Early on Monday, news broke that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) will run for president, ending any uncertainty about his future and whether he would remain in the Senate. He was scheduled to officially announce his candidacy late Monday afternoon.

As he enters the race, Rubio sits in third behind ex-Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) and Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) in our current 2016 Republican presidential rankings. This positioning reflects both the potential, and the drawbacks, of Rubio’s candidacy.

Regarding his potential, Rubio seems to check most boxes. He’s an excellent speaker and a more polished politician in many respects than some of his opponents, including Bush and Walker. His ethnic background as a Cuban American sets him apart from the others, except Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who shares the same heritage as Rubio, and Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), an Indian American. Rubio also impresses many Republican insiders, who view him as having the wherewithal to be a capable national candidate, with stronger electability than Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Cruz, and some other possible outsider candidates such as Dr. Ben Carson and ex-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA). To borrow a racing metaphor, Rubio’s position in the establishment derby could allow him to draft until Bush and/or Walker falter and enter pit lane, springing Rubio into the lead.

The Florida senator also will portray himself as an “ideas candidate” in the reform conservative mold, most recently exemplified by his new taxation proposal, which he put together with Tea Party Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). Having received strong backing from the Tea Party in his 2010 Senate victory, when he forced then-Gov. Charlie Crist (R) out of the GOP primary and into an independent bid, some Republicans hope that Rubio, like Walker, may be able to straddle the establishment and grassroots division that has often appeared in recent intraparty conflicts.

At the same time, there are inherent dangers in Rubio’s candidacy. For example, an “ideas candidate” can be especially vulnerable. The Rubio-Lee tax plan is complex and some aspects could leave Rubio open to attack on his right flank. He will almost certainly draw criticism from his fellow Republicans for his work on the Senate’s 2013 comprehensive immigration bill. Additionally, Rubio will be competing with a fellow Floridian, Bush, who is determined to siphon up money and support in the Sunshine State.

Should neither Bush nor Walker falter, it’s more difficult to see Rubio’s path to victory. National polling places Rubio well back in the pack, though he may get a boost from his announcement. Rubio may also be criticized about his preparation for the presidency — the obvious comparisons to President Obama as a first-term senator running for the White House — and Bush and Walker are likely to challenge him on that. Luckily for Rubio, freshman senators Cruz and Paul have the same problem. Lastly, Rubio’s decision to run for president means that he’s giving up his Senate seat, which he would have been at least a slight favorite to retain. Many national and Florida Republicans might well prefer that he have just run for reelection.

Rubio is relatively unknown compared to some of the other big names in the race: HuffPost Pollster’s average shows that only about 60% of the country has a favorable or unfavorable opinion of him, with an even split on the question. Walker is in the same camp, with just 53% having a view, also evenly split. To some extent, this is good news for Rubio. He will have a lot of room to grow as potential voters get to know him, giving him a leg up over Jeb Bush and another GOP hopeful, Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ).

As of this writing, Rubio’s average in national GOP primary polling is basically tied with Christie’s. But whereas just six in 10 Americans have an opinion on Rubio, three-fourths have a favorable or unfavorable view of Christie, and the latter’s numbers have been sinking — his net national favorability is now at -19. More importantly for the GOP primary process, Christie is simply not well liked by many Republicans. A recent Monmouth University poll found Christie with a -9 net favorability among GOP voters. Despite his problems with the base, Bush was at least at +18 in the same poll — and Rubio is even better, at +23. Christie is in a lot of trouble, to the benefit of Rubio in the race for some establishment backing.

Florida Senate seat now a Toss-up

Rubio’s presidential ambitions leave an open U.S. Senate seat to be contested in 2016. We had previously listed the GOP as slight favorites in case Rubio opted to seek reelection, but now it’s time to make a change. With Rubio’s announcement, we are moving the 2016 Florida Senate contest from Leans Republican to Toss-up.

Table 1: Crystal Ball Senate ratings change

Now the question is, who will run on the Republican side? The GOP has a deep bench in Florida, controlling a large majority of the U.S. House delegation, all but one statewide office (the other Senate seat, held by Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson), and the state legislature. Before Rubio’s announcement, there was a major shake-up in the still-forming Republican field when Florida Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater (R) stunned everyone by deciding against a Senate bid; he may well run for governor in 2018. Atwater may have been able to clear the field, but now the GOP nomination race appears wide open.

