Two predictors largely explain the variation in seat swing in midterm elections: the generic ballot and the number of House and Senate seats defended by the president’s party. Table 1: Change in seats for president’s party in midterm elections, 1946-2018 House results have ranged from a loss of 64 seats to a gain of eight seats while Senate results have ranged from a loss of 13 seats to a gain of four seats. Beyond this general tendency, however, the magnitude of these losses has varied considerably. The average seat loss has been almost 27 seats in the House and between three and four seats in the Senate. Table 1 shows that the president’s party has lost House seats in 17 of 19 midterm elections since World War II and Senate seats in 13 of 19. The tendency of the president’s party to lose seats in Congress in midterm elections is one of the best-known regularities in American politics. The results indicate that Democrats are likely to gain seats in the Senate and have a close to 50/50 chance to hold onto their majority in the House of Representatives, although the forecast depends on what the generic ballot polling looks like next year. I use the estimates from these models to make conditional forecasts of the results of the 2022 House and Senate elections. The generic ballot model uses two predictors - the generic ballot along with the number of seats defended by the president’s party - to generate forecasts of seat swing in midterm elections. In this article, I use generic ballot polls to construct a model for forecasting seat change in midterm elections. A recent article by Seth Moskowitz in the Crystal Ball showed that polls on the generic ballot question, while not perfect, generally give a good indication of the national popular vote in recent U.S. The generic ballot - a question in which survey respondents are asked which party they prefer for Congress without providing names of individual candidates - has proven to be a useful tool for explaining the national outcomes of House and Senate elections.
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