Larry Sabato had a quick tweet that raised an interesting point about the history of Congressional elections. The point is this: the House of Representatives has changed hands six times in the last three-quarters of a century — 1946, 1948, 1952, 1954, 1994 and 2006. Every time the Senate has flipped too. The reverse is not the case. The senate has flipped several times without the House. But going back to the New Deal era the Senate has followed the House every time.
Now, it’s always critical in these cases to remember that the validity of the ‘rule’ falls down pretty quickly via the fallacy of small data sets. It’s sort of like that old saw about how you couldn’t win the presidency without winning the New Hampshire primary. Which was true, until Clinton did it. And then Bush did it. And then Obama did it. By which time it was nonsense. The was always that there were only a few decades of history — really, four — and the sample size was too small to draw any conclusions.
Still, it’s a pattern worth considering — that at least in recent decades, a wave big enough to tip the House tends to tip the Senate too.
