Obama's Midterm Exam

What is next year's historical precedent? Many analysts who take the long view have come to believe that midterm elections follow a genetic code dictating that the president's party will almost always lose seats in the House and Senate. And quite a few doubters became believers after the 2006 election knocked President Bush's Republican Party back on its heels.

Yet first-term midterm elections and "six-year-itch" midterms are distinctly different creatures, with the latter being far more dangerous for the president's party. Voters tend to be tired of a president by the middle of his second term, and they make his party pay at the polls. In the five six-year-itch elections since World War II, the president's party has lost an average of 26 House seats and seven Senate seats.

In first-term midterms during that period, Senate elections averaged out to a wash, but the president's party lost an average of 16 House seats. For President Obama, beating that average would make for a nice midterm grade.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, talks a lot about 1934 these days. He likes to remind his troops that President Roosevelt's Depression-era Democrats gained nine seats that year after posting huge gains in 1930 and 1932, when beleaguered President Hoover was in the White House. Voters simply hadn't finished kicking Hoover's old Republicans in 1934. In fact, they didn't stop kicking 'em until 1938.

Across the aisle, some Republicans still fantasize that 2010 will be another 1994, the last year Democrats held a congressional majority of the size they do now. By that fall, President Clinton's early missteps made him unpopular, giving the GOP an opportunity to capitalize on his party's weaknesses. Democrats lost 52 House seats, eight Senate seats, and control of both chambers.

At a recent briefing, Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, reminded everyone of a different year, 1982. Kohut observed that favorable attitudes toward President Obama most closely track President Reagan's early numbers. But 1982 turned out to be something of a midcourse correction: Many voters had become impatient with the slow-moving economy and high unemployment. Republicans were forced to give back 26 House seats, although they gained a Senate seat.

Looking toward 2010's House elections, the 1934 model probably represents Democrats' best-case scenario and 1982 their worst-case scenario. As of now, Obama's Democrats are heading down a track much closer to 1934's. The good news for Obama may be that the number of truly competitive House races is likely to be very small, for three reasons.

First, after back-to-back tumultuous congressional elections, neither party has a lot of obvious targets. Democrats are having trouble finding House Republicans who persevered through 2006 and 2008 but who nevertheless are likely to be vulnerable next year. Republicans have many more targets because of their losses in the past two cycles, but many House Democrats high on their hit lists are fairly new members and thus hard to portray as having "spent too long in Washington."

Second, the economic climate may not allow either party's candidates or campaign committees to raise and spend as much as usual, making it harder for either side to expand the playing field by taking aim at less promising targets. As it is, both the DCCC and the National Republican Congressional Committee have had to pay off debts from 2008.

Third, there are simply not as many competitive House districts as there were decades ago, because the nation has become more polarized and redistricting has become a more exact science. According to The Cook Political Report's Partisan Voter Index, 10 years ago 68 House districts voted in the presidential race within 2 percentage points of the winning presidential candidate's national average. Now, just 38 districts fit that description. And nearly all of the 12 House seats that we know for certain will be open in 2010 are in districts that are relatively safe for the party holding them.

Even if Democrats end up losing a handful of House races in November 2010, they could still beat the historical average and ensure that Obama maintains a strong hand heading into his third year in office. The number of truly competitive House races is likely to be very small next year.