KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— Joe Biden’s approval rating has been steady and positive, though many other presidents had better early numbers.

— The “honeymoons” of past presidents may have been stronger because of a less partisanized and polarized electorate.

— Individual national pollsters disagree on Biden’s approval rating.

— Some pollsters who were overly bullish on Biden in the national popular vote last year are a little bearish on him now.

A first “Hundred Days” temperature check on Biden

The term “Hundred Days,” used to denote the opening few months of a new presidency, entered the American political lexicon with the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. With the help of large congressional Democratic majorities and the impetus of the Great Depression, FDR’s whirlwind Hundred Days “forged Roosevelt’s principal weapons in the battle against the Depression and shaped much of the New Deal’s historical reputation,” wrote David Kennedy in Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945.

The term has an older, historical significance: It describes Napoleon’s brief return to France in 1815 following his initial exile to Elba, culminating in his final defeat at Waterloo.

In any event, the Hundred Days’ mark has become a popular time to take the measure of a new president. We’re a little early — as we’re writing this on Wednesday afternoon, April 21, Biden is at his 92nd day in office — but we thought this would be a good time to check in on how the public views Biden so far and how he compares to past presidents.

Table 1 shows the post-World War II presidents and their approval rating in FiveThirtyEight’s historical tracking on the 92nd day of their presidencies. This starts with Harry Truman, who took over for FDR in the closing months of the war.

Table 1: Approval rating of postwar presidents on 92nd day of presidency

Note: “Total” column slightly differs in some instances from sum of “Approval” and “Disapproval” columns because of rounding.

Source: Aggregation of national polls by FiveThirtyEight

Biden, at a 53% approval and 40% disapproval split in the overall FiveThirtyEight average, is doing well compared to his predecessor, Donald Trump, but he lags every other president in terms of net approval in the opening period of his presidency. What this table seems to illustrate is the hardening partisanship of the American electorate — note the column on the right, the percentage of people expressing an opinion. The number has been over 90% at this point for the last three presidencies (including Biden’s) — a sign that, perhaps, people who didn’t vote for the new president are less likely to give a new president the benefit of the doubt, opting to just say they “disapprove” of his performance as opposed to saying they neither approve nor disapprove.

We are also in an era of steady presidential approval, which is another sign of hardening partisanship. The last two presidents, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, saw their average approval hover in a fairly narrow band: Obama was often in the mid-to-high 40s, and Trump was often in the low-to-mid 40s. The venerable pollster Gallup pegged Obama’s average approval rating throughout his eight years in office at 48%, and it had Trump at 41% in his four years. Our former Crystal Ball colleague Geoffrey Skelley, now writing for FiveThirtyEight, found in April 2020 that Trump’s approval rating was the steadiest of any of the postwar presidents, and Obama’s was second-steadiest. It may be that, in this era, presidents have both a hard ceiling and hard floor in approval — just like they may have at the ballot box. The last president to win the national popular vote by double digits was Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Probably the fairest evaluation of Biden’s approval rating so far is that he is off to a decent start, considering the strong partisanship of this era. But he may also still be experiencing something of a honeymoon, as is common with new presidents (albeit less pronounced in a more partisan era). Indeed, Biden’s disapproval rating has crept up a little over the course of his first few months in office — he started at 36% in the average, and he’s now at 40%, even as his approval has remained consistently in the 53%-54% range.

The average, though, masks the rather substantial disagreements among individual pollsters on Biden’s approval rating. Table 2 shows recent national Biden approval polling from several prominent, national pollsters that also released national polls testing Biden versus Trump near or at the end of the 2020 presidential campaign.

Table 2: Selected recent Biden national approval rating by pollster

Notes: In the “Sample” column, “A” stands for all adults, “RV” stands for registered voters, and “LV” stands for Likely Voters. For the final 2020 election polls, all were of Likely Voters except for the CNBC poll, which was of registered voters, and all concluded their surveys by Oct. 24, 2020 or later (the election was Nov. 3, 2020).

Source: Aggregation of national polls by FiveThirtyEight

On average, these eight pollsters reflect the current FiveThirtyEight average exactly: 53% approve, 40% disapprove. But there are notable differences among these pollsters, as Biden’s net approval in these polls ranges from two points to 22 points.

Rasmussen Reports, which generally was the most bullish pollster on Donald Trump’s approval rating during his time in office, is most bearish here on Biden, showing essentially an even split between approval and disapproval (they are also the only pollster that always looks at “likely voters,” a smaller universe of potential respondents than registered voters or all adults). Meanwhile, HarrisX has Biden at a much stronger 61%-39% spread. Both of these polls, despite the different findings, have no or almost no undecideds on Biden’s performance.

Meanwhile, Morning Consult is also bullish on Biden compared to the average, while Ipsos and YouGov are relatively close to the average. IBD/TIPP is at the average on approval, but shows a smaller Biden disapproval and thus more undecideds. Quinnipiac University and CNBC — the latter of which is jointly conducted by respected Democratic pollster Hart Research Associates and Republican pollster Public Opinion Strategies — are relatively bearish on Biden compared to the net average, though not dramatically so.

Still, this has set up an interesting dynamic. Note the final column in Table 2, which shows the lead that all of these pollsters had for Joe Biden in their final national polls of 2020. The leads ranged from just one for Rasmussen to 11 for CNBC and Quinnipiac. Biden’s actual winning margin was 4.5 percentage points, so it was much more common for these polls (and others not listed here) to overshoot Biden’s lead, though HarrisX and IBD/TIPP were right on the money.

Dan Guild, a poll-watcher and previous Crystal Ball contributor, tweeted last week that he was noticing that some of the pollsters who had overestimated Biden’s winning margin in 2020 are now finding relatively weaker Biden approval now. His tweet prompted us to check it out, and we noticed that CNBC and Quinnipiac both had Biden up by 11 in 2020, but now have Biden’s net approval rating worse than the average.

