Midterm Elections Wreaking Havoc Already

2010 is officially in full swing and already full of midterm election drama! With two democratic Senators announcing today that they would not be seeking reelection in the fall, the pundits are out in full force attempting to predict which party will lose seats and which party will gain.
Please don’t be confused by all the hypotheses, let me tell you right now: the Democrats will lose more seats than the Republicans. Why am I so confident?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1738236/posts

Historically speaking, every single President since Lincoln (with four notable exceptions – the Roosevelts, Clinton, and Bush 43 after 9/11) has lost seats in the midterm election. Don’t think that the Democrats losing seats is some sort of mandate for someone or that it should give Congress a bigger message. It’s simply probability.

What will be interesting to see is exactly how many seats the Democrats lose. Voters hate overspending, so the question is: How much spending in the last two years will voters think really mattered? (Oh, and hopefully they can get their timing straight too with the bailouts that passed in the 11th hour of 2008 BEFORE this Congress took over.)

The chances that the Democrats will lose control of either Congressional house is slim. Republicans would have to pick up 40 seats in the House and 11 seats in the Senate to reclaim control. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but current projections (from those pesky pundits I just warned you about) show that in a regular midterm election Democrats would lose between 10-15 seats total because of the way voter turnout falls in midterm elections. Of course, throw in the “great recession” and the numbers jump to between 20-30 seats total. Now I’m no math whiz (ok, that’s a lie, I actually kind of <3 math), but I’m pretty sure that’s not enough to regain control over both branches of Congress! Oh, and in case you were wondering, the historical average loss of seats for the President’s party is 3 Senate seats and 34 seats in the House.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31209.html

So who were these two Senators announcing their lack of reelection plans? Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), and Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND). Way to cause some serious commotion guys. No candidates have officially come forward yet in either state to run for the newly vacant seat, but no to worry, I’ll keep you posted!