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Wave elections (1918-2016)

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Main page
Wave analyses
What is a wave? • Evaluating 2018 •
House waves • Senate waves • Gubernatorial waves •
State legislative waves
Additional analyses
Multiple waves • Presidential waves • Election types • Overall waves vs. modern waves • Effectiveness of the out-of-power party • U.S. House waves since 1918
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Limitations • Data • Further analysis
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Waves in the media
Media coverage • Media definitions
2018 elections
U.S. Senate • U.S. House • Governorships • State legislatures
Other Ballotpedia reports
Who Runs the States
Competitiveness in State Legislatures

This page provides an overview of media coverage discussing whether the 2018 midterm elections would see Democrats take control of the U.S. House and/or U.S. Senate, in what is commonly referred to as a blue wave.[1] Selected articles are presented as a jumping-off point for deeper exploration of media coverage and as an overview of narratives that emerged surrounding the elections. Articles exploring similar topics or conflicts are grouped into sections, with articles arranged within each section by date of publication. The following types of coverage are featured on this page:

  • Probability of a blue wave: Articles discussing the overall likelihood of a blue wave based on polls, major policy initiatives, the popularity of the president, and other factors.
  • Economy and taxes: Articles discussing the impact the economy and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 will have on a possible blue wave.
  • Fundraising: Articles discussing how each party's fundraising will impact election outcomes.
  • Geography: Articles discussing the regional issues and specific races that will impact the probability of a blue wave.
  • State elections: Articles discussing how a possible blue wave could impact races at the state level.
  • Party politics: Articles discussing intraparty conflict and party messaging in relation to a possible blue wave.

This article also provides a sampling of excerpts from media coverage of potential wave elections in the 2014 and 2016 elections for comparative purposes.

