Voters in this week's US elections turned against the party in the White House, continuing a trend seen at almost every midterm for nearly a century, though the Republicans this time around lost ground almost everywhere, on a scale few midterms have matched.
"The American people have made the same decision that has been made in all but two midterms in the last century," US House Speaker Mike Johnson said, acknowledging Republican losses.
As votes were counted on Wednesday, Democrats won control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. They made gains in traditionally Republican states, including Texas, Kansas and South Carolina, and won congressional districts that President Donald Trump had carried comfortably in the 2024 presidential election.
Most forecasts had expected Republicans to lose the House. Instead, the party suffered something closer to a rout.
A history of midterm losses
The American Presidency Project, an archive of presidential records at the University of California, Santa Barbara, documents how many congressional seats the president's party has won or lost at each midterm.
Between 1946 and 2022, the president's party lost House seats in 18 of the 20 midterms, losing an average of 26 seats across all 20.
{{/usCountry}}Between 1946 and 2022, the president's party lost House seats in 18 of the 20 midterms, losing an average of 26 seats across all 20.
{{/usCountry}}Losing seats is different from losing control. A party can shed seats and still hold its majority. Control of the House changed hands in seven of those 20 elections, in 1946, 1954, 1994, 2006, 2010, 2018 and 2022.
The most recent of those came in 2022, when then president Joe Biden's Democrats lost nine House seats, and with them control of the House of Representatives, although they gained a seat in the Senate.
The heaviest loss in that period came in 2010, under then president Barack Obama, when the Democrats lost 63 House seats and the Republicans took control of the chamber.
Among Republican presidents, the heaviest losses since 1946 came in 1958 under Dwight D Eisenhower and in 1974 under Gerald Ford, at 48 House seats each. Trump's first midterm, in 2018, came next, costing the party 41 seats and control of the House.
Exceptions
Between 1934 and 2022, the president's party gained House seats at a midterm only three times, in 1934, 1998 and 2002, according to the American Presidency Project. (Johnson's count of two holds for the past 90 years, which take in 1998 and 2002; 1934 falls just inside a century and adds a third.)
The first came in 1934, during the Great Depression, among the worst global economic downturns in modern times, which left millions jobless. Hard times seem to invite a rebuke for whoever holds power, but voters in this case backed Franklin D Roosevelt's Democrats, who gained nine seats in the House and nine in the Senate, the archive's data show.
The second came in 1998, the year the scandal over then president Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern, broke in the second year of his second term. The scandal damaged his reputation and led to impeachment proceedings against him, yet the Democrats added four House seats and the balance in the Senate was unchanged.
"I think the message the American people sent was loud and clear: We want progress over partisanship and unity over division,” Clinton said the day after the vote.
A survey by the Pew Research Center, taken shortly after Clinton first denied the affair in January 1998, found that 71% of Americans approved of the way he was doing his job. This result was 10 percentage points more than in a survey taken just before the scandal broke.
In 2002, at the first midterms after the September 11, 2001 attacks, then president George W Bush's approval ratings were high as voters rallied behind the country's response. Republicans that year gained eight House seats and two Senate seats, the data show.
The election campaign was fought during the war on terror, an impending US-led war with Iraq and the aftermath of a recession that the National Bureau of Economic Research, the private research body that officially dates US recessions, places between March and November 2001.
Between the two chambers, the US Senate has followed the trend less closely than the House. The president's party has gained Senate seats at several midterms even while losing seats in the House, as the Democrats did in 2022. Trump’s Republicans did the same in 2018, losing 41 House seats but gaining two in the Senate.
Why the party in power may lose seats
Some see the midterm as a referendum on the governing party. Since these polls don’t decide who occupies the White House, it leaves voters free to use their ballots for the Congress to register approval or disapproval of that party.
One explanation is that the president's party gives back some of what it had won two years earlier, when a popular candidate at the top of the ticket and the momentum of a presidential campaign helped its candidates for Congress win seats. A 2022 study published in the journal Social Science Quarterly examined midterms between 1950 and 2018 and found that a party controlling both the presidency and Congress tends to lose more seats. The researcher concluded that midterms act as a "counter‐surge" to the surge in support the governing party receives in the previous presidential election.
Another explanation is balancing: some voters prefer that the party holding the presidency does not also control Congress, and vote for the opposition to give it more say over legislation and oversight. A 2010 study published in The Journal of Politics examined how voters shift towards the opposition party over the course of midterm campaigns. The researchers said this shift was consistent with balancing, in which voters use congressional elections to moderate the governing party's power.
The explanations are not mutually exclusive, and the reasons behind any single result can vary.
Why the defeat went further this time
Tuesday's vote was the first nationwide test of Trump's second term. Republicans lost ground in 99% of the roughly 2,200 counties where most votes had been counted by Wednesday morning, and the party's share of the vote fell 8 percentage points from Trump's share in 2024, Reuters reported.
Republicans had so far not won a House seat in any district that Trump won by less than 11 percentage points two years ago, Reuters reported.
By 11.30pm IST on Wednesday, Democrats were expected to gain about 30 House seats and seven in the Senate, HT reported. All 435 House seats were on the ballot, along with 35 of the 100 Senate seats, including special elections in Florida and Ohio.
Democrats broke through in Senate races in Kansas, Texas and South Carolina, states where the party had not won statewide races in a generation. Kansas elected a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in 94 years.
An HT comparison of state-wise House votes also found that Republicans trailed in 12 states they had led in 2024, and that their margin shrank in every state except Alaska.
“One of Trump's greatest assets — a MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement that supported him with a rare intensity — is now damaged, if not fractured," the Wall Street Journal wrote on the results.
The reasons for the Republican loss, it appears, were manifold.
About three-quarters of voters described the economy as not so good or poor, and around eight in 10 said inflation had caused moderate or severe financial hardship for their households, according to the AP Voter Poll, a survey of about 80,000 voters conducted for the Associated Press.
Roughly half said government corruption and the cost of living were "crucial" to their vote for Congress, and young and Latino voters moved away from Republican candidates compared with their support for Trump in 2024.
About 6 in 10 voters said Trump places a higher priority on his own personal interests than the country's interests, and roughly 7 in 10 said Congress was doing "not enough" to provide checks and balances on the presidency, the survey found.