President’s Party Up Against Poor Odds In The Midterms

The Republican Party is controlling the House, the Senate and the presidency at the moment, but the midterm elections coming up at in November have the power to change this Status Quo.

Congressional and presidential approval are near all-time lows as the Trump administration’s wars are proving unpopular, but the party is also up against a historical precedent at the same time: The president’s party rarely does well in the midterms.

As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, using data by The American Presidency Project, there are only two presidents of the modern age who could expand their party’s showing in both chambers in the midterms or at least not lose ground: Bill Clinton during his second term and George W. Bush during his first, when he managed to flip the Senate in his favor while holding on to the House just one year after 9/11. Against these few success stories stands a long line of defeats.

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President Donald Trump himself is no stranger to this. During his first term from 2017 to 2020, the Republican Party lost 41 House seats in the midterms, among the top 5 highest midterms losses since the 1960s. This lost the party control of the chamber, while it gained two seats in the Senate, holding on to it. Trump’s predecessor and successor, Joe Biden, fared similar in 2022. The Democrats lost only 9 House seats then, but with the same outcome (they also kept the Senate).

Similarly, back in 2010, Barack Obama lost control of the House just two years into his eight-year term and suffered another major setback in his second midterms when he lost the Senate as well. Bill Clinton in 1994 lost control of both chambers of Congress by the middle of his first term and never won them back in the six years that followed despite the gains he made in his second midterm election. After George W. Bush’s successful first midterms, debacle followed four years later as he lost both chambers in 2006 amid fall-out from Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq.

While the proof of midterm losses for sitting presidents is resounding, the reasons behind them are more muddled.

Nobody really knows why the midterms are so hard for incumbents irrespective of the political climate. Depending on how a president is perceived by his voters, he could be hit by either apathy or disappointment.

Other than 9/11, which helped George W. Bush succeed, other national crises have not proven a good predictor for midterms success, which leave two more possible culprits: presidential approval and the state of the economy. Both will likely not work in Trump’s favor come November.