Probability of a blue wave

  • The Washington Post (March 14, 2018): "Barack Obama and Donald Trump have at least one thing in common: They both built unique coalitions that are proving difficult to replicate when they aren't on the ballot. Obama won two presidential campaigns by relatively comfortable margins, helping boost other Democrats those years, but he watched helplessly as Democrats sustained big losses in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections.
President Donald Trump, fresh off campaigning for [Rick Saccone in Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional District special election], may be struggling with the same fate. As different as the two presidents are in ideology and temperament, Obama and Trump each has a special magnetism with a subset of the electorate. But that draw applies only to them, not to other candidates in their parties...
Those most die-hard Trump supporters see the president on stage and then are left wanting when looking at any other regular rank-and-file Republican. A recent political-science study estimated that 9 percent of voters who chose Obama in 2012 switched to Trump in 2016 - those are probably not voters who care all that much whether Ryan is House speaker next year...
[Democrat Conor Lamb's apparent victory in the 18th District special election] suggests that the playing field is much larger than anticipated, almost all on the Republican side. [Ken Spain, the former communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee] said that in 2010, after Democrats won a highly contested special election in western Pennsylvania, each side was slow to realize how big the wave was against Democrats.
Spain estimates Republicans have until the summer to change the arc of the midterms, the point after which things tend to keep getting worse. 'The political environment begins to cement in July, and it becomes increasingly difficult to reverse the trajectory at that point,' he said."[2]
  • Bloomberg (January 28, 2018): "An analysis by Bloomberg Government of historical data, election maps and public polling points to sweeping Democratic gains in the November election, when all 435 House seats and one-third of the Senate are on the ballot.
Since the end of World War II, the party in control of the White House has, on average, had a net loss of 26 House seats in midterm elections. Democrats can win control of the House with a net gain of 24 seats in November. They'd need to win two seats to gain a majority in the Senate.
Adding to that, Trump's approval rating at this stage of his presidency, 38 percent, is lower than any of his predecessors going back to Harry Truman, according to Gallup polling data. The less popular the president, the more seats his party tends to lose."[3]
  • Politico (January 20, 2018): "Are there reasons to question the inevitability of a midterm wave? Actually, there are several.
First, those generic numbers may not tell us what it looks like it's telling us (apart from the fact that the Democrats' margin has dropped into single-digit territory in the past couple of polls). Democrats learned to their sorrow that national polls in 2016 showing a Hillary Clinton victory were misleading. ...
Second, the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party may well exact a heavy cost. In the Senate, a cluster of potential presidential candidates—Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand—has gone all-in on the immigration front. ... Yes, polls show most Americans want Dreamers, the immigrants brought here illegally as children, to be protected from deportation. But looked at more locally, the picture is different.
Third, Democrats must avoid the Tea Party-style fights that plagued the Republicans in recent years. ...
Fourth, the Democrats' California dreams could turn into a nightmare in some districts. No fewer than nine GOP House seats in California are within target range of Democrats. ... But the very enthusiasm of Democrats could wind up costing them dearly. Why? Because of the state's 'jungle primary' system, in which every candidate, regardless of party, runs in one primary, and the top two finishers face off in November. ...
Fifth, Trump might not be quite as unpopular in November as he is now. It's always dangerous to rely on any given poll number, but the president has managed to move all the way up to a 40 percent average approval rating."[4]
  • Roll Call (January 17, 2018): "Yes, Doug Jones' victory in Alabama's special election gives their party a path to a Senate majority in November. But at this point, it remains an unlikely path, despite the official party line.
Even assuming Senate seats in both Arizona and Nevada fall to Democrats — not a certainty, but more likely than not — Republicans can maintain control of the Senate by swiping a Democratic seat in West Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota or one of the half-dozen other states carried by Donald Trump in 2016.
Republicans don't need to win all those states or most of them or even some of them. They need only one, unless another GOP-held seat comes into play.
While Democratic strategists are trying to flip the House by targeting districts Hillary Clinton carried and seats where minorities, younger voters and suburbanites are anti-Trump, Senate Democratic strategists must hold on to a handful of rural, religious, conservative and very white states to have any chance of flipping the Senate. That's quite a challenge."[5]
  • Fox News (January 9, 2018): "But the Washington establishment class and so-called political 'experts' dismiss President Trump at their own peril. I won't make that mistake again. The president and his party sit on many structural advantages that the liberal media conveniently ignore.
The first and perhaps most important advantage is fundraising. The Republican National Committee (RNC) raised a reported $130 million in 2017 – more than twice the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) haul. Much of it came from digital fundraising, as the RNC added more than 1 million email addresses in the last quarter of 2017 alone. ...
Second, the Republican fundraising edge suggests a reinvigorated political base, which has historically turned out in droves for midterm elections when Democrats have stayed home. According to a recent Pew poll, more than three-quarters of Republicans approve of President Trump, including an overwhelming majority of evangelical voters. ...
Finally, the 2018 electoral map charts very unfriendly territory for Democratic incumbents who must compete in districts and states carried by President Trump. This year's map has a number of realistic targets for Republican challengers."[6]
  • Bloomberg (December 31, 2017): "Most polls suggest that Democrats will gain the two dozen seats they'd need to take control. I'm even more taken by this assessment by Mark Gersh, who has tracked House races for Democrats for 40 years and is respected for prescience and caution. "Our chances are very solid," he said in an interview last week. 'The number 24 is not daunting.'
Democrats start with an advantage in contests for 14 Republican-held seats in the deep-blue states of California, New York and New Jersey. They expect to win most of those. They see promising opportunities in more than a dozen other states, multiple ones in a couple. In Iowa, for example, the reliable Iowa poll earlier this month showed Democrats running ahead of two Republican incumbents, one by a huge margin, and within striking distance of a third.
If a blue wave rolls through the electorate, Democrats could win even more, including supposedly safe Republican seats in states as diverse as Florida, Utah, Michigan and Virginia."[7]
  • FiveThirtyEight (December 22, 2017): "A new CNN survey released this week showed Democrats leading Republicans by an astounding 56 percent to 38 percent on the generic congressional ballot. That's an 18 percentage point lead among registered voters — a record-breaking result. No other survey taken in November or December in the year before a midterm has found the majority party in the House down by that much since at least the 1938 cycle (as far back as I have data).
And while the CNN poll is a bit of an outlier, the Democratic advantage in the FiveThirtyEight generic ballot aggregate is up to about 12 points, 49.6 percent to 37.4 percent. That average, like the CNN poll, also shows Republicans in worse shape right now than any other majority party at this point in the midterm cycle1 since at least the 1938 election.
So Democrats are up a lot. A lot a lot. But how might a lead this big manifest itself in 2018?
First, Democrats are probably favorites to win the House. Their current advantage is larger than the lead Republicans had at this point in the 1994 cycle, the lead Democrats held at this point in the 2006 cycle or the lead Republicans had at this point in the 2010 cycle. Those were all years when the minority party won control of the House. And a 12 percentage point Democratic advantage in the national House vote come next November would likely be more than enough for the House to flip again."[8]
  • New York Magazine (December 14, 2017): "While any single special congressional election is not necessarily predictive of future election results, in larger batches they are highly correlated to the next election coming down the pike. Enten looks at special elections prior to the last six midterms and finds that on average the partisan swing in the former is within three percentage points of the partisan swing in the latter. That would suggest a double-digit Democratic swing (or something close to it) in 2018.
If that seems extravagant, look at the congressional generic ballot (a simple polling question about which party the respondents would like to control the U.S. House), itself highly correlated with the national House popular vote. According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Democrats currently have an 11-point advantage, the highest they've enjoyed since last year's elections."[9]

