The 2002 Midterm Election: A Typical or an Atypical Midterm?

Abstract

I t had been an inevitability rivaling death and taxes. The president’s party would lose seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in almost every midterm election. The president’s party had lost House seats in 32 of the 33 midterms from 1866 to 1994. The sole exception was a gain of nine seats for Democrats in the 1934 midterm election during FDR’s first term and in the throes of the New Deal realignment. Then came the 1998 and the 2002 midterms. With a strong economy and the pending impeachment vote against President Clinton, Democrats gained four seats in 1998. This past November, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorism and with a president with strong approval ratings, Republicans also broke from the traditional pattern of in-party midterm losses and gained five seats in the House and two in the Senate, regaining their control of the Senate that they had lost when Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords renounced his Republican affiliation in 2001. The results of the 2002 midterm raise a number of questions. To what extent was the midterm (and the 1998 midterm) an aberration? Why were Republicans as the in-party able to gain seats? What explains 2002 and what might the 2002 (and the 1998) results indicate about various theories of inter-election seat change?