We don’t know if there is anything to be gleaned from this at such an early point in the Biden presidency. We’re also comparing apples to oranges to some degrees — final 2020 polls generally were of likely voters, whereas these two pollsters are just polling all adults now, many of whom won’t vote in a midterm (the 2018 midterm had a very strong turnout, but that was still just about 50% of eligible voters). Most pollsters won’t start trying to figure out who likely voters are until the summer or fall of next year.

However, it is interesting that while Biden’s overall average approval rating has been steady, pollsters disagree about how strong it actually is.

Biden’s actual level of popularity matters greatly for the 2022 midterm. If his approval rating eventually turns negative, the Democrats will be hard-pressed to hold their narrow edges in the Senate and especially the House. If Biden’s approval stays positive, Democrats might have a chance to buck the usual midterm penalty that is often inflicted on the presidential party. But the degree to which Biden is popular or unpopular likely matters too. We’ll see if individual pollsters come more into alignment on this as time goes on.

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— There have been nearly 300 U.S. House special elections since the mid-1950s.

— These elections more often flipped against the party that holds the White House — just like what often happens to the president’s party in midterm House elections — but the president’s party has scored some noteworthy wins, too, which can cloud the predictive value of special elections.

— Special election winners rarely lose their next election, but it does happen.

Six decades of special House election trends

Almost exactly 47 years ago — April 16, 1974 — Republicans suffered what would be the fourth of five U.S. House special election losses in the first half of that year. Bob Traxler (D), who would go on to serve two decades in the U.S. House, defeated James Sparling Jr. (R) in MI-8.

This happened despite — or perhaps, because of — embattled President Richard Nixon campaigning in person for Sparling days before the election.

The New York Times’ R.W. Apple Jr., who followed Nixon’s campaigning in the district covering Michigan’s thumb as well as the cities of Saginaw and Bay City, reported, “A Sparling aide confided this morning that he would be happy if the President never mentioned the local candidate’s name.” Alas, Apple reported, the president “mentioned Mr. Sparling constantly.”

Traxler won by three points in a district that Nixon had carried by 24 points in 1972 and 13 points in 1968. “It was yet another in the string of upset Democratic victories in special elections that showed Congressmen — even Republicans — how devastatingly unpopular were Richard Nixon and his works,” wrote the authors of the 1976 Almanac of American Politics. Another one of those Democratic victories, which came earlier in the year, was that of Richard Vander Veen (D) in the Grand Rapids-based MI-5, which Gerald Ford had left behind when he became vice president in 1973.

The Democratic victories in the first half of 1974 probably represent the most influential special House elections in recent history. The GOP losses “helped convince Republicans that Nixon needed to resign,” the authors of a more recent (2016) Almanac of American Politics wrote. Perhaps the only comparably influential set of special elections were those held between the 1930 midterm election and the opening of Congress in December 1931, which allowed Democrats to capture the majority during the Great Depression after narrowly coming up short in November 1930.

The 1974 specials also provide perhaps the best example of how special elections — themselves their own form of a “midterm” election — can operate as a miniature version of regular midterm House elections, which often deliver setbacks to the president’s party.

But they do not always operate this way, and special elections can sometimes be deceptive bellwethers for the approaching regular election.

With one House special election already in the books this year — Rep. Julia Letlow’s (R, LA-5) victory in the race to replace her late husband — and several more on the horizon, we thought it would be a good time to take a look at the modern history of special elections, dating back to 1957, the start of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s second term as president. We picked 1957 because we used Bloomberg congressional expert Greg Giroux’s excellent compilation of House special elections as our guide for this article, and Greg’s list goes back to that year.

We’ve identified five big-picture takeaways from this election history. But first, a few numbers:

There have been 289 House special elections since 1957. That includes Letlow’s victory last month, but it does not include a looming runoff between Democrats Troy Carter and Karen Carter Peterson in LA-2, coming up on April 24. This list also includes a couple of do-over elections, where the November results were wracked by problems: 2018’s NC-9 election, which was re-run in September 2019, and 1974’s LA-6 election, re-run in early January 1975.

Just to put in context how relatively few special elections there are, remember that there are 435 individual House elections every two years. So the whole history of special House elections since 1957 only adds up to roughly two-thirds of the number of races in a single, regular November House election.

There has been at least one House special election in every calendar year since 1957, with the exception of 2000. This averages out to roughly nine House special elections in every two-year election cycle, some of which end up being contested on the same day as a regular, biennial November federal election.

Despite occurring relatively infrequently, House specials are still a regular part of the election calendar, if irregularly scheduled. Article I, Section 2, clause 4 of the Constitution mandates that “When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.” This is why every House vacancy is filled through a special election, and why governors have no power to appoint temporary replacements to the U.S. House (unlike with Senate vacancies, which are handled differently based on state laws and where governors often have appointment powers).

Some of the most prominent House members in the country have first come to Washington via special elections. That includes the top two House Democrats, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D, CA-12) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D, MD-5), as well as the second-ranking House Republican, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R, LA-1).

With that, here are our five takeaways from nearly 65 years of House special elections:

1. Special House elections more often break against the party in power

Just as the non-presidential party is likelier to net seats in midterms, so too is the non-presidential party likelier to capture House seats in special elections than the presidential party.

Of the 289 House specials since 1957, 55 were won by the party that did not hold the seat prior to the vacancy. Of these 55 flips, 39 were won by the non-presidential party.

The Democrats’ 1974 victories are an extreme example of this dynamic — five flips over the course of just four months — but the non-White House party enjoyed other longer, successful runs at various other times, too.

Democrats won three Republican-held seats in special elections over a half-year span in Nixon’s first year in office, 1969. And Republicans flipped six Democratic-held seats over the course of Jimmy Carter’s first three years in office.

2. They can be a preview of the upcoming November general election

In the case of 1974, the Republican losses ended up being a preview of the November campaign — even with Nixon gone, the Democrats still won 48 more seats in 1974 than they had won in 1972. In other words, the Democrats’ “special” strength manifested itself in the regular election.

