Midterm elections are the nationwide contests held halfway through a president's four-year term. They refill the entire House of Representatives, a third of the Senate, and a long list of state and local offices — without a presidential race at the top of the ballot. That missing headline race is exactly why they matter: with fewer voters paying attention, midterms become a quiet, blunt referendum on the party in power.
The record is lopsided. According to Wikipedia's entry on US midterm elections, citing reporting by Ipsos and Le Monde, 37 of the 41 midterms held since 1860 have cost the president's party seats in the House. The pattern is so reliable that political scientists call it the midterm loss, and it shapes the second half of nearly every modern presidency.
What are midterm elections, exactly?
The name comes from timing. The Constitution sets a four-year term for the president but a two-year term for every House member, so the whole House stands for election in the middle of each presidential term. Senate terms run six years, and the chamber is divided into three classes, so roughly a third of the 100 seats come up every two years — including at midterms.
The date is fixed by law: the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. The most recent midterms fell on November 8, 2022. The next ones are set for November 3, 2026, when every one of the 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats — 33 regular contests plus 2 special elections — will be on the ballot, according to L'Internaute's explainer on the midterms.
No state is skipped. Even the smallest states elect at least one representative, because each state gets a minimum of one House seat regardless of population. Six additional non-voting delegates represent the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the US Virgin Islands.
What's on the ballot besides Congress?
A lot, and much of it hits closer to home than Washington. In midterm years, 36 of the 50 states elect a governor. Most serve four-year terms; Vermont and New Hampshire elect governors to two-year terms, so they vote for a governor in both midterm and presidential years. Many states also fill their legislatures the same day.
Below the statehouse, the ballot fills out with mayors, sheriffs, judges, county offices and ballot questions. In 2018, roughly 150 citizen initiatives and referendums appeared on state ballots nationwide, on subjects from marijuana policy to voting rights, according to the French-language Wikipedia entry. For a local reporter, this is the page-47 story: the county commissioner race and the water-bond referendum that never make the national broadcast but decide how residents are taxed, zoned and policed.
Why does turnout drop — and who still shows up?
Midterms draw far fewer voters than presidential elections. Over the past 60 years, presidential elections have turned out roughly 50 to 60 percent of eligible voters, while midterms have drawn only about 40 percent, according to Wikipedia's article on United States midterm elections. The 2022 midterms landed at about 46 percent of registered voters, per L'Internaute — well below the turnout of the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections.
The drop matters because the electorate changes shape. Without a presidential race to pull casual voters in, the midterm electorate skews older, more partisan and better organized. Wikipedia's analysis notes that lower turnout can also favor well-organized interest groups, which find it easier to influence outcomes when fewer people vote. Media coverage drops too, because there is no single dominant national race — and state and local contests lean on local news, which has been shrinking for two decades.
The practical takeaway for readers: the offices decided with the least attention are often the ones with the most say over daily life. School boards, county clerks and state legislators set the rules that the flashier federal debates run through.
What does the result mean for the president's agenda?
Congress writes the laws; the president signs or vetoes them. So the partisan balance on Capitol Hill sets the ceiling on what a president can pass. A president whose party holds both chambers can move its program. A president facing an opposition-controlled House or Senate spends the last two years negotiating, blocking, or governing by executive action and appointments instead.
The historical pattern runs against the White House. Since World War II, the president's party has lost an average of 26 House seats and 4 Senate seats in midterm elections, per Wikipedia's English-language entry. Losses in a president's second midterm tend to run even heavier — a phenomenon analysts call the "six-year itch." Since direct midterm elections began, the president's party has actually gained seats in only a handful of years, under Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Nixon, Clinton, Bush, Trump and Biden. Only two of those — 1934 under Franklin D. Roosevelt and 2002 under George W. Bush — produced gains in both chambers.
The exceptions tell their own story. In 1998, the failed impeachment push against Bill Clinton backfired on Republicans, who kept both chambers but lost five House seats. In 2002, the September 11 attacks lifted support for George W. Bush's party, per the French Wikipedia entry. Those are the rare breaks in a 160-year pattern.
Why do census-year midterms matter even more?
Midterms that land in years ending in zero carry extra weight. The federal census wraps up that year, and the legislatures elected in those midterms redraw congressional district maps for the next decade. Whoever wins gets the pen — and the power to draw districts that favor their party, a practice known as gerrymandering.
The 2010 midterms showed the stakes. Republicans took numerous Democratic-held districts that year, then used their new control of state governments to redraw the map for the following decade, according to the French Wikipedia entry. Readers who want the mechanics can see our piece on Redistricting After the Census: Who Draws the Lines and When.
What this means for voters
Midterms are not a warm-up act. They decide who writes federal law for the next two years, who governs 36 states, and — in census years — who draws the political map for ten. They also set up the next presidential contest, because the governors and legislators elected in a midterm often shape how the following presidential election runs in their states.
For readers, three practical points follow from the record. First, the offices with the biggest effect on daily life — governor, state legislator, county officials — appear on the same ballot as the congressional races, so a single trip covers all of it. Second, many states open the door before Election Day; our guide to What Early Voting and Mail Ballots Have in Common explains how those systems work. Third, results are not official on election night; certification follows a fixed calendar, which we cover in The Certification Calendar: When Election Results Become Official.
The evidence points to one conclusion. A midterm is the electorate's scheduled check on the president — held with fewer voters, covered with less airtime, and usually decided against the party in power. What remains unknown in any given year is only the size of the swing, not the direction history expects.