With Atwater’s decision, Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera (R) is more likely to enter the contest. Lopez-Cantera will be fighting against history, however, as the lieutenant governorship has not been a gateway to future electoral success in Florida. Among the GOP House delegation, Rep. Ron DeSantis (R) is viewed as most likely to throw his hat in the ring — he has been compared to new Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) as an Ivy League veteran who has earned backing from conservative groups like the Club for Growth. Reps. Tom Rooney (R) and Vern Buchanan (R) have also garnered mention, as has ex-state Speaker of the House Will Weatherford (R).

A former occupant of this seat, ex-Sen. George LeMieux (R), has also acknowledged some interest in a Senate run. LeMieux was appointed by then-Gov. Charlie Crist (R) to serve out the remainder of former Sen. Mel Martinez’s (R) term after Martinez resigned in 2009, with the expectation that Crist would run for the seat himself in 2010. As it turned out, Rubio challenged Crist on his right flank and wound up pushing him out of the GOP primary. Crist decided to run as an independent, but finished a distant second to Rubio in the 2010 general election; Crist later became a Democrat and narrowly lost to Gov. Rick Scott (R) in the 2014 gubernatorial contest. Given LeMieux’s failed Senate effort in 2012 — he dropped out prior to the GOP primary — it’s difficult to imagine him winning if he were to run this time.

While we are obviously focused on 2016, the maneuvering for Rubio’s seat on the Republican side has serious consequences for the GOP fields in the 2018 gubernatorial and Senate contests in Florida (Nelson will face reelection in 2018). Besides Atwater, other big Republican names have either already passed on the 2016 Senate race or are expected to: State Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) has declined to run and state Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam (R) probably will too, though it’s possible they may reconsider in light of Atwater’s decision. But if they don’t, the 2018 cycle could offer some real primary election drama in Florida, especially if Rubio fails to win the Republican presidential nomination. Rubio could target the governorship as a means to gain executive experience to boost a future presidential run — after all, he’ll only be 45 years old in November 2016. Meanwhile, Scott is rumored to be eyeing Nelson’s Senate seat, and some combination of Atwater, Bondi, and Putnam may run for one office or the other.

On the Democratic side, Rep. Patrick Murphy (D) entered the 2016 Senate race prior to Rubio’s presidential announcement and remains the only noteworthy candidate. The centrist Murphy has attracted a great deal of establishment support, especially with the possibility of a run by the more liberal (and contentious) Rep. Alan Grayson (D). Should Grayson run, the Democratic primary could get ugly and expensive — and if Grayson is the nominee, the Republican nominee is likely to be the favorite in the general election. Murphy, a former Republican, is the kind of moderate Democrat who historically has had success in Florida.

Florida is one of the three or four most important swing states in American politics, and it should be little surprise that an open-seat, presidential-year Senate contest could wind up being extremely competitive. At this point, polls won’t tell us much, though Quinnipiac just took a very early look at four potential matchups involving Murphy or Grayson and Atwater or Lopez-Cantera (though Atwater is out now). What we do know is that a mountain of money and resources will be thrown into this state by both parties — both the presidency and control of the Senate could depend on it.

For the first decade after Sept. 11, national elections showed a steady rise in voter turnout. The number of ballots cast in presidential elections jumped from 105 million in 2000 to a record 131 million in 2008, an increase of 25% in just eight years. Similarly, the midterm congressional turnout swelled from 66 million in 1998 to an all-time high of 86.5 million in 2010, a 31% increase over a dozen years.

The number of ballots cast from election to election should be increasing at least a bit as the size of the voting-eligible population constantly grows. But in the last two national elections, 2012 and 2014, the upward turnout trend has been broken.

The total votes cast in the 2012 presidential election were down by more than 2 million from four years earlier, while the midterm vote last fall for the House of Representatives (the only office contested in all 50 states in a midterm election) dropped by more than 8.5 million votes from 2010. It marked the first time since 1996-98 that the turnout declined in back-to-back national elections.

What has happened? Surveys point to an increasingly busy and mobile society, where voting is not a high priority for many people. Changes in registration and voting procedures in the states have been a mixed bag — easing the process of casting a ballot in some states, tightening it in others. But there has also apparently been a change in the way Americans view their electoral choices.