This also ended up being the case, to a lesser extent, in the other aforementioned examples. Democrats netted a dozen seats in the 1970 cycle, Nixon’s first midterm, and Republicans netted 15 in 1978 and 34 in 1980.

There are other examples when special success proved to be a harbinger of things to come.

Republicans flipped two Democratic-held seats in Oklahoma and Kentucky in May 1994 — seats formerly held by long-tenured Democrats that George H.W. Bush had carried in his reelection loss to Bill Clinton in 1992. One of those victors, Rep. Frank Lucas (R, OK-3), is still in the House today. Following the Kentucky loss, the New York Times’ Richard Berke wrote, “The Kentucky results only add to the fears of Democrats that they will lose many seats, particularly those of several conservative Democrats in the South who are retiring this year.” Later that year, Republicans won a majority of Southern House seats for the first time since Reconstruction, a regional majority they have largely augmented over the past three decades.

More recently, Democrats flipped three Republican-held seats in the first half of 2008, including the Illinois seat of the former Speaker of the House, the now-disgraced Dennis Hastert, and two Republican-leaning seats in Louisiana and Mississippi. Democrats ended up augmenting their majority that November.

In a 2010 study covering House special elections conducted from 1900-2008, political scientists David R. Smith and Thomas L. Brunell found that when “one party takes seats away from the other party in special elections, the gaining party generally fares reasonably well in the general election.”

In the 2018 cycle, Democrats only flipped one Republican-held seat in a special election — PA-18, won by Rep. Conor Lamb, who now occupies a different, redrawn district, PA-17 — but that performance combined with a series of strong Democratic showings in heavily Republican districts that cycle attracted the attention of analysts. Writing in early 2018, Daniel Donner of the liberal elections site Daily Kos Elections used historical special election results from state and federal legislative races to identify a strong Democratic environment, which would manifest itself that November.

Unexpected close calls in seemingly safe seats have at other times provided a warning for the president’s party in advance of bad elections. In both 1981 and 2005, Ohio Republicans only barely held districts that, just the previous year, had each voted Republican for president by roughly 30 points apiece. Republicans suffered significant House losses in 1982 and 2006. So don’t just pay attention to the winners of these races — pay attention to the margins, too.

3. But sometimes specials are not a preview

History is also dotted with examples of special election results that break in favor of the White House party and/or do not reflect what would happen in the November election. As noted above, 39 of the 55 special election party flips were victories by the non-presidential party. But that also means that the presidential party flipped 16 seats from the opposition party.

Democrats flipped a Republican-held seat, NY-23, in November 2009, giving the party hope that it was a harbinger of 2010, as opposed to the twin losses the party suffered in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races on the same day (as it turned out, the gubernatorial races provided more of a preview of the GOP’s huge, 64-seat net House gain that cycle). Democrats also held difficult swing seats in New York and Pennsylvania during that special election cycle.

In the first half of 2004, Democrats flipped red seats in Kentucky and South Dakota; in 1963, Republicans flipped two Democratic seats in California. The string of Republican special election House flips during the Carter administration was ended by a Democratic victory in a GOP-held seat in Louisiana in May 1980. None of these results pointed to what happened in the 1964, 1980, and 2004 elections.

Sometimes the special elections provide mixed signals. In May 2011, now-Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) flipped a usually Republican western New York district, boosting Democrats. Then, in September, Bob Turner (R) flipped a usually Democratic New York City district, boosting Republicans. The following November, Barack Obama won a competitive reelection while Republicans held the House. So perhaps the mixed 2011 special election results in New York did provide a preview of a mixed election, but that wasn’t apparent at the time.

4. Special election winners typically win their next election, but not always

In the wake of now-former Rep. Karen Handel’s (R) victory in the closely-watched 2017 GA-6 runoff, a number of prognosticators (including us) initially gave her the benefit of the doubt for the regular election based on the belief that special election winners usually win their next election. That is the case, but there are exceptions — as Handel herself ended up becoming when she lost to now-Rep. Lucy McBath (D, GA-6) in November 2018.

Just 20 of the 288 special election winners since 1957 lost their next House election, although some did not run again (Letlow is excluded from this group because she hasn’t had the chance to run for another term).

A few of these feature technicalities. In 1972, William Conover (R) won a special election for PA-27, a district that was being eliminated in redistricting. Conover lost a primary for another seat that same day. More recently, Shelley Sekula-Gibbs (R) won a November 2006 special election to win the remainder of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s (R) unexpired term. However, she had to run as a write-in for the election to the term starting in 2007, and she lost to Nick Lampson (D). (Lampson would lose the then-heavily Republican seat to Republican Pete Olson in 2008.) In 2018, Brenda Jones (D) won a special election primary to a safe Democratic seat in Detroit, but lost the primary for the regular election on the same day to now-Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D, MI-13). Something similar happened to Neil Abercrombie (D) in Hawaii in 1986 — he won a special election the same day he lost a primary for the full term. He would return to the House in a 1990 election and later become governor of Hawaii.

So these four didn’t really lose their next election — rather, they lost at the same time they were winning.

Some of the special election winners whose victories were suggestive of the November results ended up losing despite the good political environment for their party. Tom Luken (D) was one of the five 1974 special winners, but he lost a rematch with Bill Gradison (R) in the Cincinnati-based OH-1 later that year (Luken won a different Cincinnati-based seat in 1976).

Dan Cazayoux (D), a surprising 2008 victor in the LA-6 special referenced above, lost that November to now-Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA). Louisiana was not using its familiar, top-two jungle primary system that year, and Cazayoux was likely hurt by a Black state representative running as a third party Democratic alternative who won 12% of the vote (Cazayoux lost by eight).

Hochul, the 2011 special election winner noted at the end of the last section, is another special election victor who lost her next election, although her district became more Republican in redistricting and she only lost narrowly. Turner, the other New York 2011 special election winner, saw his district eliminated altogether — instead he sought, and lost, the 2012 Republican U.S. Senate nomination in New York.

