Why 2026 Might Break the Midterm Curse

By John F. Di Leo, Opinion Contributor

The conventional wisdom says that the party that holds the White House always loses seats in the midterms. Since the GOP has such terribly slim margins, this makes it a virtual guarantee that the Democrats will win both houses of Congress this year, doesn’t it?

Well, no, it doesn’t.

To begin with, it really doesn’t “always” happen that way. There have been several occasions in the past century in which the party in the White House has gained seats in the midterms; who’s to say this won’t follow those examples instead?

For example, just to look at the midterms of the past century, the party holding the White House gained seats in the U.S. House in three midterm elections, either gaining seats in the Senate also or leaving the Senate unchanged.

And there have been five more midterms in the past century in which the party holding the White House lost seats in the U.S. House, but still gained seats in the U.S. Senate at the same time.

So that’s eight midterms in which the party holding the White House gained in at least one chamber of Congress.

Now, there have been fourteen times in the past century in which the White House lost in both houses. So, yes, the odds do favor losses for the party of the White House, by a margin of fourteen to eight, but that’s not a lock, by any means.

Statistically, history favors the Democrats somewhat, on this one point, that’s all.
But there’s a lot more to the question than these baseball stats.

Senate Seats
U.S. Senators have 6-year terms, with their elections staggered so that only one-third of the Senate is up each cycle. Some years, the Democrats have more seats to defend than the Republicans do, and vice versa. Some of those historic midterm swings that the conventional wisdom blames on midterms have really been more a matter of which eats were up that year – which party had more seats to defend at the time.

House Redistricting
The U.S. House is redistricted every decade, following the U.S. Census. This means that for all states except the six that only have one congressman, there are brand new congressional district maps forcing incumbents to campaign in front of new constituents, reducing the power of incumbency. Also, as state populations shift, some of those states pick up additional Congressmen, and some lose members; this causes much greater differences in district boundaries than in years when a state’s total count remains the same. Some of those historic midterm swings – the ones occurring in years ending in a 2 – may have more to do with such new maps than with the midterm curse.

Gerrymandering and Safe Districts
While the federal government is in charge of allocation of the total numbers of congressmen per state, the district mapping process is entirely up to each state. Some state legislatures give a clear and blatant edge to one party or the other, using outrageous gerrymandering, while other states try to be more even-handed. The result is that out of 435 congressional districts across the country, only about two dozen are seriously considered to be in play nationally; over 400 are as safe as you can get. The days of swings of thirty to fifty seats in a single election may be behind us.

Toxic Branding
While the Republican Party’s stable long-term reputation as a stodgy, boring party isn’t great for generating voter enthusiasm, the Democratic Party’s reputation has taken a terrible hit in recent years. The Democratic Party is now rightly associated with many of the nation’s must unpopular policies and trends, from taxpayer-funded abortion on demand to the mutilation of small children through the grotesque process of transgender advocacy, and from literal support of islamofascist terrorists like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian mullahs, to outright antisemitism both at home and abroad. The Democratic Party’s embrace of blatant marxist groups, such as The Squad in Congress and the Democratic Socialists of America across the country, has horrified their former base of working class labor union types and churchgoing people. This growing recognition that the Democrats of today are not the Democrats of yesterday will also have an effect greater than a simple traditional midterm trend.

Vote Fraud and Illegal Immigration
Even though the SAVE America Act has not yet been passed, to mandate common-sense ballot integrity nationwide, there have still been a number of improvements in that direction to cut into the growth of fraud that Democrat partisans have long practiced. Some states or districts have abandoned easily hackable voting software systems. Some states or districts have increased their prosecution of the more outrageous vote fraud centers, like nursing homes and colleges. The open borders that allowed millions of illegal aliens to flood the country, filling the voting rolls with illegal names to be used or poached, have finally been closed, and millions have either been deported or are self-deporting, reducing the numbers of non-citizens poisoning the data pool at election time. None of these changes are nearly enough to solve all the problems, but they all add up to be part of the solution, in terms of improving election integrity.