One of the few “positive” outcomes of 9/11 was that it awoke voters to the high-stakes nature of their vote. No longer could the choice between the Democrats and Republicans be described as “Tweedledee” and “Tweedledum,” as it was during the more mellow years of the late 20th century.

After 9/11, and the Iraq War that followed, it was clear that it did make a big difference whether a Democrat or Republican won the White House, or for that manner, which party controlled Congress.

In the election of 2004, a highly charged referendum on the presidency of George W. Bush, nearly 17 million more votes were cast than in 2000. It marked the largest raw turnout increase from one election to another in the nation’s history. In 2008, turnout grew by another 9 million votes, as the historic candidacy of Barack Obama headlined another high-voltage election.

But in recent years, it seems as though voters have become more attuned to what they do not like in American politics than what they do. Stark differences between the parties remain, but voters appear to be tiring of the shrill partisanship, “my way or the highway” rhetoric, and the frequent examples of government dysfunction that follow.

Neither party is held in high regard these days, a fact that was evident in the 2014 congressional voting. Although the Republicans won their highest number of House seats since the 1920s, both the GOP and the Democrats lost millions of votes from 2010. Actually, in spite of their success, the Republicans shed more votes than the Democrats. The aggregate nationwide House vote for the latter was down 3.4 million from 2010, while the Republican tally fell by nearly 4.8 million.

Chart 1 and Table 1: The rise, and recent fall, in presidential and congressional midterm voting

Notes: Midterm election turnouts are based on the aggregate nationwide vote for the House of Representatives. The vote using the “highest” race in each state, usually for governor or senator, would produce a larger total. But in midterm elections only House seats are contested in every state. Election cycles with decreased turnout compared to previous presidential or midterm cycles are highlighted in bold.

Sources: America Votes 30 (CQ Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications) for past presidential election turnouts. CQ Weekly Reports for House midterm election turnouts through 1992; editions of America Votes for House turnouts from 1994 through 2010; Rhodes Cook Letter (February 2015) for the 2014 House turnout. All turnouts are based on official results from state election sources. Votes are included for all candidates that are listed on the ballot as well as write-in votes (where they are tallied). Ballots that are left blank are not included.

It is not just recent November balloting at the presidential and congressional levels where voters have been drifting away. The Republican presidential primary turnout dropped from nearly 21 million in 2008 to less than 19 million in 2012, even though in both years there were competitive nominating contests.

The Democratic primary turnout featured an even sharper decline, from nearly 37 million voters in 2008 to just nine million in 2012. The Democratic turnout collapse, however, was understandable: The party’s 2008 primary campaign featured a riveting 50-state struggle between Obama and Hillary Clinton, while Obama ran essentially unopposed for re-nomination in 2012.

The 2014 primary turnout was also much lower than in the previous midterm election. The aggregate Democratic and Republican primary tally last year was down by more than 5 million votes from 2010 (using the primary vote from the race which drew the highest number of votes, usually governor or senator, in states where a turnout comparison could be made between the two election years).

And then there is this year’s ongoing mayoral race in Chicago, which began with a first-round vote in late February. Four years ago, former congressman and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel easily won the right to succeed outgoing Mayor Richard M. Daley, by taking 55% of the vote in the first round. Nearly 600,000 votes were cast then, with more than 325,000 going to Emanuel.

In spite of the heated nature of this year’s race, which was much closer, Chicago voters were not similarly inspired to participate. Turnout for the February mayoral election was just short of 480,000, with less than 220,000 votes cast for Emanuel. Because he did not reach the required 50% mark, Emanuel has been forced into an April 7 runoff with his principal opponent, Cook County Commissioner Jesús “Chuy” Garcia.

What might be done these days to keep voters from drifting away permanently? Laws to ease registration and voting would probably have an effect. So would increased competition, from a wider array of battleground states in presidential voting to fewer safe districts in the House.

And of course, voters might appreciate an electoral process with more comity and a governing process that is more productive. How well the parties and their candidates can perform these two objectives in the next year or so will go a long way in determining whether the recent downward line in voter turnout is a brief hiccup or a new trend.

Table 2 and Map 1: Change in gubernatorial election turnouts, 2010-14

Notes: An asterisk (*) denotes an incumbent at the time of the 2014 election. Turnout is based on the total vote cast for gubernatorial candidates that were either listed on the ballot or were write-ins. Ballots left blank for governor were not included in the turnout tally.