The last person to flip a seat in a special election, Rep. Mike Garcia (R, CA-25), would be on this list were it not for his narrow, 333-vote victory last November following a 10-point win in a May 2020 special election. It’s a credit to Garcia that he isn’t on this list — Joe Biden won his district by 10 points in November, making Garcia a major overachiever — but it does suggest, along with other examples in this section, that special election winners are not necessarily untouchable in their next election.

In 2009, Scott Murphy (D) somewhat surprisingly held the swing seat now-Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) left behind after she was appointed to the Senate to replace Hillary Clinton. But he ended up losing in the poor Democratic environment of 2010. The same thing happened to Peter Barca (D), who narrowly held WI-1 against Mark Neumann (R) in a 1993 special only to lose another close race to Neumann in the 1994 GOP wave. Four years later, Neumann unsuccessfully ran for Senate — allowing his southeast Wisconsin seat to be won by Paul Ryan (R), the future House speaker.

Ron Paul — yes, that Ron Paul — won his first U.S House victory in a 1976 special, defeating Bob Gammage (D). Gammage came back and beat Paul in the 1976 general election, and then Paul beat him in November 1978.

Paul served through 1984, when he ran for Senate and lost the primary to Phil Gramm, who had won a special House election a year earlier to fill a vacancy created by… Gramm’s own resignation.

Gramm resigned after switching parties, and won his seat back under his new Republican label (Albert Watson of South Carolina did the same thing in 1965 — both Gramm and Watson’s victories are counted as two of the 55 overall party flips in this era).

Paul’s first retirement from the House — he would come back in the 1996 election and serve through 2012 — opened TX-22 to be won by the aforementioned Tom DeLay.

One positive sign for Republicans in advance of their 2010 national victory was Charles Djou’s (R) victory in the HI-1 special, although he was aided by an all-party special election format that split the Democratic vote in a heavily Democratic seat. Djou lost in November. Something similar happened in the heavily Democratic NM-3 in 1997, in which Bill Redmond (R) won in part because a sizable chunk of the Democratic vote broke toward a Green Party candidate. Redmond lost to future Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) in November 1998.

One other special election winner who immediately lost his next election: the “kissing congressman,” Vance McAllister (R). He won a 2013 LA-5 special election, but then the married congressman was seen on video kissing a staffer. He initially said he wouldn’t run for a full term, but he backtracked, finishing fourth in the November 2014 all-party jungle primary.

This is the same seat that the most recent special election winner, Julia Letlow, won last month.

5. Special elections can keep seats “in the family”

Speaking of Letlow, she is just the latest widow to successfully hold a seat left behind by her husband. Luke Letlow (R) died after contracting COVID-19 in December before he could be sworn into his first term in the House.

Many of those widows opted not to run again, although Julia Letlow plans to in 2022 after her impressive victory last month.

Some widows who won special elections went on to long House careers in their own right. Perhaps the most famous is Rep. Lindy Boggs (D), who served for close to 20 years after winning a 1973 special election in a New Orleans-based seat to replace her husband, House Majority Leader Hale Boggs (D), who was presumed dead in an apparent plane crash. Rep. Nick Begich (D) of Alaska was onboard the same plane: His presumed death prompted a 1973 special won by Don Young (R, AK-AL), who is still in the House and is its longest-serving current member. A separate plane crash also took the life of Chicago Rep. George Collins (D) in 1972; his wife, Cardiss Collins (D), won the special election to replace him and served in the House for nearly a quarter century. Rep. Doris Matsui (D, CA-6) won a special election to replace her late husband, Bob Matsui (D), in 2005, and she remains in the House.

House seats sometimes pass to family members other than spouses in special elections: for instance, current Rep. Donald M. Payne Jr. (D, NJ-10) won a 2012 special to replace his late father. Another current House member, André Carson (D, IN-7), won a special election in 2008 to replace his late grandmother, Julia Carson (D). Mo Udall (D-AZ) served for three decades in the House after winning a special election to replace Stewart Udall, his brother, who had become Secretary of the Interior.

Overall, a little more than two-dozen of the special election winners since 1957 had some family relation to the representative whose departure necessitated the election.

Conclusion

As we look ahead to 2021’s House specials, we know that Democrats will hold the heavily Democratic LA-2, where two Democrats are competing in a runoff later this month. The eventual Democratic nominee will also hold OH-11 in Northeast Ohio this November. There will be a special election at some point to replace the late Rep. Alcee Hastings (D, FL-20), who died last week. But his seat is also overwhelmingly Democratic.

Potentially more interesting are races in TX-6 in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex, where an all-party primary featuring nearly two-dozen candidates is scheduled for May 1, and Albuquerque’s NM-1, where party-selected nominees state Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D) and state Sen. Mark Moores (R) will face off on June 1.

These are both races that the incumbent party — Republicans in TX-6 and Democrats in NM-1 — should hold. TX-6 only voted for Donald Trump for president by three points, but it is more Republican down the ballot. One of the top Republican candidates is Susan Wright, the widow of the late Rep. Ron Wright, whose death due to complications from COVID-19 led to the vacancy. So Susan Wright could be the latest widow to win a House special election. Meanwhile, NM-1 voted for Joe Biden by 23 points, but the seat’s previous occupant, now-Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (D), won by a more modest 16 points in 2020, and Democrats performed well in some similarly inhospitable districts four years ago. Can Republicans do so now with the burden of holding the White House now passed to Democrats?

We’ll be watching to see if any trends emerge from these races, but there are confounding factors in both. The all-party format of TX-6 means we are not guaranteed a Democrat vs. Republican runoff, although a runoff seems almost certain given that no one is likely to eclipse 50% support in the first round of voting. In NM-1, former state Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn is running as an independent, and the former Republican could siphon conservative votes from Moores, making it hard for him to win even if he runs a great campaign.

