Friday, November 5, 2010

The Majority Party Always Loses Seats in Midterm Elections

Nevertheless, these remarks by Mary Mitchell are worth pondering.
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1 comment:

Six said...

I have heard this several times as some sort of defense/excuse of Democrats (that mid terms always equal losses for the majority party) and that simply is not true. This loss for the Democrats is the second worst House Seats lost by a party in US history (FDR had the worst). That should sink in for the Democrats and they should ask themselves where they went wrong.

Wiki alrady has the data up and it is as follows just a quick look at the last 20 years of mid-terms:

2010 Obama -58 House; -6 Senate
2006 Bush II -30 House; -6 Senate
2002 Bush II +8 House; +2 Senate
1998 Clinton +5; 0 Senate
1994 Clinton -54 House; -8 Senate
1990 Bush -8 House; -1 Senate

So 3 of the last 6 mid-terms there was effectively no change or a net gain directly in contradiction to this rationalization. So you should stop repeating it. This was a bad blow for the Democrats, what I would say that I pray for (but then again, I don't pray) is that the Republicans do not mistake this as some sort of endorsement for thier agenda.

Look at the 3 big swings - what was going on there? Was it some sort of endorsement of the minorty party or a rejection of the policies of the president? During Bush 2006 there was a tremendous backlash against the wars (where is that fury today!?!?!?!). Clinton and Obama got smacked around for thier poor economic policies highlighted by plans for Universal Heathcare that the majority of people do not trust the government can adacquately provide at what they (falsly) claim it will cost the taxpayer. Clinton reversed course and became one of the better presidents in recent history. Will Obama do the same?

November 5, 2010 at 9:35 AM

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