Economy and taxes

  • CNBC (January 18, 2018): "So does [the repatriation of Apple's $250 billion in overseas cash] mean a big turnaround for President Donald Trump and the Republicans in the polls? Is the predicted 'blue wave' in the 2018 midterm elections less of a sure thing now?
Not so fast.
A strong economy is usually the biggest factor in U.S. elections. But that needs to be balanced with another truth best articulated by the late Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill who wisely said, 'All politics is local.'
Big macroeconomic news, no matter how good, doesn't necessarily translate into votes until enough voters on Main Street feel the positive effects. Therein lies the challenge for the Trump team and the GOP Congress. They need to find a way to bring these big economic stories home to voters and fast."[10]
  • Daily Beast (December 22, 2017): "Today, we have Trump and the GOP jubilant over passing their massive 40 percent tax cut for corporations and boondoggle for the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us that's supported on the low end by 24 percent of Americans and on the high end by 33 percent.
And it's very likely come the midterm elections in 2018, we will see one other similarity with 2010. You see, in the 2010 midterms, the Republicans made opposing the ACA the focal point of the election. What was the result? A massive red wave crashed down on the Democrats resulting in Republicans taking a whopping 63 House Seats and control of that chamber, as well as six Senate seats.
No one can predict exactly what the results will be come November 2018, but I can tell you that a gigantic blue wave is building. And thanks to the Trump/GOP tax cut for big corporations and the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us it is now growing to tidal wave proportions."[11]

Fundraising

  • Vanity Fair (January 19, 2018): "On the precipice of a blue midterm wave, Democrats are even toying with the idea of re-taking the House of Representatives. But a dire report suggests that Dems could still find a way to bungle their advantage. An organization already riven with distrust after the intra-party wars of 2016 and 2017, in July the Democratic National Committee pledged $10 million toward rebuilding their state party infrastructures across America. More than a year later, according to Vice News, only one state has received any of the promised funding. While the D.N.C. told Vice that they had made significant, multi-million-dollar investments in recent special elections, and planned to review submissions to the State Party Innovation Fund, several state chairs told the outlet that they are still anxiously awaiting the cash influx spurred by widespread anti-Trump sentiment."[12]
  • The Wall Street Journal (December 27, 2017): "Democrats aim to win back control of Congress and build up their presence in state capitals during next year's elections, but they begin this ambitious mission with precious little cash to finance it.
The Democratic National Committee had $6.3 million in the bank on Dec. 1, while the Republican National Committee had six times as much, at $40 million, according to documents the parties filed with the Federal Election Commission. In November, the DNC posted its worst fundraising amount for the month in a decade."[13]
  • Politico (November 15, 2017): "Republican strategists are warning that some of the party's veteran House incumbents aren't adequately preparing for the 2018 election, putting the GOP majority at risk by their failure to recognize the dangerous conditions facing them.
Nearly three dozen Republicans were outraised by their Democratic challengers in the most recent fundraising quarter. Others, the strategists say, are failing to maintain high profiles in their districts or modernize their campaigns by using data analytics in what is shaping up as a stormy election cycle."[14]