Speaking to Roll Call in advance of the two 2004 specials that Democrats would ultimately win — but that did not end up being a sign of better things to come in November — 2002 cycle Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Executive Director Howard Wolfson said “Special elections can be predictive, but you don’t know that until the regular November elections.”

It’s advice worth keeping in mind. Special House elections that break in favor of one party, particularly the party that doesn’t hold the White House, can provide signs for the general election, but not always.

— Crystal Ball interns Nik Popli, Kristen Sink, and Victoria Spiotto assisted with this article.

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— Delays in the redistricting process mean that we won’t be releasing Crystal Ball House district ratings for the foreseeable future.

— However, midterm history along with GOP advantages in redistricting make the Republicans clear, though not certain, favorites to win the House next year.

— Recent midterm history helps illustrate some of the Democratic vulnerabilities if this cycle breaks against the White House, as it did in the past four midterms.

The presidential party’s persistent midterm struggles

So far this year, the Crystal Ball has released its initial ratings for the 2022 Senate races and the 2021-2022 gubernatorial races. We’re holding off on House ratings, though, because this is a national redistricting cycle. Without district lines in place, there’s no sense in issuing specific ratings.

The redistricting process is also going to be significantly later this cycle. The U.S. Census Bureau has delayed the release of the granular population data that the states use to draw new districts until Sept. 30. So we won’t start seeing new districts until the fall, at the earliest. Just to put that in perspective, by late September 2011, several big states, such as California, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio, had already completed their maps.

We know that Republicans will control the line drawing in more places than Democrats. Based on an analysis of state-by-state redistricting procedures by Justin Levitt’s All About Redistricting site, and taking into account anticipated House seat gains and losses because of population changes, Republicans control the process in states that are expected to hold 188 seats and Democrats have control in states expected to hold 73. The remaining 174 seats are in states where neither party dominates, where the process is nonpartisan or bipartisan, or where there is only a single House seat.

Among the big states, Republican redistricting power will likely be most significant in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas, while Democrats will hope to bolster themselves in Illinois and New York. There will be a lot more to say about redistricting as the cycle unfolds.

Map 1 shows the states that are likely to gain or lose House seats following the census based on an analysis by Dudley Poston and Teresa Sullivan for the Crystal Ball last year.

Map 1: Projected House seat gains/losses following 2020 census

Even setting aside likely GOP advantages in the gerrymandering wars, history points to Republicans in the House.

In midterm elections, the president’s party typically struggles, at least to some degree. Since the Civil War, there have been 40 midterm elections. The party that held the White House lost ground in the House in 37 of those elections, with an average seat loss of 33. Since the end of World War II, the average seat loss is a little smaller — 27 — but still significant.

As Andrew Busch wrote in his history of midterm elections, Horses in Midstream, “the midterm election pattern virtually guarantees that the president’s party will be hurt at regular intervals. The extent of that damage may vary considerably, but the fact of it rarely does.” Midterms provide an opportunity for voters to put a check on the White House, and voters very often take that opportunity accordingly.

In 2020, Democrats won a 222-213 majority in the House, meaning that Republicans only need to net five seats to win the majority this year. Just based on history, it would be a surprise if the Democrats kept their majority. Perhaps some confluence of factors — such as an economic boom, President Biden maintaining an approval rating north of 50%, redistricting not going the way Republicans hope, Republican infighting that depresses GOP turnout, and more — could lead to Democrats holding the House. But the bottom line is that Republicans winning the House next year would be an outcome easily foreseeable based on familiar American political patterns, whereas the Democrats holding the majority would be an outcome requiring a special explanation.

The recent midterm pattern

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that 2022 is not an exception, and that the midterm breaks against the White House. What might we expect? Data from the last four midterms provide some clues.

Back in 2017, we compared how the presidential party performed in House races conducted during the presidential year versus the following midterm year in the 2004-2006, 2008-2010, and 2012-2014 cycles. We looked only at districts that 1) Featured both a Democratic and Republican candidate in both the presidential year and the midterm year and that 2) Were not redrawn between the presidential and the midterm year. In order to normalize results across the election cycles, we just looked at the two-party vote. For this analysis, we also added the 2016-2018 results — for more on how we determined whether to include or exclude a district, see the footnote at the end of this article.[1]

Across the four election cycles, there were 1,325 individual races that met the criteria to be included in our analysis. On average, the presidential party’s share of the two-party vote declined about five points (5.1 to be exact) from the presidential year to the midterm. That’s enough to turn a 55%-45% victory in the presidential year for a candidate sharing the party label of the person elected president to effectively a 50%-50% tie in the succeeding midterm.

The average presidential penalty varied from cycle to cycle. It was 4.6 points in both the 2004-2006 and 2016-2018 cycles — both cycles where Democrats flipped the House two years after Republicans won the White House. In 2008-2010, the penalty was a larger 7.5 points as Republicans flipped the House two years after a Democrat won the presidency, while in 2012-2014 it was a more modest 3.5 points as Republicans held the House in both elections.

Part of what can impact the shift from presidential to midterm is how different the political environment was in the presidential versus the midterm year. The Democrats had one of their best elections ever in 2008, and then the Republicans roared back in 2010. In the other three cycles examined, the presidential election year was more competitive, making the midterm shift less pronounced.

We can go a bit deeper by looking at four categories of seats: seats defended by presidential party incumbents in midterms, seats defended by non-presidential party incumbents, open seats defended by the presidential party, and open seats defended by the non-presidential party. But before we do, let’s once again offer an important caveat: These races all compare presidential year to midterm results in districts that did not change from the presidential year to the midterm year. Almost all districts will change between 2020 to 2022, if only to incorporate changes in population, and some districts will change a lot or even be eliminated entirely. So keep that in mind as we look at these four types of districts over the last four midterms:

— Of the 1,325 races in our collection of results, roughly half (659) featured presidential party incumbents. On average, their performance fell by six percentage points from the presidential year to the midterm, or 12 points in terms of margin. Just to put that in perspective, 44 House Democrats won by 12 points or fewer in 2020. That’s not to say all, most, or even some of these Democratic incumbents are doomed to lose in 2022. But they are potentially vulnerable in a midterm that breaks against the White House, depending on redistricting, opponents, and other factors.

