Midterm elections 2022 full#
Midterm elections 2022 plus#

Biden’s current average job approval rating is 42 percent.

Republicans are feeling good heading into the 2022 midterms. By the luck of the draw, that mix of seats may favor the president’s party. One of the most significant is that only a third of Senate seats is up for grabs in any election. Why the difference in the outcomes of midterm voting for the House and Senate? Many factors are at play. Republicans gained two seats during President Donald Trump’s second year in office. The president’s party has picked up seats in five such elections. The president’s party sometimes gains Senate seats in a president’s first midterm election.

What about the Senate? Here the numbers are less lopsided. President Barack Obama, whose approval rating stood at 45 percent in 2010, took the biggest midterm shellacking. Those presidents saw their party lose, on average, forty-three House seats. Since Truman’s time, seven of thirteen presidents entered their first midterm with their public approval rating below 50 percent. That’s a number that most presidents can only dream of heading into their first midterm. His public approval rating stood in the low sixties.

In the fall of 2002, Bush was benefiting from the lasting rally-round-the-flag effect generated by the September 11 attacks. That unusual outcome twenty years ago highlights the fact that House midterm elections function as a referendum on the president. The Republicans picked up eight House seats. Looking at elections since the end of World War II, has the president’s party ever gained seats during his first midterm? Yes. Focusing on a president’s first midterm election here makes sense because 2022 will be President Joe Biden’s first-and perhaps, only-midterm election. Going back to Harry Truman’s presidency, the president's party has lost, on average, twenty-nine House seats in each president’s first midterm election. So it’s worth reviewing what we know about midterm elections generally, the 2022 midterm elections specifically, and the evolving debate over voting access and ballot security.Īmerican politics has perhaps one ironclad rule: The sitting president’s party almost always loses House seats in the midterms. But eight months can be a lifetime in politics. The betting money is that the Republican Party will be the winner on Election Night, taking back control of one, if not both, houses of Congress.

Midterm elections 2022 full#

The second will elect someone to fill that seat for a full term. One vote will be to fill the final two months left in what had been Vice President Kamala Harris’s term. In a twist, Californians will vote twice for the same Senate seat. He announced last month that he will retire next January 3 to care for his ailing wife.

Midterm elections 2022 plus#

Thirty-five Senate seats will be as well: the standard thirty-four seats in this cycle plus a special election to fill the four years remaining in the term of Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). House of Representatives will be up for grabs. Eight months from today the United States will hold its congressional midterm elections.