Sources: The 2010 gubernatorial election turnouts are from America Votes 29 (CQ Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications). The 2014 gubernatorial turnouts are based on official results posted on state election web sites.

Table 3: 2014 congressional turnout by district: where people voted — or didn’t

Notes: An asterisk (*) denotes an incumbent at the time of the 2014 election. A pound sign (#) indicates that the winner had no major-party opposition. Turnout is based on the total vote cast for House candidates that were listed either on the ballot or were write-ins. Ballots left blank for the House were not included in the turnout tally.

Sources: Voter turnout numbers are based on official 2014 results posted on state election web sites and compiled by the author. The 2012 presidential victory margins by congressional district are from The Almanac of American Politics 2014 (National Journal).

The Surge, the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ postmortem of the 2014 midterms and preview of the 2016 presidential election, is now available.

Edited by Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato and Sabato’s Crystal Ball editors Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley and published by Rowman and Littlefield, The Surge: 2014’s Big GOP Win and What It Means for the Next Presidential Election brings together some of the nation’s top political journalists and analysts to explain why and how the Republicans took the Senate and where American politics stands as the country’s polarized political parties gear up for 2016.

The Surge can be purchased via Rowman and Littlefield, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other major booksellers.

The contributors and their chapters are:

• Larry J. Sabato provides an overview of the 2014 election, including a look at historical election patterns and demographic voting trends.
• Long-time political expert and Crystal Ball Senior Columnist Rhodes Cook explores the 2014 primary season and how those nominating contests influenced the November results.
• Politico’s James Hohmann and the Crystal Ball’s Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley provide in-depth analysis of, respectively, the Senate, House, and gubernatorial races.
• Former Federal Election Commission chairman Michael Toner and former FEC staffer Karen Trainer examine the ever-growing pot of money involved in American elections and where it came from.
• Huffington Post’s Mark Blumenthal and Ariel Edwards-Levy follow with a look at the state of polling and how pollsters fared in 2014.
• Veteran journalist Jill Lawrence reminds us that despite all the talk about 2016, President Barack Obama has two more years in office and goals he still wants to achieve.
• The state of the parties as they turn their eyes to 2016: Slate’s Jamelle Bouie examines the Democrats and the Washington Post’s Robert Costa explores the Republicans.
• FrontloadingHQ’s Josh Putnam reviews the likely shape of the presidential nominating process.
• RealClearPolitics’ Sean Trende, also a Crystal Ball Senior Columnist, gives an early sense of how the Electoral College may align.
• Crystal Ball Senior Columnist Alan Abramowitz sketches the fundamentals of the race for the White House.

The Koch brothers and their network of wealthy conservative donors recently announced that they intend to spend almost $900 million on the 2016 elections. This level of spending by a group operating independently of any candidate or political party would be unprecedented in American politics. In fact, it would exceed the combined spending by the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee during the 2012 election cycle. Understandably, this announcement reinforced concerns among Democrats and liberals that spending by the Koch brothers and other conservative groups could give Republican candidates a crucial advantage in key House and Senate contests and in the race for the White House.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision opened the door to spending by Super PACs funded by unlimited contributions from corporations, unions, and wealthy individuals, there has been a dramatic surge in spending by outside groups on federal elections. In 2012, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, groups not affiliated with any candidate or party spent over $1 billion on the presidential and congressional elections, more than three times the amount that such groups spent in the previous presidential election year. In 2014, outside groups spent over $565 million, almost twice the amount that such groups spent in the previous midterm election year.

Spending by outside groups strongly favored Republican candidates in 2012. According to the data from the Center for Responsive Politics, conservative groups spent over $700 million on the 2012 presidential and congressional elections while liberal groups spent less than $300 million. Despite this huge advantage in outside spending, however, candidates favored by conservative groups generally fared poorly in 2012. In the presidential race, conservative groups supporting Mitt Romney outspent liberal groups supporting Barack Obama by $418 million to $131 million but Obama still defeated Romney. In the battle for control of the Senate, the balance of outside spending favored Republicans over Democrats by a narrower margin of about $150 million to $115 million. Nevertheless, Democrats won almost every competitive race and actually added two seats to their Senate majority.

