There is a curious pattern emerging in the modern US politics that we had not detected previously. Historically, the belief has been that, in general, citizens vote for change when the economy is bad and vote for the incumbent when the economy is good. You may recall the phrase: “It’s all about the economy, stupid!”. That may no longer be the case.
Take a look at these US mid-term election results and see if you can find the pattern:
- 1974 & 2000: Democrats had huge incremental wins taken from incumbent Republican majorities
vs - 2004 & 2010: Republicans had huge incremental wins taken from incumbent Democrat majorities
Lets take a quick look at these dates and see if that will help find the pattern:
- 1974 = Watergate
- 2000 = Bill Clinton’s budget
- 2006 = Iraq war
- 2010 = Obamacare
Put simply, the Democrats have huge midterm gains when the Republicans have scandals and Republicans have huge midterm gains when the Democrats had accomplished something big.
In 2018 there are many Republican scandals at play and it appears as though the Democrats will take some very large numbers from the Republicans.