Geography

  • PBS (January 25, 2018): "The sheer number of Democratic candidates points to the level of enthusiasm on the left [in Texas]. As of early January, 111 Democratic candidates had registered to run for Congress in the midterm elections this fall.
In contrast, when Democrats regained control of the House in 2006, the party fielded just 39 candidates in Texas, though it competed in 31 congressional districts, nearly as many as this year. Since 1992, Democrats have run candidates in an average of 28 House races, according to an analysis of election results.
Lisa Goodgame, the political director of the liberal group Indivisible Austin, said the 2016 election and disapproval of President Donald Trump's performance in office were the main factors driving Democrats in Texas to run for Congress."[15]
  • Salon (January 11, 2018): "But 10 months out from the midterm elections, much of the drama is in the blue states. Republicans' strategy of seeking vengeance against regions of the country that did not vote for Trump appears likely to hurt GOP legislators in Democratic-leaning states the most.
Two of California's longest-serving Republicans in Congress announced plans to retire this week, joining a record number of House Republicans who are choosing to quit rather than face re-election this fall. ...
But it is Republicans – for all their sneering at the coastal elites – who have practically written off states like California, New York and New Jersey, and who will now reap the whirlwind. Democrats could come close to a congressional majority on the seats they flip in those three states alone, home to nearly one-fourth of the U.S. population. where nearly one in four Americans lives. The result is an ever more regional Republican Party, which is only represents a majority in the Deep South and would already be a marginal force in American politics if not for its ingenious use of the gerrymander."[16]
  • The Hill (January 5, 2018): "Both Indiana and Missouri have Republican governors. In both, the state legislatures overwhelmingly are controlled by the GOP. There are only two Democratic House members in each state's congressional delegations; three of those four are African-American.
The blue wave of 2018 will run smack into a red wall in Indiana and Missouri. It can be overcome, but it won't be easy for these two Democratic incumbents [Donnelly and McCaskill]."[17]

State elections

  • Washington Examiner (January 16, 2018): "But it isn't just Congress that is up for grabs in the midterms. Governor's mansions — many of which are inhabited by Republicans — are also on the table, and reporting earlier this week is that Republican operatives are also growing nervous about how their gubernatorial candidates will fare in this political environment. Republicans are defending around two dozen seats, while Democrats are defending fewer than ten.
Just how much trouble are Republicans in on that front? Polling by Morning Consult from late 2017 tested the job approval ratings of every governor in the U.S. and ranked them from most to least popular. Republicans take all ten of the top slots, but also take eight of the ten at the bottom of the list.
Some, like Gov. Sam Brownback in Kansas, proves that being of the 'right' political party doesn't mean much if your state is angry what you've done to the state budget."[18]

Party politics

  • Salon (January 30, 2018): "Moderate House Republicans like Frelinghuysen [of New Jersey] who represent swing districts are heading for the hills. Trump's politics of vengeance has hit Republicans who represent districts won by Clinton in 2016 (or nearly so, as in this case) the worst. Frelinghuysen voted in favor of Republican attempts to repeal Obamacare and then refused to face his constituents at town halls. His vote against the GOP's tax plan, which specifically eliminated deductions favored by Frelinghuysen's tax-weary voter base, apparently could not protect him from what is shaping up to be a brutal midterm for his party. (Historically, a new president's party suffers in the succeeding midterm election, and that effect is likely to be exaggerated this year.)
It's clearly rough out there for Republicans in the House of Representatives, but what may be less obvious is how that provides a prime opportunity for progressives who want to push Democrats to the left."[19]
  • NBC News (December 27, 2017): "[T]his year's election results suggest there's good reason for the reports of panic among national Republicans as they look ahead to 2018. Simply put, the Democratic base appears significantly more energized under Trump than its Republican counterpart.
It explains the big jumps in Democratic performance in Kansas and South Carolina, where overall turnout was low. It also explains the party's solid margin in Virginia, where Republican turnout was healthier, but where the heavily Democratic D.C. suburbs came out in astonishing numbers. And it was the story in Alabama, where turnout fell off far more from 2016 in the rural counties where Trump had surged than in heavily black counties that went overwhelmingly Democratic."[20]
  • National Review (December 15, 2017): "As Fred Bauer argues, Moore's defeat offers a lesson for both the party's establishmentarian and populist wings. Populists need to take candidate quality more seriously, because ill-qualified insurgents do not fare well in Senate races. To preempt the emergence of those candidates, however, the establishment also needs to make concessions. Ignoring populist concerns creates a void that unsavory actors tend to fill.
It will fall on the president to broker a peace between the two camps, stopping Steve Bannon from doing his darnedest to depose Mitch McConnell. That the Trump administration needs a Senate majority to function should be motivation enough: Were Democrats to take control of the upper chamber, Trump's efforts to remake the federal judiciary would be cut short while the specter of impeachment haunting his administration would only grow."[21]

