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The midterms are coming, and with it predictions that the nation’s economic woes will cost Democrats control of Congress. As one pundit on Fox News recently declared, political consultant James Carville’s 1992 adage, “It’s the economy, stupid,” still applies. Polling data seems to support this point of view.
But applying a 30-year-old rule of thumb for a presidential election to the 2022 midterms isn’t such a safe bet, if history has any say.
The Democrats will almost certainly lose seats, much as any party that holds the presidency tends to lose ground in the midterms. But research suggests that the economy is unlikely to affect that outcome one way or another.
This wasn’t the case in the 19th century, when economic issues often decided midterm elections. One study of the period ran regression analyses to determine whether economic growth or prices of household necessities had helped…
