What is a midterm election? Why the US votes mid-term

A midterm election is the US general election held two years into a president's four-year term. The president is not on the ballot, but all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are, along with about a third of the Senate's 100 seats, 36 of the 50 governors and thousands of state and local offices. Midterms are often read as a verdict on the president, and the president's party has lost House seats in almost every one since the 1930s.

In short

• Midterms fall halfway through a presidential term, so voters choose Congress without choosing a president.
• The whole House and about a third of the Senate are elected, which is why control of Congress can change.
• The president's party has lost House seats in 20 of the 23 midterms from 1934 to 2022, by 27 seats on average.

Why does the US hold elections in the middle of a term?

The schedule comes straight from the Constitution. Members of the House serve two-year terms, so all of them face voters every second year. Senators serve six-year terms, staggered so that about a third of the seats, one of three "classes", come up every two years; the Senate's own list shows which senators are in each class. A president serves four years. Every other House election therefore lands in a year with a presidential race, and every other one lands in the middle of a term. Those are the midterms.

Federal law sets the day: the Tuesday after the first Monday in November of even-numbered years, under 2 U.S.C. § 7. That rule means the date always falls between 2 and 8 November. The 2026 midterms were held on 3 November 2026.

What is on the ballot?

Office	How many are elected	Term
US House of Representatives	All 435 voting seats	2 years
US Senate	33 or 34 of 100 seats, plus any special elections	6 years
Governors	36 of 50 states in a typical midterm year	4 years in most states, 2 in New Hampshire and Vermont
State legislatures	Most seats in most states	Varies by state
Local offices and ballot measures	Thousands across the country	Varies

The House and Senate together make up Congress, which writes federal laws, sets the budget and can investigate the executive branch. Whichever party wins a majority in each chamber chooses its leaders and controls which bills get a vote. A midterm can therefore decide how much of a president's program can pass in the second half of the term.

The House seats are drawn into districts after each census, and the people who draw them can tilt the result, which is why gerrymandering comes up most in House races. Senate seats cover whole states and can't be gerrymandered. There is no Electoral College step in a midterm; that only applies to the presidential race.

Why does the president's party usually lose seats?

It is one of the most consistent patterns in American politics. In the 23 midterms from 1934 to 2022, the president's party lost House seats 20 times. The average change was a loss of 27 seats, according to The American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara. The Senate is less predictable, because only a third of its seats are up and which ones are up varies: there, the president's party gained seats 7 times in the same period and averaged a loss of about 3.

Midterm	President	House seats, president's party	What stands out
1934	Franklin Roosevelt	+9	A rare gain, during the New Deal
1938	Franklin Roosevelt	−72	The largest loss in the period
1994	Bill Clinton	−54	Republicans won the House for the first time in 40 years
1998	Bill Clinton	+4	A gain during the impeachment fight
2002	George W. Bush	+8	A gain the year after the 11 September attacks
2010	Barack Obama	−63	The largest loss since 1938
2018	Donald Trump	−41	Democrats won the House
2022	Joe Biden	−9	A smaller loss than most

The three gains came in unusual moments: the depth of the Great Depression, a backlash against an impeachment, and a rally around the president after an attack.

Still argued

Political scientists agree on the pattern and argue about the cause. The "surge and decline" view, from Angus Campbell's work around 1960, holds that a presidential race draws in less committed voters who lean toward the winner, and they stay home two years later. The "referendum" view, associated with Edward Tufte in the 1970s, holds that midterms are a verdict on the president's approval and the economy. A "balancing" view holds that some voters deliberately split power by voting against the president's party in Congress. A fourth points to the "thermostatic" public, which tends to move against whatever direction the government is pushing. Each explains some elections better than others, and many researchers think several work at once.

How many people vote in midterms?

Fewer than in presidential years. Without the top of the ticket to draw them, many occasional voters skip the midterms, and those who do vote tend to be older and more politically engaged. Even so, turnout has been high by historical standards in recent cycles. The Census Bureau's survey found that 52.2% of voting-age citizens voted in 2022, the second-highest rate for a midterm since 2000, after 2018. Almost half of 2022's voters cast their ballots before Election Day, by mail or in person.

That turnout gap is part of why midterms behave differently. A party whose voters turn out reliably has an edge when overall turnout falls, and campaigns spend much of their effort on getting their own occasional voters to the polls.

What changes after a midterm?

The new Congress takes office on 3 January of the following year. If the president's party loses a chamber, the result is divided government: the other party controls which bills reach the floor, can block nominees in the Senate, and can open investigations in the House. Presidents facing a hostile Congress often lean more on executive action and on vetoes, and spending fights, including the standoffs that lead to a government shutdown, tend to sharpen.

Midterms also reshape the states. Governors and legislatures elected in midterm years often oversee the next round of redistricting and run the next presidential election in their states, and they can be a pipeline for future candidates for Congress and the presidency.

A midterm is, in the end, the most regular check voters have between presidential elections, and one of the ways a representative democracy keeps its lawmakers answerable every two years.

Check yourself

• Without looking back: which federal offices are on the ballot in a midterm, and which aren't?
• Why can the House change hands in a midterm more easily than the Senate?
• Name two explanations for why the president's party usually loses seats.

Sources

• Seats in Congress gained or lost by the president's party in midterm elections — The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara
• Senators' classes — United States Senate
• 2 U.S. Code § 7, Time of election — Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School
• 2022 voting and registration data — U.S. Census Bureau, 2023
• Election statistics, 1920 to present — US House of Representatives, History, Art and Archives