Midweek midterm elections update for April 25th - Who Would Control Congress today?
Bottom Line: We're up to our 14th midterm election update. Here's what history tells us about midterm elections:
Since the advent of the current two-party system (39 midterm elections) we've averaged the President's party losing 4 Senate seats and 30 seats in the House. If that happens this year Democrats would retake control of both chambers of Congress. Democrats only need to flip two Senate seats to retake control and they need 24 seats in the House. History is on the side of the Democrats reclaiming control going into this cycle.
There are only three times that the incumbent President's party has gained seats (1934 during FDR's first term, 1998 during Bill Clinton's second term and 2002 during George W. Bush's first term) thus only 3 out of 39 midterm elections have resulted in the President's party gaining seats. Here's another way of looking at it... History suggests there's a 92% chance Democrats will gain Congressional seats this year. The question becomes how many. That's where it's helpful to look at the history of generic ballot polls and outcomes. These are the past four cycles:
The first number is the average generic ballot polling on Election Day and the second is the actual result:
2014: GOP +2.4 - GOP +5.7 = GOP +3.3%
2010: GOP +9.4 - GOP +6.8 = GOP -2.6%
2006: DEM +11.5 - DEM +7.9 = DEM -3.6%
2002: GOP +1.7 - GOP +4.6 = GOP +2.9%
The first takeaway is that the polls average being off by about 3% - however history has shown that the party with a generic ballot advantage has always performed the best in the midterm elections - so this perspective is highly predictive of which party is best positioned for the cycle. So next let's try to see what cycle this one most resembles. As of today, the generic ballot says...
Current: DEM: +7%
Democrats added one point to their generic ballot lead over the past week. At this stage of the cycle that's a pivotal number. If it were to hold come Election Day, it's a potential pivot point. With a seven-point advantage Democrats would be positioned to pick up 25 seats in the US House and two Senate seats. Were those outcomes to occur you'd have Democrats gaining control of the US House by two seats and the US Senate by one. It's seemingly odd because despite the stakes involved this year we aren't seeing either party run on a big agenda that matches reforms voters are interested in achieving. Granted we're still in primary season in most of the country including Florida and there's time to focus on a more centralized agenda but for the most part Democrats are running on opposition to President Trump and Republicans are running on the tax cuts and the economy – which is fine to a point but that's what's already happened – not what's on tap for the future.
Once we get past the primaries and can track specific races, we're likely to see a myriad of tight races this year - much more so than in typical midterm cycles. This story is a third of the overall election equation. It's the equivalent of "home field advantage" in a sporting event.
Until next week...