The party in the White House has lost House seats in 18 of the 20 midterm elections since 1946. The average loss is about 26 seats. The only exceptions in modern midterm elections history are Bill Clinton’s Democrats in 1998 and George W. Bush’s Republicans in 2002.
That record is the backdrop for Tuesday, November 3. Republicans control both chambers. Democrats need a net gain of three House seats and four Senate seats to take them, Al Jazeera reported on Monday. A 50-50 Senate would stay Republican, because Vice President JD Vance breaks ties.
We built a table of all 20 midterms from two records. House changes come from the House Clerk’s party divisions, comparing each Congress with the one elected at the midterm. Senate changes and approval come from the American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara, which uses Gallup polling. Approval is the last reading the project lists before each election.
Every midterm since 1946, in one table
| Year | President | House | Senate | Approval |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1946 | Truman (D) | -56 | -12 | 27% |
| 1950 | Truman (D) | -28 | -6 | 41% |
| 1954 | Eisenhower (R) | -18 | -1 | 62% |
| 1958 | Eisenhower (R) | -50 | -13 | 57% |
| 1962 | Kennedy (D) | -4 | +3 | 61% |
| 1966 | Johnson (D) | -47 | -4 | 44% |
| 1970 | Nixon (R) | -12 | +2 | 58% |
| 1974 | Ford (R) | -48 | -5 | 53% |
| 1978 | Carter (D) | -14 | -3 | 45% |
| 1982 | Reagan (R) | -26 | +1 | 42% |
| 1986 | Reagan (R) | -4 | -8 | 64% |
| 1990 | Bush (R) | -8 | -1 | 57% |
| 1994 | Clinton (D) | -54 | -8 | 48% |
| 1998 | Clinton (D) | +4 | 0 | 65% |
| 2002 | Bush (R) | +8 | +2 | 67% |
| 2006 | Bush (R) | -30 | -6 | 37% |
| 2010 | Obama (D) | -64 | -6 | 45% |
| 2014 | Obama (D) | -13 | -9 | 41% |
| 2018 | Trump (R) | -42 | +2 | 44% |
| 2022 | Biden (D) | -9 | +1 | 40% |
The House flipped seven times, the Senate less often
Counts can differ by a seat or two depending on when they are taken. The Clerk records initial results. The presidency project’s own House column shows 63 seats lost in 2010, for example, rather than 64.
For 1962, when the House shrank from 437 seats back to 435, we used the project’s figure.
The House changed hands in seven of these midterms: 1946, 1954, 1994, 2006, 2010, 2018 and 2022. The biggest single loss came in 2010. Republicans gained 64 seats and the majority two years into Barack Obama’s first term.
The president’s party lost Senate seats in 13 of the 20 midterms, by our count from the presidency project’s data. The average change was a loss of about three and a half seats.
The smaller swing has a structural cause. Senators serve six-year staggered terms, so only about a third of the chamber faces voters in any cycle.
In some years the two chambers moved in opposite directions. Republicans lost 26 House seats in 1982 but gained a Senate seat. Trump’s party lost 42 House seats in 2018 while adding two senators.
This year Republicans are defending 20 seats in the regular class, the presidency project counts. Florida and Ohio also hold special elections.
Approval is the clearest dividing line
Sorting the table by approval shows the pattern most plainly. In the 11 midterms where the president’s last listed approval was under 50%, his party lost about 35 House seats on average. In the nine where it was 50% or higher, the average loss was about 15 seats.
Both exceptions sit at the top of that list. Clinton’s approval stood at 65% in the project’s late-October 1998 reading, and Bush’s at 67% in 2002.
High approval is no guarantee. Gerald Ford’s Republicans lost 48 seats in 1974 with approval in the low 50s. That midterm came three months after Richard Nixon resigned and two months after Ford pardoned him, the project notes. Dwight Eisenhower’s party lost 50 seats in 1958 with approval near 57%.
Low approval does not always mean a rout either. Joe Biden’s Democrats lost only nine House seats in 2022 with a 40% reading, and kept the Senate.
How Clinton and Bush broke the streak
Political analyst Stuart Rothenberg, writing in Roll Call, traced Clinton’s 1998 result to a strong economy and Republican overreach. Unemployment fell to 4.4% in the second quarter of 1998, and Republicans built their campaign around Clinton’s character.
Voters kept their focus on the economy, he argued. In late August 1998, an ABC News/Washington Post poll put Clinton’s approval at 66%. Only 28% called him honest and trustworthy, Rothenberg wrote. The House impeached Clinton on December 19, weeks after his party gained seats.
Bush’s 2002 gain came in the year after the September 11 attacks. Rothenberg described a rally-around-the-flag effect. The president’s approval jumped to about 80% after the attacks and stayed high until early March 2002. He also pushed through a large tax cut and worked with Democrats on education.
Rothenberg counts a five-seat Democratic gain in 1998, one more than the Clerk’s initial results show. Either way, the two cases share a president whose standing stayed high through Election Day.
Why the president’s party usually loses
One explanation is turnout. Fewer people vote in midterms, and the drop is large. Turnout among eligible voters fell from 61.6% in 2008 to 39.9% in 2010. It rose back to 58.2% in 2012, according to a Pew Research Center analysis by Drew DeSilver.
Political scientist James E. Campbell’s “surge and decline” theory, as Pew summarized it, holds that a presidential race draws extra voters who lean toward the winner. Two years later many of them stay home. “For the congressional candidates of the president’s party, the return to normalcy at the midterm represents a loss,” Campbell wrote.
Brian Knight of Brown University tested that idea against two others. One is a direct penalty voters impose on the president’s party; the other is swings in voter ideology. He found all three contribute, Pew reported, with the presidential penalty having the largest effect. That fits the approval split in our table, since a penalty should bite hardest when voters dislike the president’s record.
Where Trump stands going into Tuesday
Trump’s Gallup approval averaged 33% in late August, the presidency project’s latest 2026 entry. That is the lowest late-August figure on its list. Only Truman’s 27% in late October 1946 sits lower anywhere in the table.
More recent polling points the same way. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released October 20 found 31% of Americans approved of Trump’s performance, the lowest of either term, KTVU reported. Registered voters in that survey preferred Democrats for Congress by 47% to 35%.
Trump’s first midterm, in 2018, cost Republicans 42 House seats at 44% approval. The final polls show Democrats ahead in several Republican-held Senate races, as our look at where the races that decide Congress stand details.
History sets a high bar for Republicans. Only two presidents since 1946 have gained House seats at a midterm, and both had approval above 60%. The first polls close at 7 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, and our election night guide lists when each state reports.