Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Republicans would need to net 18 seats in 2020 to win back the House.”
“The GOP holding onto the White House seems to be a prerequisite for realizing such a seat gain, although reelected presidents often don’t provide much in terms of House coattails. Since World War II, six presidents have been reelected to second full terms: Dwight Eisenhower (1956), Richard Nixon (1972), Ronald Reagan (1984), Bill Clinton (1996), George W. Bush (2004), and Barack Obama (2012). Trump hopes to become the seventh. On average, the parties of those six presidents elected to second terms netted only an average of seven House seats in those successful reelection bids.”
“Even in landslides, Nixon (+12) and Reagan (+16) didn’t net quite the number of seats the GOP would need in 2020 to win the House back. To be clear, President Trump has a path to a second term, one that probably would look fairly similar to the one he took in 2016. But the kinds of sweeping national presidential victories Nixon and Reagan achieved don’t seem possible in this current era, let alone with a president whose approval has been both consistent and consistently weak.”
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