— Another large chunk of races, 521, featured incumbents from the non-presidential party. Those incumbents, on average, ran 3.9 points better in the midterm compared to the preceding presidential election. Only three of these incumbents lost: then-Reps. Steve Southerland (R, FL-2) and Lee Terry (R, NE-2) in 2014 — both of whom undermined their reelection bids with self-inflicted problems — and then-Rep. Charles Djou (R, HI-1) in 2010. Djou won a flukish special election victory that May: He benefited from a Democratic split in an all-party election format but was unable to defend the heavily Democratic seat in the regular November election. No Democratic incumbents lost in either the 2006 and 2018 midterm. This is potentially good news for some new Republican incumbents, a handful of whom won by extremely close margins in 2020.

— There were 65 open seats defended by the nonpresidential party. On average, there was hardly any change from the presidential year to the midterm year in these seats, with the nonpresidential party gaining a negligible 0.2 points on average. Just three such seats changed hands over the last four midterms: Democrats flipped Delaware’s open and heavily Democratic at-large seat in 2010 after popular then-Rep. Mike Castle (R) ran for Senate (and proceeded to lose to fringe candidate Christine O’Donnell in the primary), and Republicans flipped two open Minnesota House seats in 2018, MN-1 and MN-8, that Donald Trump won by double digits in both 2016 and 2020.

— And there were 80 open seats defended by the president’s party. These kinds of seats often end up as the best targets for the nonpresidential party in midterms: Close to half of them, 35, flipped to the nonpresidential party, and the presidential party lost an average of 9.9 points of voteshare in these districts from the presidential to the midterm (or about 20 points in terms of two-party margin). Just two Democrats have retired so far this cycle, but based on this recent history, both districts could be Republican targets: Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D, AZ-2) won by about 10 points in a district that Biden won by roughly the same amount, and Rep. Filemon Vela (D, TX-34) won by about 13.5 points in a district that Biden won by just four. Biden performed poorly across several South Texas districts — Hillary Clinton carried TX-34 by 21.5 points in 2016. Redistricting could change these districts markedly, particularly TX-34: Republicans may dramatically alter the South Texas districts in order to capitalize on new Democratic weakness in the region, although it’s also possible that Republican gains in the region won’t endure in the long term.

Conclusion

It’s far too early to make any hard and fast predictions about the House, particularly with all of the uncertainties about redistricting. But the history is what it is, and if the 2022 midterm unfolds like the last several, Republicans are well-positioned to win the House next year. In midterm environments, the president’s party typically loses ground, particularly in open seats, while the nonpresidential party typically gains ground and is able to defend its open seats.

Footnote

[1] Here’s how we decided which races to include: For each of the four presidential-to-midterm comparisons, any district that was uncontested by one of the two major parties in either election was excluded. We also excluded elections in states that use a “top-two” system (California and Washington) in which two members of the same party advanced to the November election. Districts that were redistricted between the presidential election and the midterm were also discarded, meaning that all of Georgia’s results and a handful of Texas districts are excluded from the 2004-2006 analysis because those states used different maps in those two elections. Pennsylvania was excluded from the 2016-2018 analysis because that state redistricted between those two elections. Finally, we did not include any results from Louisiana because of its unique, November “jungle” primary system that sometimes produces December runoffs. Understandably, this culled hundreds of races from our four-midterm study, but we still ended up with 1,325 total races over four time periods: 316 in 2004-2006, 357 in 2008-2010, 328 in 2012-2014, and 324 in 2016-2018. Our decision to exclude Louisiana from our study removes one of the rare losses for a non-presidential party incumbent in a recent midterm. In 2008, Joseph Cao (R) narrowly defeated indicted then-Rep. William Jefferson (D, LA-2) in a heavily Democratic seat based in New Orleans. Two years later, Cao suffered a lopsided loss. The data we used are from Gary Jacobson and Daily Kos Elections.

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— Even as a new president is inaugurated today, the outgoing president looms large.

— As Senate Republicans ponder how to vote in the Trump impeachment trial, they may be incentivized to move the party past Trump as they seek to recapture power in Washington next year.

Trump’s shadow

Given Donald Trump’s ability to dominate the news both before and during his presidency, it is perhaps not surprising that he remains the subject of the most immediately pressing political question in Washington: Should Senate Republicans use the pending impeachment trial in the Senate to forbid the outgoing president from holding public office again?

Practically speaking, that’s what the stakes of the looming impeachment trial are, which will begin sometime in the coming days (after Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi passes the article of impeachment to the Senate). Trump will no longer be president at noon Wednesday, and thus he cannot be removed from office. But if Trump is convicted by a two-thirds vote in the upper chamber, the Senate can then ban Trump from holding office in the future through a simple majority vote.

The decision may largely be up to one man: the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY). The conventional wisdom, which strikes us as sensible, is that if McConnell backs impeachment, he will be able to find 16 other Republicans to come along with him. That, along with all 50 Senate Democrats, is what it would take to convict the president in the impeachment trial, opening the door to the vote banning Trump from holding public office. If McConnell balks at conviction, this impeachment trial likely will end the same way last year’s did, with Trump acquitted.

Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday, McConnell said the Jan. 6 pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol “was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.”

Some of those who would benefit the most from Trump being disqualified from running again — those who want the GOP presidential nomination for themselves in 2024 — have been some of the president’s biggest defenders in recent weeks. Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) were two of the ringleaders of the effort to question election results from Arizona and Pennsylvania in the Electoral College certification, which was interrupted by the Capitol sacking. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), another possible presidential candidate and the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, voted in favor of the objection to the Pennsylvania results. Non-Trump Republican presidential contenders logically should want Trump out of the way for 2024, but they likely feel that if they are seen as anti-Trump, they won’t be able to win the nomination.

