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Shortly after Election Day 2020, Joe Biden’s success as a presidential candidate drew a parallel to FDR: Biden won 51.3% of the popular vote, which was the best showing of any challenger since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s performance in 1932.
In the aftermath of Biden’s first midterms, the Roosevelt standard has returned to the public conversation. The Washington Post noted overnight:
With Sen. Raphael G. Warnock’s win, Democrats have gained one Senate seat and two governor’s seats in the first midterm elections of President Biden’s term. It’s the first time since 1934 that a president’s party has gained in both in a midterm.
Obviously, it’d be an overstatement to characterize the 2022 midterms as a genuine triumph for Biden’s party. After all, Republicans did take back the House majority, which will, among other things, derail the Democrats’ legislative agenda for the next two years.
But even on this front, the news is impressive. Since World War II, Democratic presidents in their first midterms have seen their party lose an average of 40 House seats and five Senate seats. Since Watergate, the results have looked even worse for the party: Democratic presidents in their first midterms have seen their party lose an average of 44 House seats and six Senate seats.
This year, Biden’s party only lost nine House seats, while managing to expand their Senate majority, gaining gubernatorial offices, and even flipping some state legislative chambers.
Indeed, Democrats didn’t lose any state legislative chambers in this year’s midterms, which is a first for the party since — wait for it — Roosevelt in 1934.
What’s more, over the past century, only three presidents — FDR in 1934, John F. Kennedy in 1962 and George W. Bush in 2002 — finished a midterm cycle with fewer than 10 House losses and zero Senate losses. Biden just joined that club.
In the run-up to Election Day last month, talk of a “red wave” was common. It’s against this backdrop that Biden’s party, in quantifiable terms, had the best midterm cycle of any Democratic president in generations.
Postscript: This isn’t directly relevant, but as long as we’re kicking around historical tidbits, zero Senate incumbents lost their re-election bids this year. That’s a first since 1912. “Throw the bums out” is a familiar cliché, but in 2022, voters effectively said, “Keep the bums in.”