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Wave elections (1918-2016)/Gubernatorial waves
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House waves • Senate waves • Gubernatorial waves • State legislative waves |
Competitiveness in State Legislatures |
June 19, 2018
By: Rob Oldham and Jacob Smith
For 2018 to qualify historically as a wave election, Republicans must lose seven gubernatorial seats in 2018.
The president's party lost seven or more gubernatorial seats in 11 of the 50 elections since 1918, ranging from seven seats lost under Presidents Ronald Reagan (1986) and Barack Obama (2010) to 12 seats lost under President Richard Nixon in 1970.
Eight of the 11 wave elections happened in a president's first midterm election.
The median number of gubernatorial seats lost by the president’s party is two. The average number of seats lost is almost three.
The varying number of gubernatorial elections held each year from 1918 to 2016 complicated this analysis. To read more about this limitation, click here.
The chart below shows the number of seats the president's party lost in the 11 wave elections. To see the full set of elections from 1918 to 2016, click here.
| Gubernatorial wave elections | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | President | Party | Election type | Gubernatorial seats change | Elections analyzed[1] | |
| 1970 | Nixon | R | First midterm | -12 | 35 | |
| 1922 | Harding | R | First midterm | -11 | 33 | |
| 1932 | Hoover | R | Presidential | -10 | 35 | |
| 1920 | Wilson | D | Presidential | -10 | 36 | |
| 1994 | Clinton | D | First midterm | -10 | 36 | |
| 1930 | Hoover | R | First midterm | -9 | 33 | |
| 1938 | Roosevelt | D | Second midterm | -9 | 33 | |
| 1966 | Johnson | D | First midterm[2] | -9 | 35 | |
| 1954 | Eisenhower | R | First midterm | -8 | 33 | |
| 1982 | Reagan | R | First midterm | -7 | 36 | |
| 2010 | Obama | D | First midterm | -7 | 33 | |
Click here to read the report as one page.
Click here to read or download the report as a PDF.
Footnotes
- ↑ The number of gubernatorial seats up for election varies, with as many as 36 seats and as few as 12 seats being up in a single year.
- ↑ Lyndon Johnson's (D) first term began in November 1963 after the death of President John F. Kennedy (D), who was first elected in 1960. Before Johnson had his first midterm in 1966, he was re-elected president in 1964.