In other words, those with future presidential aspirations in the GOP likely will stick with the president, leaving it up to Republican members of the Senate whose aspirations do not go beyond that chamber to block Trump from seeking the Republican nomination in 2024.

One also wonders if there may be some sort of de facto barrier erected against Trump running again even if he is not convicted in a Senate trial and subsequently disqualified. One possibility, as suggested by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) in a revelatory interview last week with Center for Politics Director Larry Sabato, would be if Congress enacted a requirement that any presidential nominee publicly release 10 years of tax returns, something Kaine suggests Trump would not do.

Trump’s approval with Republicans remains strong, but among the broader populace, the president is limping to the finish line. A raft of national polling on Trump’s approval has been released over the last several days, and Trump’s approval rating has sagged to an average of 39% approve/57% disapprove in the FiveThirtyEight average. The spread was 45% approve/53% disapprove on Election Day.

It’s reasonable to believe that Trump’s real level of approval may be higher than conventional polls suggest. The first bit of evidence comes from the election results themselves: Trump lost the national popular vote 51%-47%, so he ran a little ahead of his approval. The national exit poll conducted by Edison Research for many major media outlets found that Trump’s approval with the electorate was 50% approve/49% disapprove; another poll of the electorate, the VoteCast, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for the Associated Press and Fox News, found Trump’s approval with the electorate as 47% approve/53% disapprove. So the pre-election polling probably understated Trump’s approval rating.

However, whatever Trump’s “real” approval number is, it’s likely lower now than it was at the time of the election.

As McConnell and other Senate Republicans ponder what they should do about Trump, they also have to consider what impact their actions might have on Trump’s position within the party. Part of what has sustained Trump, arguably, is that Republicans have generally stayed in lockstep with him. Trump had no presidential primary challenge of note, and Republicans almost uniformly backed him in the impeachment process in late 2019 and early 2020: No House Republican backed impeachment, and only Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) voted to convict Trump in the Senate trial.

This time, 10 House Republicans voted in favor of impeachment, and, in all likelihood, more than just Romney will vote to convict in the Senate. Could a public break with Trump from some leading Republicans create more of a so-called “permission structure” for Republican voters to break with Trump, too? Or will Republicans who vote against Trump be punished by voters? Would Trump hurt Republicans in other ways, such as by creating a third party, which he reportedly has discussed according to the Wall Street Journal? These questions are what Senate Republicans have to ponder, and it’s hard to know the answers in advance of whatever decision they make in the Senate trial.

We suspect that the full story of the Jan. 6 Capitol disgrace has yet to be told. The Senate trial may help to fill out the story and determine how culpable Trump, his allies, and other elected officials were in what happened. That could move public opinion, too.

This leads to yet another important, unanswerable question: How long will the events of Jan. 6 linger in the broader political consciousness?

To us, the scene represented the most alarming sight on American soil since 9/11. But we also cannot assume that others will feel the same way. The 2022 midterm is still well in the future, and the issues that will animate that election are a mystery.

From a historical perspective, just an average midterm performance by Republicans would be more than enough to flip both chambers of Congress next year. Republicans will need to net just a single seat in the Senate and a half-dozen or so in the House. Since World War II, the president’s party has lost an average of 27 House seats and 3.5 Senate seats in midterms, although individual yearly results have varied widely.

Joe Biden, as president, could end up presiding over a strong economic recovery as the nation (we hope) eventually leaves COVID-19 in the rearview mirror. A divided GOP with Trump remaining a major and divisive figure could lead to outcomes like we saw in the Georgia Senate runoffs, with an engaged, united Democratic Party fending off a slightly less engaged and united GOP. That is one midterm possibility; there are others that would be better for the GOP.

On this, the day of Biden’s inauguration, we find ourselves still fixated on the man leaving office, Trump. This is much as it was during the campaign, when Trump and his allies sought to make the election about Biden, to insufficient avail. The best midterm results for the presidential out-party typically come when they can make the election a negative referendum on the president and/or the president’s party.

The first order of business for Republicans in 2021, thus, probably should be working toward making sure the midterm isn’t a referendum on the final days of the Trump presidency.

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— Roughly two-thirds of House Republicans backed at least one of two objections to a state’s presidential results last week. And a clear majority backed both.

— Generally speaking, members who backed both objections come from more Republican-leaning districts than those who opposed both.

How House Republicans voted on Electoral College disputes

Hours after rioters and terrorists sacked the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday, the House of Representatives and Senate voted to certify the Electoral College victory of President-elect Joe Biden. The outcome of this process was never in doubt, but more than half of the Republican House caucus voted to object to the results in Arizona, Pennsylvania, or both.

This may end up being one of the most consequential votes some House Republicans will take. One can imagine vulnerable House Republicans having to deal with attacks from Democrats on their votes, and there may be more fallout as well. Some major companies, such as Marriott and Blue Cross Blue Shield, are halting donations to anyone who voted in favor of these objections. Incensed House Democrats may freeze objectors out of the legislative process, with some proposing that the House expel objectors.

Some House Democrats objected during the electoral vote certifications in Congress in the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections, when Republicans won the presidency. They were joined by then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in 2004, triggering the same kind of two-hour debate in the House and Senate over a state’s results that we saw last week because of the need for both a House member and a Senate member to object to a state’s results in order to force a debate on that matter (in 2004, the state was Ohio).

The difference, of course, is that those objections were not championed by the losing presidential candidate as well as by some top leaders in the party, unlike in 2020.

Nor did those objections occur mere hours after a throng of dangerous lunatics descended on the Capitol, fueled by a misguided belief that the election was robbed from their candidate.

Let’s take a look at how Republican House members voted on these objections, and then see if there are any patterns in who voted yes on both objections, who voted no, and who split their votes.

