"The president’s party almost always does poorly in midterm elections" is so commonly repeated that its become cliché. While this cliché, has the virtue of being true, nobody ever talk about why that happens. So let’s talk about that. There are twin forces that act.
Why It Happens
First, The party that “wins” the previous presidential election gets apathetic. Presidential election years are more exciting and more well-covered. People who don’t always vote stop following the news and don’t get excited to vote. The same thing happens to activists(the ones that knock on doors and drive people to the polls, etc...), they get burned out and might decide “its safe to sit this one out”. Also, the Presidents policies start getting tested or hit the brick wall of political compromise and become disillusioned. This further suppresses voters and activist energy. Finally, without a single person to concentrate on as being dangerous, they lose their last motive to donate time and money to a party.
The second thing that happens, is that the party that lost the previous election gets worried about what the other party is doing and stays motivated to vote against them. In addition, the party usually takes a moment to self-reflect why they lost, and makes meaningful changes in some way to policy, rhetoric, and voter outreach. This starts with the Presidential candidate that lost fading into the background. The twin effects of the party reflecting on how to reach more voters, with the base and activists motivated by concerns about the other side, and suddenly you’re getting new people, independents, and “sometimes” voters to the polls while the other side isn’t.
Here’s my point. Those 2 forces are not happening this year. Let’s start, not by looking at what Republicans are doing, but instead what they AREN’T doing.
Why It’s NOT Happening Now
Trump Didn’t Fade
First of all, the Republican candidate that lost did NOT fade into the background. After losing, you didn’t see Carter or H.W. Bush loudly campaigning for their party in the midterms. Yeah — they might show up to fundraisers or MAYBE a rally in a district they were very popular, but that’s it. You didn’t see Kerry campaigning with a lot of Democrats in 2006, McCain with a lot of Republicans in 2010, not even Hillary did we see a lot of in 2018. Trump, on the other hand, is constantly out there with rallies, events, and social media. He’s even openly endorsing candidates. That works against both of the twin forces. First, it reminds Democrats how much they dislike Trump and motivates voters and activists, second, it prevents the party from pivoting. Speaking of Pivoting…
Republicans Didn’t Pivot to something new
The second thing that isn’t happening is any meaningful change in rhetoric or policy in the Republican party. Instead they’re doubling down on the politics of cruelty and chaos — the very things voters just got done rejecting. MAGA Republicans made sure that Trump Republicans remain firmly in control. Its true that low-information voters could choose to believe that the party has returned to the old Conservative values, but that is getting harder to do. Furthermore, that rhetoric is charging up the activists and voters that already rejected it 2 elections in a row. When a party pivots, like Republicans did in 2010 from Bush II era of “compassionate conservatives” to “Tea Party Republicans” voters can think that this is something new. And, Dems didn’t really know how to counter it yet. Democrats know how to counter Trump-style Republicans. They’ve been running against it for 6 years now. There’s no surprises. Maga Republicans ran on crime and immigration in 2020, 2018, 2016, and even before Trump in 2014.
Sore Loser Resentment has traditionally been bad for the party
The only things Republicans have going for them is Inflation as something to run against and their base is riled up about losing in 2020. This brings me to my third point, I want to make and its important. In the 2 examples that History gives us, being a sore loser is bad for the party’s midterm.
If you want to talk about getting cheated in the last election, Democrats actually got cheated in 2000. So Democrats didn’t really change that much. There wasn’t a big party and policy reflection until after Kerry lost in 2004. You might say “Well, that had more to do with 9-11 and Iraq”. Maybe. We don’t have 300 data points to study.
So let’s look at 1960. That was another election that was really close, but this time Republicans were resentful and thought they’d gotten cheated. This was when “dead democrats voting” got started nationally because of the Chicago area. Can you guess what happened in 1962 midterms, Kennedy’s Democrats lost a few seats, but kept in power.
Republicans told themselves a fiction about 2020 — an election that wasn’t even close, that they won. They currently don’t think they have to reach out to new voters.
Republicans have overreached and rallied our base
The fourth thing that’s happened is that Republicans have WAY overreached and have rallied our base. Unlike normal midterms, our base voters and activists have been activated by January 6th, Trump not going away, Republicans letting slip their true Social Security\Medicare\Medicaid eradication plans over, and over again and again and of course the big one: The overturning of Roe.
There is precedent for a President’s party to do well in a midterm when the other party has overreached. In 1998, going into election night, people thought Republicans were going to expand their leads in congress — instead Dems gained 5 seats. Republicans had overplayed their impeachment hand and the public’s backlash against it affected the outcome.
Democrats, not Republicans have retooled
Usually, a president’s party doesn’t adjust after winning an election. It probably should, but most people are, understandably, “why change success”. As mentioned before, Republicans haven’t changed. But something unprecedented has happened, the winning party is still trying to improve itself. Even though we won, Democrats wanted to win even bigger in 2020. Everyone from activists to pundits are trying to improve the Democratic message and appeal going into 2022 — not just running on the “same thing we did last time”. Here’s 3 examples:
www.npr.org/…
www.brookings.edu/…
www.nybooks.com/…
That doesn’t even cover the 5,000 “How do we win back white working class” articles or the 2,000 “are we losing Latino” articles. Democrats have been doing the retooling that Republicans should’ve been doing.
Sometimes, the other party just sucks
In 1978, Republicans were on the cusp of their transformation from Rockefeller Republicans to Reagan Republicans. Democrats had huge wins in 1974 and then again with Carter in 1976 and had the Trifecta. Republicans were now a number of years from Nixon, they did right by letting Ford fade to the background, but… they couldn’t pull off a win in 1978 and Democrats held their Trifecta. They lost some seats(they really had a LOT to spare), but still the whole house was reelected to a large Democratic majority. I believe that Republicans, going through their identity crises, couldn’t settle on an anti-Carter platform that was broadly appealing. Its not impossible to buck history.
Edit: BenBanks82 in the comments added “Carter had just gotten done the Camp David accords in 1978. His approval rating was (briefly) surging.” That makes sense. Presidential popularity can help!
Conclusion
There are several other things going on that are going to affect the election either negatively or positively. But I wanted to counter the oft repeated "The president’s party almost always does poorly in midterm elections".
Here’s what I hope you take away from this. Democrats winning this upcoming election isn’t necessarily working “against” history. All the ingredients are here for Democrats to repeat several historical trends by winning the midterm.
I don’t want to get into “unskewing” polls, I don’t think its a good use of time. But, I will say that we only need ~2% poll error in our favor to win. For that to happen its gotta be because pollster’s “Likely Voter” screen is wrong because we turned out the vote more than they expected. There is still time for you to donate your time or money to help get a friend, family member, or stranger to the polls. So go do it!