2016 media coverage

  • The Weekly Standard (November 1, 2016): "This is not a cycle where the Republicans should have expected to gain House seats. The GOP holds 246 seats, which is probably near the party's ceiling, barring some kind of drastic realignment. That being said, the Democrats' gains should not be all that great, all else being equal. It is exceedingly rare for an incumbent party to pick up a lot of House seats when it is trying to win its third straight presidential term. The last time that happened was in 1904, when Teddy Roosevelt won a landslide election.
But this year is unique because of Donald Trump. Long suspected of being a down-ballot drag on Republicans, he has made it hard to get a read on where exactly things stand. Now that we are just a week away, however, we can get a clearer picture than we could just a few weeks ago.
Put simply: It does not look like the Democrats have put enough seats in play to take control of the House, nor does the public mood seem to be leaning in that direction, either."[22]
  • Vox (October 12, 2016): "'Wave elections tend to be in midterms because voters who are unhappy with the presidential administration take it out on Congress by punishing the sitting party,' Burden says. 'For this to be enough of a wave, it'd have to be on the back of presidential coattails, and we just haven't seen that in a long time.'
Four of the best political science models built around the "fundamentals" in elections (things like GDP growth, the employment rate, the president's approval rating) all suggest Democrats are only on track to pick up between five and 15 seats, according to Burden. That's right about where the best House watchers, like the Cook Political Report and the Center for Politics, peg the race when looking district by district."[23]
  • Roll Call (September 22, 2016): "Trump aside, the GOP aides are feeling much better about keeping their jobs. Six in 10 say their party will keep the Senate now, up from 44 percent in July. And not a single Republican staffer who took the poll thinks the GOP will lose the House.
Indeed, they no longer fear a wave election. 'All the polls are getting tighter. Trump's been disciplined and everyone is cautiously optimistic,' said Sam Geduldig, a partner at the CGCN Group lobbying firm and a former aide to GOP Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio before Boehner was speaker."[24]
  • The New York Times (August 23, 2016): "Could this year be a wave? Maybe. Mrs. Clinton is up by around seven percentage points in polling averages. But historically, a seven-point victory for the president's party in the national popular vote is not the way to start a wave election. Richard Nixon's huge victory in 1972 didn't give Republicans the House. Neither Ronald Reagan nor George H.W. Bush took the House in 1984 or 1988. Bill Clinton didn't retake the House in 1996. ...
So far, it doesn't seem as if [Trump] has done enough damage to the rest of the party to put the House into question. The Cook Political Report estimates that just 36 Republican-held seats are either 'tossups' or 'leaning' Republican. Many of the well-educated white G.O.P. voters with reservations about Mr. Trump appear to be sticking by Republicans, at least for now."[25]
  • Observer (August 22, 2016): "Democrats need to pick up 30 seats to flip the House. They aren't going to do this in a wave election led by Clinton's popularity. But if an unpopular Trump drags down down-ballot Republicans, the House could still flip. Republicans should be wary of this, even if it is unlikely."[26]
  • NBC News (August 13, 2016): "Despite Donald Trump's slide in the polls, a series of surveys released this week showed that some Republican Senate candidates are currently faring much better than the GOP nominee in their own states, raising the possibility that voters might be viewing the broader Republican Party separately from the real estate mogul. That dynamic could help boost Republicans hopes of keeping control of Congress, even if Trump loses at the top of the ticket."[27]
  • Politico (March 21, 2016): "Donald Trump is on the verge of two things once thought to be impossible: winning the Republican presidential nomination, and putting Republicans' historically large House majority in danger.
Democrats have for the past year discussed the GOP's 30-seat majority as a long-term problem, solvable only by shrinking it over several successive elections. But Trump's remarkable rise in the GOP presidential race, and the backlash he has already provoked among the broader electorate, has suddenly raised the prospect of a large November wave against Trump and the Republicans who would share the ballot with him.
The House GOP's leading indicators — its most vulnerable members, like Reps. Bob Dold and Carlos Curbelo — are already sounding the alarm against Trump and his rhetoric on women, Hispanics and other groups."[28]

