Within the Margin

I’ve spent a good bit of time this summer talking about the favorable political environment for Democrats and how a wave seems to be building. That has included quite a few references to past wave elections, in order to contextualize a given candidate’s victory or defeat, and to make comparisons to this current cycle. Those of us who like to nerd out over election analysis frequently reference these election in shorthand, so I figured I’d describe some of the notable midterm waves of the post-war era so that readers have a sense of what it means when we toss out a given year. We’ll start with 1946 and take us up to the present day.

1946: The war is over and Republicans finally regain a foothold in Congress
During the Great Depression, Democrats didn’t only dominate FDR’s presential elections. They also racked up absurd majorities in the House and Senate, peaking after the 1936 elections at 334 seats out of 435 in the House and 77 out of 96 in the Senate – numbers that have not been matched since. Those majorities decreased a bit over the next decade, but the Democratic majorities held until ’46. That year, with new president Harry Truman’s popularity sinking like a stone amid labor strife and price controls, Republicans netted 55 seats in the House to take the majority for the first time in a decade and a half. In the Senate, they captured a whopping 12 seats to flip that chamber as well. Neither majority would last past 1948, and Truman’s presidency rebounded as well for an upset victory that year.

1958: Even Ike is not immune to the sixth-year curse.
President Eisenhower’s first midterm saw Republicans lose another pair of short-lived House and Senate majorities – but it was nothing compared his second midterm. While Eisenhower was generally popular throughout his two terms in office, he reached a low ebb amid a global recession in 1958. The results were resounding: a 49-seat backup for Dems in the House, and a far more dramatic 15-seat pickup in the Senate. It took them from a razor-thin 49-47 majority to a 64-34 near-supermajority. Fun fact: the Senate grew by two seats thanks to the addition of Alaska as the 49th state, and Democrats won both of them.

1974: Nixon’s demise and the emergence of a new generation of leadership.
Generally referred to simply as the Watergate election, the 1974 midterms came three months after President Nixon’s resignation. His re-election campaign two years earlier had burglarized the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters, and then Nixon and his team spent years attempting to cover it up. Democrats flipped five House seats in special elections between February and June, which contributed to momentum for Nixon’s resignation and set the tone for a November landslide. Dems gained 49 House seats, bringing them to 291 in total – more than two-thirds of the 435-seat chamber. The freshman intake tended to be young, liberal and reform-minded, and set a very different tone than the one established by long-tenured and often sharply more conservative committee chairs that would soon give way. Dems also gained four Senate seats, for a total of 61.

1982: A political market correction amid an economic downturn.
The aftermath of the Reagan Revolution of 1980 was marked by a steep economic downturn and plummeting approval ratings for a president who had just won 44 states. Republicans had flipped the Senate as well in 1980, while winning enough House seats to form a de facto conservative majority with Southern Democrats. The recession did a number on the manufacturing and construction sectors and brought about a quick end to that particular moment of conservative ascension. Democrats netted 26 seats to get back to 269. Their +1 gain in the Senate was more modest, but they already held the vast majority of Senate seats contested that year. This midterm didn’t signal a change in national political direction per se – the economy and Reagan’s popularity soon recovered – but the supply-side economics that held sway in Reagan’s first two years faded and the major legislation of the remainder of Reagan’s tenure would be more bipartisan in nature.

1986: Alright, we have changed our mind about all those weird senators.
As mentioned, the 1980 Reagan Revolution ushered in his party’s first Senate majority since 1954. They flipped 12 seats that year, defeating many long-tenured Democrats and achieving their largest gain in a Senate election since 1946. Six years later, those folks faced the voters again and fared poorly. Six of these mostly quite conservative – and in some cases, rather odd – freshmen lost in 1986 (a seventh passed away before the election; his appointed replacement was also defeated). Democrats flipped nine seats in total while the GOP took only one, for a net gain of eight Democratic seats. Their gains in the House were relatively small, but they remained in a considerably stronger position than when the Reagan administration began.

1994: Perhaps history’s most-discussed midterm election, and rightly so insofar as it launched modern American politics.
The Newt Gingrich-led Republican Revolution of 1994 ended Democrats’ 40-year reign in the House of Representatives and their 8-year Senate majority. It also ended an era of relatively amicable politics and commenced a far more personal, bitter approach from which we have never really extricated ourselves. The GOP’s net gains of 54 House seats and 8 Senate seats were considerably larger than most observers anticipated as the election approached, and would prove secure for the remainder of the Clinton years. I cannot recommend enough Linda Killian’s book The Freshmen about the “revolutionaries” and their first (and in some cases only) term in office. (Amazon link because I cannot find it on Bookshop.org)

2006: Ushering in the last Democratic majority that felt truly national.
George W. Bush won re-election in 2004, declared that he had acquired political capital that he intended to use, and set about using it by proposing a partial privatization of the Social Security program. Bush’s political standing began to erode, accelerated by the Iraq War taking an extended turn for the worse years after his declaration of “mission accomplished.” On the House side, Republicans were beset with ethical issues among party leaders like Tom DeLay and Bob Ney. Democrats won seats in blue territory and red territory; they flipped seats in cities, suburbs and rural areas. In the end, they won 31 House seats while not losing any; they flipped 6 Senate seats and lost none. Both majorities flipped – and the momentum wouldn’t soon slow, either, as Democrats went on to add 21 more House seats and 8 more Senate seats in 2008, along with the presidency.

2010: An irresistible force encounters some very movable objects.
This is generally thought of as the Tea Party election, though it might be wiser to think of it as the “recovery from the worst economic downturn in 80 years is not happening quickly enough” election. Republicans obliterated the Democratic House majority, winning back many of the seats lost in 2006 and 2008 along with much longer-held Dem seats all over the country. Their net gain? 63 seats, for the largest House swing since 1948. Their Senate triumphs were more modest – an impressive six seats, but failing to flip the majority.

2014: The end of the innocence.
Barack Obama’s second presidential campaign was a decisive victor; his second midterm, not so much. Republicans netted 13 House seats – they were running out of seats to flip at this point – but took advantage of a devastating Senate map to flip nine seats, mostly in states Obama had also lost in his two presidential victories. Democrats were simply over-extended, and their presidential-year voters were nowhere to be found. Amid historically low turnout, the party lost ground in many states and rural areas that they’ve never regained. It warrants a longer essay sometime, but 2014 was the start of something darker.

2018: If you were there for the outpouring of staff and volunteer efforts – if you saw it up close – these felt like days of miracle and wonder.
Democrats climbed up off the mat after their defeat to Donald Trump two years earlier. New cohorts of organizers and volunteers took root all across the country, knocking thousands upon thousands of doors to flip suburban and exurban Congressional and state legislative seats, many of them for the first time in decades, if ever. In the House, the net gain was an impressive 41 seats. The Senate went differently, though, as Democrats flipped two seats but Republicans captured four as Senate results aligned even closer to presidential results than previously.