As Democrats in Washington work to deliver on infrastructure spending and other priorities, they’re trying to make progress in large part because of a key event that’s still more than a year away.
That event is the midterm elections on Nov. 8, 2022, when Republicans will aim to take back control of the House and Senate and become a more powerful check on the priorities of President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats.
“What leaders are thinking about, particularly since we have unified party control, is that these midterm elections are inevitably a referendum on the governing party,” said Sarah Binder, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and a professor of political science at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
“In that sense, shrinking time coupled with ‘What is it that Democrats want to run on?’ — it adds pressure on Democrats to get their priorities through the door.”
Time is growing short, Binder said, because party leaders often avoid making their members vote on tough issues in the same calendar year as an election, since that can hurt incumbents in tight races. “Party leaders often think primarily about what they can get done in the first year of a Congress, as opposed to counting on the second year,” she said.
New Child Tax Credit payments — which start July 15, and which many Democrats are working to make permanent — are the type of thing that will play a big role in 2022 campaigns, according to Ed Mills, a Washington policy analyst and managing director at Raymond James.
“Democrats will certainly run on a message of ‘If Republicans get control, they would stop the Child Tax Credit,’” he added, noting that campaigning on direct payments to Americans helped Georgia go blue this past January, when the Peach State held its two crucial Senate runoff elections.
Republicans currently have a 68% chance of seizing control of the House, according to betting market PredictIt. The fight over the 50-50 Senate looks much tighter, with PredictIt giving a slight edge to Democrats, who only control the split chamber because Vice President Kamala Harris can cast tiebreaking votes.
History suggests a Republican edge in 2022
“If we look at the historical record, midterm elections favor the party out of power. Those are the most angry voters, and most likely to turn out,” said Farnsworth, the Mary Washington professor.
Since the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt, presidents for the most part have seen their side lose seats in the House and Senate during midterm elections, as shown in the table below, which is based on data from the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Significant exceptions to this trend came in 2002 for George W. Bush, 1998 for Bill Clinton and 1934 for FDR.
Donald Trump saw the Republicans lose 40 House seats in 2018’s midterms, though the GOP did pick up two Senate seats.
Congressional seats gained or lost by a president’s party in midterms
| Year | President | President’s party | Change in House seats | Change in Senate seats |
| 1934 | Franklin D. Roosevelt | D | +9 | +9 |
| 1938 | Franklin D. Roosevelt | D | -81 | -7 |
| 1942 | Franklin D. Roosevelt | D | -46 | -9 |
| 1946 | Harry Truman | D | -45 | -12 |
| 1950 | Harry Truman | D | -29 | -6 |
| 1954 | Dwight Eisenhower | R | -18 | -1 |
| 1958 | Dwight Eisenhower | R | -48 | -13 |
| 1962 | John F. Kennedy | D | -4 | +3 |
| 1966 | Lyndon B. Johnson | D | -47 | -4 |
| 1970 | Richard Nixon | R | -12 | +2 |
| 1974 | Gerald Ford | R | -48 | -5 |
| 1978 | Jimmy Carter | D | -15 | -3 |
| 1982 | Ronald Reagan | R | -26 | +1 |
| 1986 | Ronald Reagan | R | -5 | -8 |
| 1990 | George H.W. Bush | R | -8 | -1 |
| 1994 | Bill Clinton | D | -52 | -8 |
| 1998 | Bill Clinton | D | +5 | |
| 2002 | George W. Bush | R | +8 | +2 |
| 2006 | George W. Bush | R | -30 | -6 |
| 2010 | Barack Obama | D | -63 | -6 |
| 2014 | Barack Obama | D | -13 | -9 |
| 2018 | Donald Trump | R | -40 | +2 |
“There’s some folks saying, ‘Well, there’s going to be a positive-news boost for Democrats,’” said the University of Minnesota’s Jacobs, referring to the good vibes around the U.S. economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Maybe that’s true, but we haven’t really seen that kind of thing before,” he added. “And then you throw in the fact that Republicans are going to have a shot at gerrymandering some seats for the House races. In the very, very close battles, that could be the difference.”
Races worth watching
Individual 2022 races that could be telling include two in Virginia where Rep. Elaine Luria and Rep. Abigail Spanberger will be seeking re-election, according to Farnsworth.
“Both of those districts, historically, had been represented by Republicans, but the Democrats won them during the Trump era,” he said. “Some of the Republican suburban voters might go back to the Republican Party post-Trump.”