The
Gallup polling folks have an interesting
analysis of what happens to the party of the president when the president is/is not popular. Presidents who are popular when midterm elections occur rarely see major losses for their party in the Congress. Gallup finds:
Since 1946, when presidents are above 50% approval, their party loses an average of 14 seats in the U.S. House in the midterm elections, compared with an average loss of 36 seats when presidents are below that mark.
And then they note:
The clear implication is that the Democrats are vulnerable to losing a significant number of House seats this fall with Barack Obama's approval rating averaging 45% during the last two full weeks of Gallup Daily tracking.
Democrats would need to lose 40 seats for Republicans to gain control of the House. Here is the history:
Bill Clinton in 1994 and George W. Bush in 2006 saw their parties lose enough seats in the House to turn party control over to the opposition party when they had less than majority approval.
