Ahead of tomorrow's midterm elections, many are predicting upsets in key races. But generally speaking, according to UAlbany historian Carl Bon Tempo, the overall results in midterm elections aren't terribly surprising. WAMC's Sam Dingman spoke with Professor Bon Tempo about the small handful of midterm election surprises in U.S. history, and what those examples say about this election:
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Editor's note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Carl Bon Tempo: So honestly, if you go back and you look at almost 100 years of data of midterms, what you see is there's only a bare, kind of, half-handful of occasions when the party that's in power actually wins seats in the midterms. So, the first one happens way back in 1934. The Democrats are in power in the White House and in Congress, and they do really well in the congressional midterms. But that was explained by the fact that the country was in the midst of its worst ever economic crisis, the Great Depression, and essentially voters were telling Roosevelt and the Democrats to push farther, to be more aggressive with their New Deal liberal reforms.
Sam Dingman: That is very interesting, though I have to say, Professor, because right now there's a pretty serious economic anxiety happening. You know, some would probably call it an economic crisis, but it's cutting the other way, right? It's cutting against the folks in power rather than making voters feel like, you know, “See it through! We believe in what you're doing.”
Carl Bon Tempo: I think that's true. I mean, I do think we may be in a crisis right now. Maybe one might think of the problems of the 1930s as a catastrophe that basically threatened the country's future. And so there is a difference in magnitude here. In the 1930s, many Americans still had faith in the federal government. They still had faith in President Roosevelt. I think that's something that's lacking nowadays. Generally, you see a larger distrust of government in our current situation, and obviously, President Trump's approval ratings are at historic lows.
Sam Dingman: Okay, so that was 1934. What are these other two examples?
Carl Bon Tempo: We can get a little closer to the time that our listeners have lived through. The second example is 1998, which is President Bill Clinton's last midterms in office, and essentially what happens there is the Democrats pick up four seats in the House of Representatives, and they remain neutral. They don't lose any in the Senate, and that's seen as a big victory for Clinton. But it's largely coming on the heels of failed Republican attempts to impeach him over the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and so there's this sort of groundswell of support for Clinton, and so he manages to use that moment. The Democrats manage to use that moment to reverse historic trends in in midterm elections.
Sam Dingman: That's fascinating, and another example, I think, of such a different era in American political and policy history, where the personal failings of the Chief Executive were under a microscope, and it benefited his political standing.
Carl Bon Tempo: Yes, I think in part because most observers, even at the time, felt that the Republicans were overstepping, maybe being too aggressive in pursuing the president, and so this was almost a punishment for the GOP. And you have to keep in mind too, right, that in the mid to late 1990s the economy is in fairly good shape, and so he's got that going for him as well.
Sam Dingman: And then midterm number three that had a surprising result?
Carl Bon Tempo: The last one comes in 2002, and that is when President Bush essentially picks up seats in both the House and the Senate, largely in the wake of the 911 attacks, and a sort of rally-around-the-flag effect that manages to help the Republicans overcome the traditional anchor of midterms that incumbent presidents, and incumbent parties in power face.
Sam Dingman: So, professor, so far we have defined these three midterm cycles as surprising in the sense that they bucked the historical trend of what normally happens. What for you qualifies as a surprise in the modern political era, where we do have so much more robust polling, and so much more robust access to those polls, and so much more of a fertile ecosystem of prognostication and things like that? Is a polling miss a surprise to you, or do you define surprises differently?
Carl Bon Tempo: No, I mean I've learned, probably like the rest of us over the last few years, to take the polling stuff with a large, heaping grain of salt. Some of this is these individual races that it comes down to, right? So when you see states where it's close, even right now, like Texas, Kansas, Iowa, and these are states that have, you know, been pretty solidly in the Republican column. It tells you something about the sort of national political atmosphere and how that national political atmosphere or environment is shaping state races, which are also determined by what's happening in those states, so it's this sort of odd mix. And so each race is different - so it's hard to declare any of them a surprise, but it is surprising when you start to add it all up. I think that's the question for us, as we look at the at the coming week: Is this going to be a sort of real what they call ‘wave election’ or ‘wipeout,’ which is I guess is what happens after the wave hits, or is it going to be a smaller Democratic victory? The national political environment does seem to suggest that Democrats are going to have a very good day tomorrow. There's also going to be moments where, for sure, Republicans are going to hold on to seats that some folks are looking at right now and say, "Oh, I think the Democrats have a chance there."
Sam Dingman: And to your point from earlier, fascinating to think even if there is a blue wave, as some are predicting, what will the long-term impacts on our politics be of that? Because, as you were just describing, the last couple of times that there were these surprising midterm outcomes that had very significant long-tail political effects. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Carl Bon Tempo: Yeah, I mean, I think what's going to happen is the parties are going to digest what occurs on Tuesday and start, again, mapping out a path to 2028, right? Because honestly, this is, in a lot of ways…the 2026 midterms are the opening course of the 2028 presidential campaign, and you will see a variety of politicians in both parties begin, probably starting on Tuesday night, to frame their case over the next two years where they think their party can go and where they think party leadership should take them. So, we are concluding one part of the cycle tomorrow, and at the same time, opening the next part.
Sam Dingman: Professor Carl Bon Tempo, historian at UAlbany. Thank you for this conversation.
Carl Bon Tempo: Happy to be here.