First of all, here’s the basic math. Currently, there are 211 members of the House Republican caucus. There is one vacancy, in heavily Republican LA-5, after Rep.-elect Luke Letlow (R) died from COVID-19 complications before taking office. That seat will be filled in a special election later this year. One race also remains uncalled as a sloppy and very close vote count continues under the guidance of a court: NY-22, between former Reps. Claudia Tenney (R) and Anthony Brindisi (D).

Of the 211 Republican members, 120 voted in favor of both objections, while 63 voted against both. Another 18 voted against the objection to the Arizona results, but in favor of the objection to Pennsylvania. A handful of others either didn’t vote, didn’t vote on one of the two objections, or — in the case of Reps. David Valadao (R, CA-21) and Maria Elvira Salazar (R, FL-27) — had not been sworn in yet because of COVID-19. Valadao and Salazar are noteworthy because they are two of the handful of Republicans who won districts that Joe Biden carried in the presidential race (more on that below).

Table 1 lays out how all the GOP members voted by category. Every Democrat voted no on both objections, with a few not voting on one or both.

Table 1: How Republican House members voted on Electoral College objections

Note: “District rated comp.?” column indicates whether the district was rated as something other than Safe in the final 2020 Crystal Ball House ratings.

From here on out, we’ll use “double objectors” to denote the Republicans who objected to both the Arizona and Pennsylvania results, and “double rejecters” to describe the Republicans who voted against both objections. In other words, the double objectors supported President Trump on these votes, and the double rejecters did not.

Generally speaking, the districts of the double objectors are redder than those of the double rejecters.

Based on Daily Kos Elections’ calculations of the 2016 presidential results — we’re using 2016 because 2020 calculations are not yet complete — Donald Trump won the 211 GOP-held House districts (excluding the vacant LA-5) by an average of 24.5 points.

In the 120 double objector districts, Trump won by an average of 28.8 points. So these districts are more Republican than the average.

Meanwhile, in the 63 double rejecter districts, Trump won by a still impressive but markedly smaller average margin of 18.6 points. (As an aside and just for some perspective, Hillary Clinton won the 222 Democratic House seats by an average of 29.8 points.)

Republicans hold 60 districts that were rated as at least somewhat competitive in the final 2020 Crystal Ball House rankings (a rating other than Safe). There is an almost equal number of members in these seats in both the double objector (26) and double rejecter (25) columns, but because there are roughly two times the number of double objectors compared to double rejecters, vulnerable seat-holders make up about 40% of the double rejecters as opposed to just about 21% of the double objectors. It makes some intuitive sense that members in potentially vulnerable seats would be likelier to vote against the objections.

Based on the best available information we can glean from Daily Kos Elections and others who are calculating the presidential results by congressional district, there are just nine House Republicans who represent districts that voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race. Hypothetically, these are the most vulnerable House Republicans. Interestingly, their votes were all over the map, although COVID-19 played a role in how they voted.

First of all, the aforementioned Valadao and Salazar have not been sworn in yet, so they did not vote. Valadao indicated that he would have rejected both objections had he been in Congress. We have not seen any indication from Salazar as to how she might have voted. The same is true for Rep. Michelle Steel (R, CA-48), who also missed the votes because of COVID-19. Rep. Young Kim (R, CA-39) missed the first vote, on Arizona, because of possible COVID-19 exposure, but she voted against the Pennsylvania challenge. Salazar, Kim, and Steel are new members; Valadao lost in 2018 before regaining his seat in November.

Reps. Don Bacon (R, NE-2), John Katko (R, NY-24) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R, PA-1) were unsurprising double rejecters: All three have won multiple elections in tough districts, and they sometimes look for ways to distinguish themselves from their party.

Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Garcia (R, CA-25) was a double objector despite winning by only a few hundred votes in a district that backed Biden by about 10 points. Additionally, Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R, TX-24) backed the Pennsylvania objection while voting against the Arizona objection. These two members stand out as those who could potentially be the most hurt by their votes, although we have to remember that we are heading into a redistricting year: Van Duyne, in particular, could see the Republicans who run Texas redistricting make her seat, which flipped from Trump 2016 to Biden 2020, much easier to defend.

Some other observations:

— The top two House Republicans, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R, CA-23) and Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R, LA-1), were double objectors, but the No. 3 House Republican, Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R, WY-AL), was a double rejecter.

— Rep. Tom Emmer (R, MN-6), the current chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, was a double rejecter, as was his predecessor, Rep. Steve Stivers (R, OH-15). However, the other two House members who are former chairs of the House Republican campaign arm, Reps. Pete Sessions (R, TX-17) and Tom Cole (R, OK-4), were double objectors.

— Rep. Chris Smith (R, NJ-4), who is tied with Rep. Hal Rogers (R, KY-5) as the second-longest serving House Republican, was a double rejecter. Meanwhile, party-switching Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R, NJ-2), the only other New Jersey House Republican, was a double objector. The Dean of the House, Rep. Don Young (R, AK-AL), was a double rejecter; Rogers of Kentucky, meanwhile, was a double objector, while his four other less-tenured Kentucky Republican House colleagues were double rejecters.

— Vice President Mike Pence’s brother, Rep. Greg Pence (R, IN-6), was one of the 18 members who split their votes, objecting to Pennsylvania but not Arizona.

— Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R, IA-2) was a double rejecter. She won by just six votes, and her opponent, former state Sen. Rita Hart (D), argues that 22 legally-cast votes were not counted and that she should have won. Hart has asked the U.S. House, controlled by Democrats, to intervene on her behalf. The matter is pending. Iowa has certified the IA-2 results, and House Democrats overturning certified results to seat one of their own might undercut their own criticisms of Republicans for denying Biden’s victory. In any event, Miller-Meeks likely was wise to vote the way she did: She voted against Congress sticking its nose into elections conducted in other states just as she surely hopes Congress backs off of the election conducted in her state.