Democrats win both chambers of Congress in the midterms
Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in Tuesday's midterm elections, AP reports, flipping at least seven Senate seats and more than two dozen House districts. AP described the result as a rebuke of President Trump, with voters citing high prices, the Iran war and concerns about corruption. BBC projections put Democrats at about 245 House seats to the Republicans' 166, and races in Alaska and Mississippi were still being counted. Read at AP News →
The 1994 “Republican Revolution” and the 1996 rebound
What happened then
Two years into Bill Clinton's first term, Republicans gained 54 House seats and 8 Senate seats in the 1994 midterms and took control of the House for the first time since the 1952 election. Newt Gingrich became Speaker. It was one of the largest midterm swings of the twentieth century.
What caused it
It followed a long-running pattern: the party holding the White House usually loses ground in midterms. By the American Presidency Project's count, the president's party lost House seats in 20 of the 23 midterms from 1934 through 2022. Voters often use the midterm to check the party in power, and the president's own name isn't on the ballot to turn out his supporters.
How it was resolved
Clinton and the new Republican Congress fought, compromised and fought again, including over budgets and a government shutdown, and both sides found ways to claim results.
How it turned out
In 1996 the pendulum moved again: voters re-elected Clinton with 379 electoral votes while keeping Republicans in charge of Congress. The same cycle shows up elsewhere. Reagan's party lost 26 House seats in 1982 before he won 49 states in 1984, and Obama's lost 63 in 2010 before he was re-elected in 2012. The rare exceptions, when the president's party gained House seats, were 1934, 1998 and 2002.
What the philosophers say
Defending two-year House terms in The Federalist No. 52, Madison (the essay is sometimes credited to Hamilton) argued that the House should have “an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people,” and that “frequent elections are unquestionably the only policy by which this dependence and sympathy can be effectually secured.” He added that “the greater the power is, the shorter ought to be its duration.” On this view, the midterm swing isn't a breakdown of the system. It is the system doing what the Founders built it to do, for whichever party holds power.
Sources: The Federalist No. 52 (Avalon Project, Yale Law School)
Sources: American Presidency Project (UCSB): Seats gained or lost by the president's party in midterm elections · US House of Representatives: Party Divisions of the House · Wikipedia: Republican Revolution
Further reading: The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry That Defined a Generation by Steven M. Gillon