The impact of outside spending in 2014

While there is little evidence that conservative outside groups were successful in influencing the results of either the presidential election or key Senate contests in 2012, some observers believe that their efforts may have had a greater impact on the 2014 midterm elections, especially in the crucial battle for control of the Senate. Conservative groups spent more than $250 million in support of Republican Senate candidates in 2014, including almost $35 million in North Carolina, more than $33 million in Colorado, and more than $31 million in Iowa. Republican candidates won all three of those races and almost every other key Senate contest, scoring a net gain of nine seats in the upper chamber.

There is no question that 2014 was a very good year for Republicans, especially in the U.S. Senate elections. The question remains, however, to what extent did outside spending by conservative groups contribute to GOP gains in the 2014 Senate elections? On that score, there are good reasons to be skeptical. For one thing, liberal groups did a decent job of matching conservative groups in 2014 when it came to outside spending. Table 1 displays total spending by outside groups on the 10 Senate races with the largest amount of total outside spending.* These 10 races accounted for over 90% of spending by outside groups on the 2014 Senate elections. Altogether, liberal groups spent about $215 million to support Democratic candidates in these 10 states while conservative groups spent about $224 million to support Republican candidates. In four of these races, including North Carolina and Colorado, outside spending by liberal groups was actually greater than outside spending by conservative groups. And even where one side had an advantage in spending, as in Georgia or Michigan, it appears that both sides had more than enough money to get their messages across to the voters, especially when party spending and candidate spending are considered along with outside spending.

A glance at the data in Table 1 reveals another important feature of spending by outside groups: liberal and conservative groups tend to spend money on the same races. For all 34 two-party contested 2014 Senate elections (Alabama and Kansas’ races didn’t have candidates from both major parties), the correlation between spending by liberal groups and spending by conservative groups was an extraordinarily strong .94. Moreover, liberal and conservative groups also tend to spend money on the same races that the national parties are spending money on. For the same 34 Senate contests, the correlations between spending by liberal groups and spending by the Democratic and Republican Senate campaign committees were .96 and .92 respectively. The correlations between spending by conservative groups and spending by the Democratic and Republican Senate campaign committees were .93 and .91 respectively.

These spending data indicate that liberal and conservative outside groups along with the national parties were all pouring money into the same relatively small set of races that were considered competitive, and there was almost perfect agreement about which races those were. Moreover, even though they are not legally allowed to “coordinate” with each other, the outside groups and parties track each other’s spending closely: If they see other groups or parties spending money on a race, they spend money; if they don’t, they don’t. This can be seen from the fact that neither outside groups nor the parties spent a significant amount of money on the Virginia Senate race — a race that shocked everyone by turning out to be extremely close.

The fact that vast sums of money were being spent by liberal and conservative groups along with the national parties on the same small set of Senate races probably limited the impact of such spending. Not only was one side’s spending generally matched by the other side’s spending, but the sheer volume of spending probably exceeded the point of diminishing returns in many of these states. For example, after each side had spent $30 million on attack ads in a small state like Iowa, it’s hard to believe that an additional $1 million in spending on attack ads by either side was going to have much impact on the Hawkeye State electorate — except perhaps causing more Iowans to turn off their televisions.

Along with relatively balanced spending by both sides and diminishing returns on spending, there is another important reason to be skeptical about the influence of outside spending on the results of these Senate contests — the powerful influence of partisanship. In the current era of electoral competition, partisanship exerts a very strong influence on the outcomes of elections from the presidency down to the state and local level and Senate elections are no exception. In 2014, the correlation between the Democratic Senate candidate’s vote margin and Barack Obama’s vote margin in 2012 was an astonishing .89. With Maine excluded — Sen. Susan Collins (R) faced minimal opposition in her race and ran far ahead of Mitt Romney — the correlation goes up to .95.

In order to measure the effects of outside spending and party spending on the outcomes of 2014 Senate races, I conducted a regression analysis with the Democratic Senate margin as the dependent variable and four independent variables: the difference between pro-Democratic and pro-Republican outside spending in millions of dollars, the difference between Democratic and Republican Party spending in millions of dollars, incumbency (coded as +1 for Democratic incumbents, 0 for open seats, and -1 for Republican incumbents), and the 2012 Democratic presidential margin. The results of this analysis are displayed in Table 2 for the 34 Senate contests with Democratic and Republican candidates.

