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.