Why did the Republicans get massacared in 1958 despite IKE popularity

[OSR stands with Israel]

They lost 50 house seats and 15 senete seats which shut them out of congress in the next 22-36 years, and Eisenhower was really popular

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

[quote=wikipedia]As is common in midterm elections, the party in the White House lost seats, but losses this year were on a huge scale, perhaps due to the high unemployment of the Recession of 1958. The Eisenhower Administration's position on right-to-work issues galvanized labor unions which supported Democrats. The launch of Sputnik may also have been a factor.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Ike was popular but the GOP was not.

This was the height of the country club GOP era. The Republicans had not broken into the suburbs of the South as much yet. They were basically a Northern Suburbs plus Vermont (insert ancestrally Republican rural areas) Party. Rockefeller and Javits types could win upscale liberals in urban areas as well as a lot of working class types in those areas. However, union dominated and ethnic urban and surburban areas were Democratic Territory in the New Deal Era. In order to win a majority these people had to vote Republican or not turn out (think back to 1920 when they didn't turnout and the Republicans won supermajorities because of it. By the 1950's they needed that same effect, just to win a majority in Congress).

There was the recession of 1957-1958, which moved many of those voters to turn out for the Democrats.

[Ebsy]

The recession in the late 50s reminded everyone why you can't trust Republicans on economic issues.

[President Johnson]

Ike was popular but the GOP was not.

This was the height of the country club GOP era. The Republicans had not broken into the suburbs of the South as much yet. They were basically a Northern Suburbs plus Vermont (insert ancestrally Republican rural areas) Party. Rockefeller and Javits types could win upscale liberals in urban areas as well as a lot of working class types in those areas. However, union dominated and ethnic urban and surburban areas were Democratic Territory in the New Deal Era. In order to win a majority these people had to vote Republican or not turn out (think back to 1920 when they didn't turnout and the Republicans won supermajorities because of it. By the 1950's they needed that same effect, just to win a majority in Congress).

There was the recession of 1957-1958, which moved many of those voters to turn out for the Democrats.

^^ This. And Ike was very popular among Democrats, too, because of his moderate positions. He wasn't a true Republican. He decided to run for the GOP because the country had 20 years of Democratic presidents in 1952.

[Sumner 1868]

Ike's popularity had declined drastically in 1958. At the time of midterm, only 52% approved,  whereas in the prior five years he was routinely in the sixties and seventies.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

And Ike's popularity had not previously translated to GOP support in 1954 and 1956 either.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Ticket splitting was a little more common in those days. The Democrats had been hoping Ike would run as a Democrat.

[pbrower2a]

Ike was popular but the GOP was not.

The point. Just look at the results of the 1952 and 1956 Presidential elections. Eisenhower won Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the only two Northern states that did not go for Herbert Hoover in 1928 (then fairly recent history)... and he is the only Republican since 1924 to win both Massachusetts and Minnesota in the same Presidential election, and he did that twice. (Nixon got a 49-state landslide in 1972 without Massachusetts, and Reagan got a 49-state landslide in 1984 without Minnesota).

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Eisenhower manifestly won millions who did not play golf. It is true that Republicans had yet to break into the Southern suburbs, but not for any fault of their political competence;  the South was then much more rural in population. The South had few suburbs, and its cities were much smaller. 

What did Ike do right? He posed no threat to the New Deal, and he did not jump onto the Red-baiting bandwagon of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Other Republicans railed against the New Deal and jumped onto the Joseph McCarthy bandwagon -- and they would pay a political price for such folly. Defeat.

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Such played a role. Democrats played up the New Deal as a back-up to an unregulated market.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Simple: there was a recession.

[pbrower2a]

Recessions usually follow the end of big projects. A particularly nasty one followed the completion of the Golden Gate, Transbay, and George Washington bridges. Another happened after the completion of the Verazzano  Bridge. Likewise dams and tunnels.

In 1958 it was the Mackinac Bridge.  The construction of a giant suspension bridge implies a huge number of iron workers getting very high pay... and practically every possible bit of steel production being marketable. Just imagine how many jobs such a project creates. But once the great suspension bridge is complete, the jobs dry up.