Democrats’ projected gains in the Nov. 3 U.S. House election rank among the biggest midterm shifts in CNBC’s review, which found no consistent pattern for predicting the 2028 presidential winner.
MS NOW’s tally projected Democrats would gain at least 41 House seats, after flipping at least 43 seats held by Republicans. Votes were still being counted when CNBC assessed the result. The network used a 41-seat gain estimate to place the shift at No. 10 among major midterm waves. It identified the outcome as the biggest House-seat loss for the party in the White House since 2018.
CNBC found that every president hit by one of the four largest pre-final-term midterm waves won another term. Yet across the next five waves, the party holding the presidency lost the subsequent presidential election.
The later outcomes included the 1958 midterms, when Republicans lost seats under President Dwight Eisenhower, before John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon in 1960. A similar sequence unfolded after Republicans lost seats in 2018 and Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020.
Democrats lost 72 House seats in 1938. The losses came as recession returned and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt faced opposition to his court-packing proposal, alongside resistance from conservatives in his party. He won reelection in 1940.
In 2010, Republicans took control of the House after Democrats lost 64 seats, though they retained the Senate. President Barack Obama won reelection two years later.
Jay Campbell, a Hart Associates partner and the Democratic pollster on CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey, said presidential races depend on the nominees as well as the broader political environment. “A lot can happen in two years,” Campbell said. He added that candidate quality carries greater weight in a presidential contest than in congressional elections.