2014 media coverage

  • The Washington Post (October 30, 2014): "You start to get into 'wave' territory if Republicans also sweep Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina, and, especially, if they add New Hampshire to their win total. The first three states are places where Democrats can and, in the case of Iowa, should win statewide elections in neutral political environments. Yes, Republicans pulled a rabbit out of a hat when they lured Rep. Cory Gardner into the Colorado Senate race. But, under normal circumstances Gardner probably doesn't find himself pulling away from Sen. Mark Udall (D). Ditto Iowa where Republicans a) found a gem in state Sen. Joni Ernst and b) benefitted from Rep. Bruce Braley (D) being not-so-good but still probably wouldn't be in the position they are to win in the open-seat race in a less-good year. And New Hampshire is the best example of all: If former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown beats Sen. Jeanne Shaheen that will have lots and lots to do with a very favorable national environment for Republicans.
So, if you are looking to figure out whether 2014 is a wave, look to New Hampshire. If Scott Brown is delivering a victory speech in five days time, you can safely call 2014 a wave election."[29]
  • New York Magazine (October 23, 2014): "Are Americans unhappy with Obama's policies, per se, or are they acting out a broader displeasure with the state of the economy, or American politics? To what extent should we think of the electorate as expressing conservative (or, at least, anti-liberal) impulses?
One way to test the two theories against each other is to consider governor's races. The smaller, non-presidential electorate still favors Republicans, but the map does not. Senate seats turn over every six years, and six years ago a Democratic wave election helped the party capture lots of normally red territory, making this election especially challenging. ...
In McConnell's case, the Republican is bedeviled by a popular Democratic governor who has thrown himself fully behind implementing Obamacare, with impressive results. In many of the other states, the general pro-Republican thrust of the election is running up against a localized backlash against Republican policies. If Obama were the only incumbent, Republicans would have locked up the Senate majority by now and might be poised to enjoy a genuine wave. Unfortunately for them, they have had the chance to govern."[30]
  • American Spectator (October 21, 2014): "Fifty years later, as (depending on the predictor) the GOP is on the verge of either a 'wave election' that will return the Senate to its control, an obvious fact presents itself. The Washington Post/ABCpoll reports that the favorability rating for the Democratic Party is 39 percent — but that of the GOP is lower still at 33 percent. So if in fact the GOP wins this election and retakes the Senate, why is the GOP as a whole held in such miserably low esteem?
The answer, it would seem, is obvious. What Reagan accomplished in 1964, as Krock described, was to present a 'cogent exposition of the conservative political philosophy.' And as the years moved on, he never ever stopped doing this. Unfortunately, in the world of Republican presidential nominees and Republican presidents who would follow him, Reagan remains a stand-alone."[31]
  • The Los Angeles Times (October 10, 2014): "Republicans seem assured of gaining House and Senate seats on Nov. 4, bolstering their majority in the former and possibly seizing control of the latter.
But will this be a 'wave' election, the kind pressed in the pages of political history and lovingly recounted generations hence, as today's campaign junkies dandle their grandchildren on their knees?
Probably not."[32]
  • USA Today (August 10, 2014): "In order to take back the House, Democrats would need a 'wave' election in which one party enjoys dramatic political gains. But there is no wave on the horizon, largely because of the president's unpopularity. There have been only four times in the past two decades in which the House saw a net seat change in the double digits. In those four election years — 1994, 2006, 2008 and 2010 — the wave was fueled by backlash against the incumbent president's party.
Republicans won control of the U.S. House under President Clinton in 1994; Democrats won control back and increased their majority under President Bush in 2006 and 2008. Republicans returned to the majority in 2010 with the Tea Party-inspired wave under Obama. The prospect of 2014 becoming a wave election year benefiting congressional Democrats is more than just unlikely. It would be unprecedented in modern politics."[33]
  • The New York Times (July 21, 2014): "This year seemed poised to turn into another so-called wave election, like in 2006 or 2010, when a rising tide of dissatisfaction with the incumbent party swept the opposition into power. Given a favorable midterm map, with so many Democratic Senate seats in play, some analysts suggested that Republicans could win a dozen of them, perhaps even picking up seats in states like Virginia, New Hampshire and Oregon.
The anti-Democratic wave might still arrive. But with three and a half months to go until November's elections, the promised Republican momentum has yet to materialize."[34]