Table 2: Results of regression analysis of 2014 Senate election results

Sources: Center for Responsive Politics and data compiled by author

This regression equation does an excellent job of explaining the results of the 34 contested Senate races, explaining 86% of the variance in the Democratic Senate margin. Among our four independent variables, presidential partisanship was by far the strongest predictor of the election results. The estimated unstandardized regression coefficient for the presidential partisanship variable means that for every one percentage point increase in Barack Obama’s 2012 margin in a state, the Democratic Senate candidate in 2014 could expect to receive an increase of about .8 percentage points in his or her margin.

Incumbency also had a significant impact on the outcomes of Senate races. According to these results, on average, a Democratic or Republican incumbent could expect to receive a nine-point boost in margin compared with a Democratic or Republican candidate in an open-seat race. The estimated constant, or intercept, in the regression equation indicates that there was a significant Republican tide in 2014 — a Democratic candidate for an open seat in a state in which Barack Obama and Mitt Romney received equal shares of the vote in 2012 would be predicted to lose by a margin of more than six percentage points in 2014. However, these results indicate that neither outside spending nor party spending had a significant impact on the results of these Senate races. The estimated coefficients for the spending difference variables are both negligible in size and actually in the wrong direction. Our results indicate that after controlling for state presidential partisanship and incumbency, relative spending by outside groups and political parties had no discernible impact on the Democratic candidate’s margin in these contests.

Conclusions and implications for 2016

Republicans made major gains in the 2014 Senate elections but the findings reported here indicate that outside spending by conservative groups had little or nothing to do with those gains. The main reason why Republicans did very well in 2014 was that Democrats were defending far more seats than Republicans and many of those seats were in states that normally favor Republicans based on recent presidential voting patterns. Democrats lost all seven of their seats in states carried by Mitt Romney in 2012 even though Democratic candidates enjoyed an advantage in outside spending in several of those races.

The factors that limited the impact of outside spending in 2014 are very likely to be present in the 2016 elections as well. In the large majority of states, the winners of the presidential and Senate elections will be determined by the relative strength of the parties in the state. In the last four presidential elections, 40 of the 50 states have supported the same party in each contest, and there is little reason to expect anything different in 2016. In the 2016 Senate elections, Democrats are likely to gain at least a few seats simply because Republicans will be defending a large number of seats in blue states that they picked up in the 2010 midterm election. Notwithstanding the plans of the Koch network to spend almost $900 million on the 2016 elections, neither party is likely to enjoy a substantial advantage in spending in the relatively small number of competitive states that will decide the presidential election or control of the Senate.

The fact that outside spending is unlikely to have a major impact on the results of the 2016 elections does not, of course, mean that Americans should not be concerned about the vast sums of money pouring into American elections since the Citizens United decision. What we are seeing today is essentially an arms race between the two major parties with Democrats struggling to keep up with spending by the Koch brothers and other conservative billionaires. Even if Democrats and their liberal allies are able to remain financially competitive, it’s reasonable to question whether having both of our major parties increasingly dependent on financial largesse from the super-rich is a healthy development for American democracy.

*The Kansas Senate election is not included in this analysis because there was no Democratic candidate. Conservative groups spent more than $10 million to support Republican incumbent Pat Roberts while liberal groups spent almost $7 million to support independent Greg Orman.

Think of the billions the parties must raise to elect a president in 2016. Consider the millions of paid and volunteer man-hours that will be devoted to this enterprise. The White House is the center of the partisan political universe, and Democrats and Republicans alike measure success or failure by their ability to win and hold the presidency.

Instead, maybe they ought to hope they lose. The surest price the winning party will pay is defeat of hundreds of their most promising candidates and officeholders for Senate, House, governorships, and state legislative posts. Every eight-year presidency has emptied the benches for the triumphant party, and recently it has gotten even worse. (By the way, the two recent one-term presidents, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, also cost their parties many lower-level offices, but in both cases this didn’t happen until they were defeated for reelection.)

Since World War II there have been eight two-term presidencies: Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, plus the reasonable succession combos of Franklin Roosevelt-Harry Truman, John Kennedy-Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon-Gerald Ford. Not a one has left his party in better shape that he found it, at least in terms of lower elected offices.

Naturally, there are differences. As in all other categories, some presidents were more damaging than others. And while his record is not yet complete, since the 2016 cycle still awaits, Barack Obama is well on his way to becoming the most harmful to his sub-presidential party of all modern chief executives.

