A prominent sportswriter in the early 20th century, Hugh Keough, has been credited with a quote that is also quite relevant to political prognostication:
“The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.”
My Twitter feed these days is abuzz with the notion that Democrats are going to buck the longstanding trend in which the “out” party–which is to say, the party that does not control the presidency–picks up seats in Congress during midterm elections.
Is it possible? Sure. Democrats made net gains in Congress in the 1998 midterms, and Republicans did so in 2002. Prior to that, the last time the “in” party netted seats in Congress was 1934. On a handful of rare occasions, notably the midterms of 1962, 1970 and 2018, the “in” party has picked up seats in one chamber of Congress, while losing a larger number of seats in the other chamber.
However, to say that it is unlikely would be a tremendous understatement. The near-constant of midterm elections cutting against the party holding the presidency is one of the most consistent, and time-tested, patterns in American politics. The likelihood of Democrats keeping the House of Representatives or taking an outright majority in the Senate after 2022 is so low that I would consider it foolhardy for anybody to bet any amount of money on that outcome.
It isn’t just 150-plus years of post-Civil War history that leads me to this conclusion. There are several factors coming into play that point to significant Republican wins in the 2022 midterm elections.
First, the “exception” midterms of 1934, 1998 and 2002 all occurred when the president at the time was exceedingly popular. In 1998 and 2002, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, respectively, were both polling above 65% approval. While there was no public polling on approval ratings in 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt was exceedingly popular at the time due to his leadership in combating the Great Depression.
With today’s partisan polarization, it is hard to imagine President Joe Biden being at 65% or higher in November 2022. Polarization alone would seem to render that all but impossible. But there’s also the fact of continued Republican obstruction, which means that President Biden will likely fail to pass very much substantive legislation. The public, not always especially discerning as to where to place the blame, usually blames the president and his party, not the opposition party in Congress, when things don’t go well.
Two Democratic Senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have ensured Republicans will continue to have the ability to obstruct the Democrats through 2022. By refusing to budge on ending the filibuster, the arcane rule requiring 60 votes out of 100 to end debate and bring a bill up for a vote, Manchin and Sinema have given the Republicans a veto over any Democratic legislation that might benefit the public. Republicans will use this veto to deny Biden any substantive victories, and Biden will get the blame for it from a largely uninformed public.
On the House side, it is a near-certainty that Republicans, who need to net only five seats for control, will gain those seats on the strength of redistricting alone. Because of Democratic failures to flip any state legislatures in the 2020 elections, Republicans remain in firm control of redistricting in most of the key swing states.
On the Senate side, most of the Republican-held seats that are up in 2022 are not promising targets for the Democrats. Their best shot at a pickup is in Pennsylvania, where Republican Senator Pat Toomey is not seeking reelection. There will also be vacancies in North Carolina and Ohio, but North Carolina still leans Republican, and Ohio has been trending heavily Republican for years. Democrats also may have a shot at flipping Wisconsin, where incumbent GOP Senator Ron Johnson is considering retiring, and Florida, though it appears very unlikely that any top Democrats will step up for a tough race against Republican Senator Marco Rubio. Of these five seats, Democrats would probably do really well to flip two, and one is much more likely.
But there are several vulnerable Democratic senators up in 2022, two of whom won special elections in 2020 by extremely close margins. With an electorate that is likelier than not to skew more Republican in 2022, Democratic Senators Mark Kelly of Arizona and Raphael Warnock of Georgia will face difficult challenges. Catherine Cortez Masto is up for reelection in closely divided Nevada, and Maggie Hassan may have to face off against popular Republican Governor John Sununu in New Hampshire. It would be no surprise if two or three of these Democrats lost, maybe even all four if 2022 is a bad year for Democrats.
The likeliest scenario in the Senate is a wash, which would mean continued 50-50 gridlock, or a modest GOP gain, which would deliver control of the chamber to the Republicans. Starting in 2023, President Biden is likely to face a Congress where at least one chamber is Republican-controlled, sharing the fate of the last two Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. It is true that midterm losses for Clinton and Obama in 1994 and 2010 set the stage for resurgences by both presidents and their ultimate reelections two years later. However, it is also true that neither of those Democratic presidents ever had a governing majority in Congress again, and that they were succeeded by Republican presidents who inherited those Republican majorities in Congress.
The bottom line is that whatever little Democrats get done in Washington in the next two years is likely to be all they are going to get between now and 2033, at the earliest.