Campaign Finance Changes
The Republican Party has a significant financial advantage, but not just because of better fundraising techniques or good luck. Many of the Democratic Party’s key funding sources have been exposed to be corrupt, from money laundering to outright theft. Whistleblowers and investigative journalists have proven that ActBlue has been accepting massive illegal donations from unknown sources for years, then breaking them up and falsely attributing countless small donations to utterly unsuspecting individuals. The DOGE process last year that resulted in shining a light on the slush funds of USAID and similar agencies has ended the money train for numerous illegal organizations that were apparently functioning as conveyances to fund Democratic political activities with tax dollars. Democrats are finding that it’s difficult to run their kinds of campaigns in daylight.

Lightning Rod Candidates
Perhaps due to overconfidence fed by the “midterm rule,” the Democratic Party has had the audacity to nominate a number of candidates this year who don’t just jeopardize their own races, but who add up – when seen as a group – to show the voting public that the Democratic Party has lost so much judgment, they simply cannot be entrusted with power anymore:

For Governor of Wisconsin, Democrats nominated the radical marxist county executive of Milwaukee County, David Crowley, who admitted out loud that he is every bit as socialist as Francesca Hong, the DSA candidate he defeated in the primary. So as soon as Wisconsin’s Democrats sighed the sigh of relief that they’d stopped the un-winnable alternative, they learned that the one they chose instead is no closer to the mainstream than she was.

For U.S. Senator, Michigan Democrats nominated Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, a man who not only favors islamofascist terror groups himself, but literally married into a family of such terrorist financiers.

For U.S. Senator, Texas Democrats nominated James Talarico, a countercultural extremist who has made blasphemy a core of his political identity, as he has not only embraced such policies as taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand and transgender advocacy, but he has repeatedly claimed that Jesus would be on the side of the abortionists and the mutilators. He has even identified his favorite drag queen acts for proselytizing the LGBTQ agenda to small children. In Texas!

For U.S. Senator, Maine Democrats thought they had dodged a bullet when they got their elected nominee, Graham Platner to step down almost as soon as he won the nomination. Their relief was short-lived. As soon as they named his replacement on the ballot, the extreme Leftist Maine politician Troy Jackson, this character was discovered to have accumulated numerous ethics charges while holding state legislative offices; all the charges remain pending but appear to have been slow-walked since 2023, which of course raises whole new questions.

A Successful Presidency
The midterm curse is usually caused, at least in part, by either a perceived or real failure of the party in the White House to succeed on policy matters. The second Trump presidency, however, by any objective measure, has been remarkably successful. This administration has brought illegal immigration to a stop, and has even reversed the flow of illegal aliens. The Trump administration has brought most of the terrible Biden-era inflation down significantly, while reducing unemployment and increasing business startups. The Trump administration is succeeding in encouraging re-shoring activities for American manufacturing. Aggressive drug interdiction has been more successful than it had been in years, and a targeted focus on identifying and protecting missing and exploited children has resulted in record-breaking arrests of such international criminals. An aggressive foreign policy that has refused to just keep kicking the can down the road has finally demolished most of Iran’s abilities to further endanger the world.

While all these positives are works in progress, they are further along, with both more visible progress and proven benefits, than any presidential term in memory.

That kind of success will obviously motivate America’s enemies to work against the president’s party, but it should similarly motivate patriotic Americans to rally to the president’s side, at election time.

In Conclusion
None of this is to say that we can make a definitive prediction on how the November elections will go. The psychological instinct of many Americans to just vote against the party in the White House, every midterm, no matter what, is probably a significant motivator for some percentage of the electorate.

But how big that affected electorate is, well, that’s yet to be seen.

A strong case can therefore be made that this election season is still very much in play, and how the parties and candidates will convey these issues to the voters will – as always – be the key to Election Night results.

Copyright 2026 John F. Di Leo