The Republican Congress that began its first full week of work on Monday is already operating on borrowed time unless the GOP can defy one of the most powerful patterns of recent US politics. The last five times a president has taken office with unified control of the White House, the House, and the Senate, voters have revoked it. No president has maintained control of both congressional chambers through a midterm election since Jimmy Carter in 1978.
The inability of both parties to maintain unified control through a midterm election for such a long period is unprecedented in American political history. The recent pattern of rapid and severe shifts in advantage between the two parties has become head-spinning, causing leaders to reevaluate their behavior, said Steve Israel, a former Democratic representative from New York.
The willingness of many members to run again while in the minority, while also discouraging bipartisanship in the House, has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, said David Price, a former Democratic representative from North Carolina. This has led to both parties prioritizing their goals and planning their careers with the expectation of a short-lived majority.
The frequency of turnover has also led to the use of reconciliation, a legislative tool that allows the majority party to pass its agenda without needing to compromise with the minority party. The party holding unified control often uses reconciliation to cram as many of its priorities as possible into one bill, as seen with the Bush and Trump tax cuts.
The heightened risk of losing unified control has become a valuable lever for presidents to corral recalcitrant legislators behind their agenda, said Price. This has led to an urgency and focus in legislative efforts, with a sense of, “we damn well better get it done in those first two years, and that added all kinds of urgency and focus to our legislative efforts.”
Since the 1990s, it has become far more difficult for either side to establish unified control of the White House and Congress – and much harder to defend it when they do. Among the past five times a president has taken office with unified control, every president has lost the House two years later. The only deviation from this pattern is when George W. Bush’s Republican Party held unified control for only a few months before losing control of the Senate.
The modern era has seen a unique convergence of voter anxiety, economic insecurity, and instability, leading to a pattern of reversing the outcome of elections every two years. Political polarization has also intensified this instability by widening the gap between the policy priorities of the two parties and shrinking the size of congressional majorities. As a result, the current Republican controls in the House and Senate are among the smallest in recent history, leaving little room for error or loss in the next midterm election.