Republicans will now be able to use their position of power to wage a guerrilla war against Obama in the remaining two years of his presidential term – the next 24 months are likely to be marked by rancorous partisan bickering and little in the way of new legislation. However, despite these glimmers of Democratic hope, there was no denying the stark outcome, which included ten new Republican governors. Not only did Senator Barbara Boxer defeat her Republican challenger, Carly Fiorina, but Jerry Brown beat Meg Whitman to wrest the California governorship back into Democratic hands after eight years of 'the Governator', Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Democrats best results came in the Senate races, winning in Colorado, West Virginia and Nevada, where the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, pulled off a surprise victory against the Tea Party darling Sharron Angle in one of the most bitterly fought contests of the campaign.Ĭalifornia seemed to act as a bulwark holding back the Republican tide. 'We must all strive to find common ground to support the middle class, create jobs, reduce the deficit and move our nation forward,' she said.

Pelosi called for party cooperation to avoid gridlock. They want the president to change course. The swap of a liberal San Franciscan woman for a conservative Ohio man is a symbol of the deep shift in US politics heralded by the midterm results.īoehner said: 'It's pretty clear the Obama-Pelosi agenda has been rejected. The loss of the House is the first major setback Obama has faced in his relatively untroubled political rise from a community worker in Chicago to the presidency, and means that Nancy Pelosi – its first female Speaker – will give way to the Republican John Boehner. The political momentum has swung to the rightwing Tea Party movement, which energised the Republican base and notched up a string of high-profile victories. Instead, Obama faces a hard political lesson after a hammering that wiped away the last vestiges of the euphoria that swept him to the White House. It was a remarkable comeback from two years ago, when many experts expected the party to endure a long time in the political wilderness in the wake of Obama's emphatic 2008 presidential election victory. They also gained at least six Senate seats, falling short of the 10 they needed to gain control of the upper house. With some seats still to be counted, the Republicans picked up at least 60 House seats, eclipsing their 54 gains in 1994 and the party's best result since 1938. The president’s party has lost seats in four elections, gained in four, and the average is a loss of four-tenths of one seat, basically a wash.In midterm election races across America, Republicans pummelled their opponents, capturing the House of Representatives and a fistful of Senate seats. In the Senate, which has six-year terms, the pattern is less clear. Bush, after the Septemtragedy altered the trajectory of the otherwise predictable pattern. In fact, it has happened in seven of the eight midterm elections during the first terms of a president in the post-World War II era, resulting in an average loss of 16 seats. It is perfectly normal for the party of a newly elected president to lose House seats in his first midterm election. Another way of putting it is that midterm elections are binary, everything is either a “1” or a “0”-one side goes down, so the other side goes up. One party has all the responsibility and takes the credit or blame (usually the latter) for whatever occurs.

When the same party occupies both the White House and control of Congress, things are pretty straightforward. Midterm elections are almost inevitably a referendum on the party in power.

2010 midterm elections