Footnotes

  1. ↑ In selecting articles for inclusion in this page, Ballotpedia has drawn from a variety of sources and viewpoints to identify articles that are representative of broader trends in media coverage.
  2. ↑ The Washington Post, "The Obama history that Trump may be doomed to repeat," March 14, 2018
  3. ↑ Bloomberg, "All Signs Point to Big Democratic Wins in 2018," January 29, 2018
  4. ↑ Politico, "The Thin Blue Wave, January 20, 2018
  5. ↑ Roll Call, "Analysis: It's a Blue House Wave, but Not Yet a Senate One," January 17, 2018
  6. ↑ Fox News, "Republicans will keep control of Congress this year—Here's why," January 9, 2018
  7. ↑ Bloomberg, "Is It Too Early to Handicap the 2018 Elections? No!" December 31, 2017
  8. ↑ FiveThirtyEight, "The Democrats' Wave Could Turn Into A Flood," December 22, 2017
  9. ↑ New York Magazine, "The Democratic Wave Is Coming in 2018," December 14, 2017
  10. ↑ CNBC, "Apple's big jobs announcement may save the GOP in 2018," January 18, 2018
  11. ↑ Daily Beast, "Trump and the GOP Just Ensured That the 2018 Blue Wave Will Be Yuuuge," December 22, 2017
  12. ↑ Vanity Fair, "Will Democrats Bungle Their Own Blue Wave?," January 19, 2018
  13. ↑ The Wall STreet Journal, "Democrats Struggle to Convert Voter Enthusiasm Into Cash Contributions," December 17, 2017
  14. ↑ Politico, "GOP strategists worry incumbents aren't ready for a blue wave," November 15, 2017
  15. ↑ PBS, "House Republicans in Texas are facing their biggest midterm challenge in 25 years," January 25, 2018
  16. ↑ Salon, "Trump's politics of vengeance hits blue-state Republicans hardest," January 11, 2018
  17. ↑ The Hill, "Blue wave of 2018 stops in Indiana and Missouri," January 5, 2018
  18. ↑ Washington Examiner, "Can blue state Republican governors survive a blue wave?" January 16, 2018
  19. ↑ Salon, "Go left, Democrats! Ditch the Blue Dogs in the midterms," January 30, 2018
  20. ↑ NBC News, "For Trump and Republicans, these red flags are hard to miss," December 27, 2017
  21. ↑ National Review, "Alabama Was an Early Warning for Senate Republicans," December 15, 2017)
  22. ↑ The Weekly Standard, "It Won't Be Easy for Democrats to Win the House On Election Day," November 1, 2016
  23. ↑ Vox, "The math says Democrats have little shot at the House. Donald Trump suggests otherwise," October 12, 2016
  24. ↑ Roll Call, "Republican Hill Aides Gain Confidence in Trump Victory," September 22, 2016
  25. ↑ The New York Times, "What Are the Chances That Democrats Retake the House?" August 23, 2016
  26. ↑ Observer, "Republicans Could Lose the House," August 22, 2016
  27. ↑ NBC News, "Some Down-Ballot Republicans Weathering Trump's Nosedive, For Now," August 13, 2016
  28. ↑ Politico, "Trump puts GOP House majority in jeopardy," March 21, 2016
  29. ↑ The Washington Post, "Is this a wave election? And what would that look like if it is?" October 30, 2014
  30. ↑ New York Magazine, "Republican Governors Just Might Save the Democratic Senate," October 23, 2014
  31. ↑ American Spectator, "A Time for Choosing at 50," October 21, 2014
  32. ↑ The Los Angeles Times, "A wave or not a wave? That's the question Nov. 4," October 10, 2014
  33. ↑ USA Today, "Why Democrats can't win back the House," August 11, 2014
  34. ↑ The New York Times, "Goodbye to the Republican Wave?" July 21, 2014