If 2022 Is About Trump’s Grievances Republicans Will Lose
MINOT, N.D. — What are Republicans going to campaign on in 2022?
It’s a midterm election, the first of President Joe Biden’s term, and historically those go pretty well for the opposition party. In the modern political era, the opposition’s candidates pick up an average of 30 seats in the House and Senate combined.
In 2018, the first midterm of Donald Trump’s term in office, Republicans lost 39 seats in Congress overall (41 in the House while gaining two in the Senate).
Why does this happen?
A winning president brings a lot of voters to the polls, and those votes are cast for down-ballot races too, but when the president isn’t on the ticket a lot of those voters don’t show up. But perhaps more important is the reality of governing versus campaigning. By the time the midterm comes around, the new president has governed for a while, and the voters have gotten a taste of just how different that is from how the president campaigned.
There’s always disappointment that lends itself to the success of the opposition.
