Election results around the country continue to roll toward the Democrats.
Special elections, and this week, a Congressional redistricting vote in Virginia, have contributed to shaping the outlook for midterm elections.
A deep look at the history of midterms only emphasizes what the election results have shown thus far.
All five presidents since 1992 have lost control of the House of Representatives in a midterm election during their terms in office.
Moreover, 1992 is the logical beginning point for this discussion. For 40 years prior to that time, going back to the 1930 midterm election, immediately following the onset of the Great Depression, Democrats controlled the House, except for a two-year stretch during the Truman administration in the 1940s and another two-year stretch coinciding with Dwight Eisenhower’s election in 1952.
The Democrats reclaimed the House with double-digit margins of control after each of these two-year Republican intervals.
Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992 and carried a substantial 82-vote margin of control in the House.
Republicans then would win control of the House in 12 of the next 16 biennial elections, but every President during this time – two Republicans and three Democrats – ultimately would lose control of the House in either their first or second midterm elections during their terms in office.
Bill Clinton
His first midterm election was one of the biggest opposition party flips of control in the House ever. Republicans flipped 54 seats to win a 26-vote margin of control in the House. They continued to hold the House through the next two election cycles and the conclusion of Clinton’s presidency.
George W. Bush
Republicans maintained control of the House with the subsequent election of George W. Bush as president in 2000.
In his first midterm election, Bush strengthened Republican control of the House by a few votes following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.
But then, in the midterm election following Bush’s election to a second term in 2004, Republicans lost the House.
Barack Obama
Democrats were able to more than double their margin of control in the House to 79 votes with Barack Obama’s election as President in 2008.
Still, in Obama’s first midterm election, the Democrats lost the House as the Republicans won a 49-vote margin of control.
The Republicans held the House through the remainder of Obama’s two terms in office.
Donald Trump, 45th President
The GOP held the House in 2016 as Donald Trump won the presidency.
Trump’s initial 47-vote margin of control in the House disappeared in his midterm election, however, as Democrats flipped 41 seats in the House.
Joe Biden
Biden began his presidency with a nine-vote margin of control in the House. The Republicans won control in the midterm.
Donald Trump, 47th President
Trump is heading toward the midterm election, a little more than six months from now, with the Republican Party having one of the slimmest margins of control in the House in history, just three votes.
If Trump holds the House, he would be the first President to complete his term without losing control in a midterm election since Jimmy Carter a half-century ago.
The forecasters
The Cook Political Report, one of the most respected political forecasters, is predicting a 15-vote margin of control for House Democrats in the midterm, not counting the 16 districts it rates as too close to call. A consensus prediction by Cook and two other forecasters, Inside Elections and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, shows a similar outcome: a 14-vote margin for Democrats, plus 17 districts too close to call. Republicans, thus, would have to win almost all of the too-close-to-call districts to hold the House.
In Iowa, all three of these forecasters show the first House district in northwest Iowa as safe Republican, the second district in northeast Iowa as likely Republican, and the remaining two districts in southwest and southeast Iowa as too close to call.
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