It might all sound quite familiar: A president at 40 percent approval, inflation and the economy top issues in the polls and foreign wars driving up oil and gas prices.
But the year was not 2026, it was 2022, and former President Joe Biden was in the Oval Office. But despite mounting dissatisfaction with his tenure, 2022 stands out as a key exception to the rule where incumbents — especially unpopular incumbents — face steep losses in Congressional midterms.
Instead, in 2022, Biden and Democrats amid sinking popularity, the highest inflation in 40 years and an escalating war taxing global supply lines, only lost 9 House seats and actually picked up a Senate seat.
But how?
Usually, in midterm elections dating back to 1906 through 2022, the party that occupied the White House lost seats in the House 27 out of 30 times, or 90 percent of the time, and in years with losses those averaged 34 seats. The Senate is a little better, with losses only occurring 66 percent of the time, with losses averaging 6 seats.
On the House side, it was only overcome in 1934, 1998 and 2002, with the Great Depression, Monica Lewinsky and the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks acting as exigent events.
Another edge case is 1962, wherein Democrats only lost three seats, and came within weeks of the Cuban Missile Crisis being resolved.
In 1934, Gallup was not even founded yet (not until 1935) but judging by the result of the 1936 election wherein Franklin Roosevelt garnered 60.8 percent of the vote, his approval was sky-high as Roosevelt went on to win 46 out of 48 states.
In 1962 John Kennedy also had a high approval rating, measuring 74 percent post-election and post-crisis, only losing 3 seats, the lowest losses in a year when there were losses.
And in 1998 and 2002, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had pretty high approval ratings, 66 percent and 68 percent per Gallup, respectively, and did well, picking up seats in the House, 5 seats and 8 seats, respectively.
Whereas lower approval shows greater losses in the dataset. In 1946, Harry Truman was registering just 33 percent approval as Democrats lost 54 House seats. In 1966, Lyndon Johnson had 44 percent approval and lost 47 House seats. In 1974, Gerald Ford only had 47 percent approval and Republicans lost 48 House seats amid the fallout from Watergate. In 1994, Bill Clinton had 46 percent approval and Democrats lost 54 House seats. In 2006, George W. Bush had 38 percent approval and Republicans lost 30 House seats. In 2010, Barack Obama had a 45 percent approval rating, and Democrats lost 63 House seats, and in 2014, he had a 40 percent approval rating and lost another 13 seats. And in 2018, Donald Trump had a 40 percent approval rating and Republicans lost 42 House seats.
Basically, anything below 50 percent usually stinks, wherein the White House party loses about 38 House seats. Above 50 percent it loses about 11. That is the model.
Still, in 2022, Biden only lost 9 seats in the House and picked up a seat in the Senate — despite record Republican turnout for a midterm election with 54.2 million votes. But Democrats managed to bring out 51.3 million.
So, there was a red wave, but it crashed into a blue wall. More than one thing can be true at once.
The shift was not a surge in favor of Biden — who was so unpopular his own party deposed him without so much as a primary in 2024, opting for former Vice President Kamala Harris at the Democratic Party National Convention — but may have been due to an offsetting issue that motivated Democrats to turn out and vote: Abortion.
Besides inflation at 32 percent as 2022’s most important issue, a close second was abortion at 27 percent after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to the 2022 NBC exit poll. Voters who said abortion broke overwhelmingly for Democrats, whereas, if the Supreme Court had not acted, those voters might have had no reason to turn out in greater numbers than usual.
Republicans still managed to win the House majority in 2022, albeit by a slim margin, netting 222 seats to Democrats’ 213 seats.
In short, turnout is the decisive factor in midterms as the opposition party is motivated to retake power. Whereas, the incumbents in the majority tend to get lazy and complacent. The outcome, incumbents usually lose seats, proves James Madison’s scheme of periodic elections every two years for Congress works, tempering majorities.
In Federalist No. 52, Madison wrote, “As it is essential to liberty that the government in general should have a common interest with the people, so it is particularly essential that the branch of it under consideration should have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people. Frequent elections are unquestionably the only policy by which this dependence and sympathy can be effectually secured.”
Even going back to the earlier republic, following the split of the Democratic-Republicans in 1824 — from Thomas Jefferson through James Monroe, the U.S. essentially had Democratic-Republican one-party rule — a true two-party system emerged, and so did midterm losses follow for the White House incumbent party in the House elections of 1826-27, 1830-31, 1838-39, 1842-43, 1846-47, 1850-51, 1854-55, 1858-59, 1862-63, 1866-67, 1870-71, 1874-75, 1878-79, 1882, 1886, 1890, 1894 and 1898. The only exceptions were 1834-35 and 1902, both years when new seats happened to be added to the House due to expansion. Still, 18 out of 20 times, once again, in this dataset, too, 90 percent of the time the incumbents lost seats in the House in the midterms.
It’s like clockwork.
Almost nobody ever wins the midterms. And neither did Biden in 2022. He still lost the House, albeit, by a slimmer margin than usual, as his party successfully pushed their people to turn out in greater numbers than usual. Usually, the only question is how many seats the incumbents lose — above the mean and below the mean. That’s it!
That’s likely not great news for President Donald Trump and Republicans in 2026, with the President’s approval at about 39 percent in the latest national average. That’s about as poor as Biden in 2022, Trump in 2018, Obama in 2010 and 2014, and George W. Bush in 2006 all of whom went on to double-digit losses in the House, with the exception of Biden.
And then there’s the polls, which could always be wrong. But they’re usually not in midterms. Polls successfully captured the 2002 upset by Republicans picking up seats when incumbents usually lose. But even in normal cycles, the polls got 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018, and 2022 all correct in terms of predicting who won the popular vote and therefore the House majority, and so — barring extraordinary Republican turnout in the midterms with an offsetting issue (like anti-socialism) or perhaps the redistricting does the trick — maybe the polls will be right again.
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
