Election prognosticators increasingly predict Congress will fall to the GOP in this year’s midterms. The reasons have less to do with Republican policy proposals (those are scarce nationally these days) than with inflation, President Joe Biden’s low approval numbers and other factors that have the ruling party on the rocks. This is a good time to remind voters of what the GOP has done in the past and would likely do in the future with renewed congressional control — and to implore Democrats to get their act together.
The consistent pattern is that the party in the presidency almost always loses congressional seats in the midterms. Polls indicate that pattern will endure this year. The House is “about as good as gone for Democrats,” Politico predicts. The Senate outcome is less assured, in part because if disgraced Missouri ex-Gov. Eric Greitens wins the state’s Republican Senate nomination, he could well lose a winnable seat for the party. But overall, prospects in that chamber, too, still lean to the GOP.
The main factor is which side gets its voters to the polls. FiveThirtyEight and other analysts predict a major midterm enthusiasm gap: the difference between mobilized conservatives who yearn to humiliate Biden by voting against Democrats, and frustrated liberals who aren’t in the mood to defend him and his party.
