swings back and forth in the House with steady regularity since Harry Truman’s administration at the end of World War Two.
Midterm downturns
The midterm results serve to highlight the striking pattern of losses for the party in power. In fact, the House almost never changes control in a presidential election year, with every House flip since 1955 resulting from a midterm election.
The Senate swings too
Roughly one-third of the Senate’s 100 members are up for election every two years. James Madison, the fourth president, referred to the Senate as an anchor of the government and described it as acting like a fence against the partisan passions that influence the public and members of the House. But the party in power gains and loses Senate seats like the House does, especially between presidential elections.
Senate midterms: more gains, more flips
When looking at only the Senate midterms, the president’s party again shows consistent loss in recent decades. When gains have occurred, it was only one or two seats at most, compared to a gain of five seats on average during election years. And while the Senate may have fewer total seats and fewer senators up for election than the House does, it changes control more often, flipping 10 times since World War Two.
Two chambers, one pattern
Tallied up, 13 of the last 19 midterms saw losses in both chambers for the party in power. And of the six remaining elections, only the 2002 midterms resulted in gains in both House and Senate for the president. This is largely attributed to the country rallying around the Bush administration in the wake of the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Biden’s margins
The last five presidents have been elected with party control of the House and Senate, and four of them lost that control in the following midterm. President Joe Biden has slim margins to work with if he wants to buck the trend and retain control of both chambers. Democrats currently hold the House majority over the Republicans by two members, at 220, and hold the Senate by the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Biden’s prospects
Keeping control of both houses of Congress will be a tall ask for the Democrats. The razor-thin majority they hold in the Senate allows for no margin of error, and of the seven seats that are deemed competitive four of them are currently held by Democrats. The House is much more competitive, with around 50 seats that could go to either party.
Note
In 2001, Republican Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont left the Republican Party to caucus with the Democrats as an independent, causing power to shift back to Democrats. House and Senate seat predictions are as of October 11, 2022.
Sources
U.S. Senate; U.S. House of Representatives; Reuters reporting
Edited by
Feilding Cage, Rosalba O’Brien