5 Brutal Midterm Losses for US Presidents

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Sunday, November 04, 2018

Warren G. Harding, president of the United States of America from 1921-1923. | (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

As the midterm elections draw closer, many speculate that Republican President Donald Trump will experience a "Blue Wave" which will give Democrats control of Congress.

At present, polling data does indicate that the Democrats will retake the House of Representatives, however Republicans are expected to keep control of the Senate.

Midterms, especially those in the first term, tend to be bad experiences for the president, regardless of party affiliation. According to ThoughtCo, modern midterm elections average out 30 lost seats for the party that controls the presidency.

However, some midterm losses can be very sizable. Here in chronological order are five midterm elections that devastated the ranks of the president's party.

Spanning the 1870s to the 1930s, these losses were greater than those suffered by Bill Clinton in 1994, George W. Bush in 2006, or even Barack Obama in 2010.