November Forecast

The Elections: How Bad for Democrats? by Michael Tomasky | The New York Review of Books: "...Some longtime observers of Congress point to history, and the fact that the president’s party almost always loses seats in midterm elections—since 1862, it has averaged losses in midterm elections of about thirty-two House seats and two Senate seats. Only twice since the Civil War—in 1934, during the Depression, and in 2002, following the September 11 attacks—has the president’s party gained seats two years after he took office. Other experts argue that the Democratic majority ballooned unnaturally in 2006 and 2008: because of George W. Bush’s unpopularity, Democrats won some seats that they ordinarily never win, so the losses of 2010 can to some degree be seen as Republicans regaining seats they had long held..."