Do midterms naturally favor Republicans or the party out of the presidency?

[OSR stands with Israel]

1894- 1930: Republicans

1930-1994- Democrats

1994-Present: Republicans

[OSR stands with Israel]

Number of midterms where the Democrats did well despite holding the White House: 3 (1934, 1962, and 1998)

Number of midterms where the GOP did well despite holding the White House: 1 (2002)

Interesting that people still think midterms favor the GOP...

Two of the elections were before the realigning congressional elections of 1994. Before 1994 the Democrats controlled the house for all of the past 40 years, and the Senate all but 6 of the years just like before 1992 the Republicans were the dominant party for the presidency winning the 7 out of the past 10. 1992 and 1994 reversed the trends of the 40 years before those elections.

[OSR stands with Israel]

1962 - What do you mean? Democrats lost 4 seats.

They gained 4 Senate seats. And I read somewhere that the House seats they lost were conservative Dems who didn't support Kennedy anyway. Basically, 1962 was the Democrats' 2002-national security issues at the forefront, popular sitting president albeit one elected narrowly, incumbent party does a little worse at the gubernatorial level where national security issues aren't salient.

Anyway, the poll asked whether midterms favor Republicans or the party out of the presidency, and I think the evidence is still in favor of the latter. It may seem like midterms favor the GOP recently more because they've been shut out of the White House. 2006 was pretty bad for the Republicans-lost House, Senate, and majority of governorships. They didn't even take a SINGLE House, Senate, or governorship from the Democrats. This was despite the fact that the economy was doing fairly well, and Democrats were more exposed in the Senate races because of how well they did in 2000. As for the point about turnout, it was higher in 2010 than in it had been in 2006...just saying (though admittedly 2014 was lower than both).

I will concede it's difficult to find a multi-term administration with worse back-to-back midterm results than Obama's, but Democrats were very exposed in 2010 (in House races) and 2014 (in Senate races).

As for 2018 with a Republican president, it could be analogous to 1970. It was a bad midterm election for Republicans overall, but they gained two Senate seats for no other reason than they had nowhere to go but up in that class. I could very easily see the same thing happening (it's the same class even).

Republicans only have able to do good in 1994 with that class

While Democrats crushed the Republicans with that class in 1958, 1964, 2006