Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Can a President Lose While His Party Gains House Seats?

Steve Deace recently claimed (1:32) that in the past 100 years before 2020, only one incumbent president lost reelection while his party gained house seats.  This claim is true, but highly misleading.  Only four incumbent presidents have lost since 1916--Hoover, Carter, HW Bush, and Trump.  (Ford, while technically an incumbent, was never elected.)  In 2 of those 4 elections (1992 and 2020), the president's party gained house seats.  The 1932 and 1980 elections were landslides, so it is not surprising that the president's party lost house seats then.  (In 1976, the Ds gained just 1 house seat, so this doesn't add much to the pattern.)

So the thing that almost never happens actually happened 2 out of 4 times!  Something that happens half the time is not surprising!  This is the sort of factoid that is cited as evidence of election fraud, but doesn't prove anything.  It sounds impressive due to the length of time (100 years!) but there are actually only 4 relevant elections, so the denominator of the fraction is small.

It should also be noted that whether a party gains or loses house seats depends greatly on the previous (midterm) election.  In 2018, Rs lost 42 house seats, so it is not surprising that Rs gained some in 2020.

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