The Forum Volume 8 Issue 4 2010 Article 3 MIDTERM ELECTIONS OF 2010 The Midterm Landslide of 2010 A Triple Wave Election James E Campbell University at Buffalo SUNY Recommended Citation Campbell James E 2010 The Midterm Landslide of 2010 A Triple Wave Election The Forum Vol 8 Iss 4 Article 3 Available at http www bepress com forum vol8 iss4 art3 DOI 10 2202 1540 8884 1405 2011 Berkeley Electronic Press All rights reserved The Midterm Landslide of 2010 A Triple Wave Election James E Campbell Abstract Democrats were trounced in the 2010 midterm elections They lost six seats in the U S Senate six governorships and about 700 seats in state legislatures Compared to 2008 Democrats lost 64 seats in the House and Republicans regained their House majority The Republican majority elected in 2010 was the largest number of Republicans elected since 1946 The analysis finds that Republican seat gains resulted from the receding of the pro Democratic waves of 2006 and 2008 as well as the incoming pro Republican wave of 2010 Voters rejected Democrats in 2010 for their failure to revive the economy but also for their advancement of the national healthcare reform and other liberal policies The analysis speculates that Democrats are likely to gain House seats and lose Senate seats in 2012 Finally President Obama s prospects of reelection have probably been improved because of the Republican gains in the 2010 midterm KEYWORDS midterm elections congress voting elections presidency presidential approval political parties economy polarization retrospective voting Author Notes James E Campbell is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University at Buffalo SUNY He is the author of The American Campaign U S Presidential Campaigns and the National Vote He has also published more than sixty five articles and book chapters on various aspects of American politics His most recent research has appeared in the Journal of Politics Public Opinion Quarterly Presidential Studies Quarterly and PS Political Science and Politics Campbell The Midterm Landslide of 2010 1 The 2010 midterm elections were a victory of landslide proportions for the Republican Party It was an overwhelming devastating and crushing defeat for the Democrats They were trounced Democrats sustained a net loss of 64 seats in the House of Representatives A total of 52 Democratic House incumbents were defeated As a result Democrats lost the control of the House that they had won in 2006 The new Republican majority of 242 members is the largest Republican majority in 64 years The 2010 midterm was truly a national defeat for Democrats though it could hardly have been otherwise given the magnitude of their losses After the 2008 election Democrats held at least one House seat in 45 states The election cost Democrats at least one seat in 33 of the 45 states in which they had held a seat There were only twelve states in which they could have lost a seat but did not Though national in scope Republican gains were not uniform They fared best in middle Atlantic border and Midwestern states They gained five seats in each of three states New York Ohio and Pennsylvania They gained four in Illinois as well as in Florida They also picked up three seats in Tennessee and in Virginia The one bright spot on the political map for Democrats was on the west coast Democrats managed to hold all 34 of the seats they were defending in California The landslide was not limited to House races Democrats suffered significant losses in Senate gubernatorial and state legislative races as well Though falling short of the nearly impossible task of retaking the Senate given the net gain of ten seats that was required Republicans gained six Senate seats and greatly reduced the ability of the Democratic majority to invoke cloture on filibusters It was also a good year for Republicans in state elections They made a net gain of six governorships In state legislative races they picked up about 700 additional state legislative seats According to Karen Hansen 2010 of the National Conference of State Legislators this was the most Republican state legislators elected in any election since 1928 As a result they added control of twenty state legislative chambers to their column bringing the total number of Republican controlled state legislative chambers to 56 out of 99 According to Hansen Republicans have not controlled this many state legislative chambers since 1952 In this article I offer an explanation of why the Republican victory was so large or perhaps more accurately why the Democratic losses were as large as they were While the landslide metaphor aptly characterizes the magnitude of electoral change in 2010 the metaphor of a political wave has also been used Though in truth the results of the 2010 midterm were not those of a single political wave sweeping over the political landscape but rather three waves The political wave favoring Republicans in 2010 brought many Republicans into Published by Berkeley Electronic Press 2011 2 The Forum Vol 8 2010 No 4 Article 3 office but many more Republicans were helped into office by the receding political waves of 2006 and 2008 Those waves had helped bring a large number of Democrats into office Though the 2010 referendum on the in party Democrats the incoming wave is important to understanding the election the decline from the 2006 and 2008 surges that had favored Democrats the outgoing waves is also critically important to appreciating the magnitude of electoral change Some Historical Perspective As the in party Democrats were expected to lose seats in the 2010 midterm The in party has lost seats in 32 of the 35 midterm elections since 1860 Office of the Clerk 2010 This is not quite the certainty of death and taxes but it is about as dependable as things get in politics The regularity of in party loss has been violated only three times The in party gained seats only in the first midterm election of the New Deal realignment 1934 and in two recent midterms in which approval of the president s job performance was unusually high These were President Clinton s 1998 midterm in his second term and President Bush s 2002 midterm in his first Both Clinton and Bush had approval ratings in the mid 60percent range at the time of these midterms Lacking anything close to that level of approval for President Obama more on this later Democratic Party seat losses in 2010 were a virtual certainty While Democrats were expected to lose