Given all that's happened in American politics since 2019, it may be hard to believe there's been anything missing. But the decade of the 2020s has yet to see a midterm that mattered much — or that ranked among the impact midterms of past decades. That sets the 2020s apart, as every other decade over the past hundred years has produced at least one midterm that made a big difference in Congress and in national politics more broadly.
These big-impact midterms have also shifted power in the statehouses, often signaling changes in state and national political landscapes that have mattered and lasted. Midterms do not attract the same level of voter participation or voter interest as presidential elections. When the White House is not at stake, "low propensity voters" tend to tune out.
Overall vote totals slide by about one-third. But those voters who show up for midterms elect just as many members of Congress and fill just as many state legislative seats as voters in presidential years. Moreover, midterm voters determine about two-thirds of the nation's governorships.
The big midterms have tended to come in presidents' second terms, when their popularity and political energy may be waning. And just because a president is not on the ballot does not mean he's irrelevant. Historically, each president's detractors have seen midterms as an opportunity, while his supporters have often been complacent — or at least less motivated.
All this contributes to the general expectation that the midterms arriving Nov. 3 will be important, and perhaps momentous. Because this is a decade with three presidential cycles (2020, 2024 and 2028), it is also a decade with just two midterms. Some expected at the time that a "big red wave" would sweep then-President Biden's majorities out of Congress.
Democrats held on in the Senate, and the House shifted from barely Democratic to barely Republican. That did bring an end to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's second (and last) turn with the Big Gavel. But the GOP would spend much of the next two years struggling to unite behind a speaker of their own.
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