From Truman to Obama, it’s a sorry record. Take a glance down this chart, compiled by my colleague Geoffrey Skelley, which catalogues the injury done to each president’s party during his (or their) eight years at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:

Notes: Senate data do not include independents or members of third parties caucusing with president’s party. Having become states in 1959, Alaska and Hawaii’s data are not included prior to John Kennedy. Until Minnesota changed its law in 1973, Minnesota and Nebraska had technically nonpartisan legislatures (Nebraska still has one today). Therefore, Minnesota’s state legislative data are not included prior to Ronald Reagan, and Nebraska’s data are excluded throughout.

Sources: U.S. Senate; U.S. House; CQ Press Guide to U.S. Elections, vol. ii, sixth ed.; NCSL; The Book of States, vols. 9-34; Polidata; Party Affiliation in the State Legislatures; Crystal Ball research

Some presidents did fairly well by their parties, relatively speaking. Truman’s nearly eight years in office came at the end of an extraordinarily long period of Democratic control (1932-1952), yet his losses — while serious — were modest compared to many of his successors.

Eisenhower left the GOP in much worse shape when he left office in 1961, with a net loss of 14 governors, 12 senators, 48 House members, and a whopping 843 state legislators. Republicans wouldn’t recover much of this ground until Reagan.

Kennedy’s Democrats were in solid shape in all categories during his brief tenure, but despite a landslide with lengthy coattails for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Democrats had suffered major erosion in federal and state positions by 1968, notably losing 15 net governorships and 437 state legislative seats.

The Nixon-Ford years, capped by the Watergate scandal and Ford’s pardon of Nixon, left an overall record that mimicked Eisenhower’s in some ways, though the GOP was left at an even lower ebb once Ford exited the White House in 1977. The shell-shocked Republicans were at rock bottom in the number of governorships, House seats, state legislative seats, and state legislative chambers.

Of all modern presidents, Reagan could boast the best record. In fact, he is the only president to achieve a gain in any category — a slight net addition of six Republican state legislators from 1980 to 1988. (There are almost 7,400 state legislators, so this is a very modest advance, but a unique one all the same.) Still, Reagan left the GOP in a substantially weaker minority status in both the U.S. Senate and House.

Democrats were delirious when Bill Clinton restored them to power in 1992, a euphoria that lasted until his unpopularity pushed both houses of Congress to Republican control two years later. Despite a marginal improvement in Democratic fortunes during the rest of Clinton’s administration, the party registered a net loss of 11 governorships, seven Senate seats, 45 House seats, 524 state legislative berths, and 18 state legislative chambers.

George W. Bush’s long-term losses were more modest. Nonetheless, with Bush’s sharp drop in job approval because of his handling of the Iraq War and Katrina (plus GOP congressional scandals), Democrats regained full control of Congress in 2006, and in 2008 secured outright majorities in 60 of the states’ 98 legislative chambers (excluding Nebraska’s nonpartisan unicameral body).

However, it is Barack Obama who holds the modern record for overall losses, at least through 2014. President Obama has presided over two devastating midterms for his party. From 2008 to the present, Democrats in the Obama era have racked up net forfeitures of 11 governorships, 13 Senate seats, 69 House seats, 913 state legislative seats, and 30 state legislative chambers. In the latter three categories, Obama has doubled (or more) the average two-term presidential loss from Truman through Bush.

It may well be that Obama can moderate these totals in 2016 by helping Democrats in a larger-turnout White House year. Still, Democrats would have to fare exceptionally well in the next round of sub-presidential races for Obama to escape the cellar.

The historical record is clear: A party surges when it elects a president, but goes into a roller-coaster decline shortly thereafter. Even if a party makes up significant ground in the president’s reelection campaign, by the end of the eight-year cycle, it is in worse shape, sometimes (as with Obama) much worse.

One wonders whether a party’s top elected officials would be quite so gung-ho about winning the White House if they focused on who is going to pay the piper.

Democrats and Republicans will give little attention to these grim numbers, of course, and as usual they will gear up and do whatever is necessary to take the big prize in 2016. Yet it should be a consolation to the eventual losers that at every other level of public office, they’ll almost certainly be better off in the not-too-distant future.

As for the eventual ’16 White House winners, well, for their own mental health, they’d better revise the old Bill Clinton campaign song (courtesy of Fleetwood Mac), and stop thinking about tomorrow. Because tomorrow will almost inevitably take a big bite out of their elective empire.