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Three Things That Usually Happen in the Midterms

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Larry Sabato’s Cyrstal Ball notes there are at least three fairly consistent things that we see in midterms compared to presidential elections:

  • The turnout of eligible voters in midterms is consistently lower than the turnout in the most recent presidential election.
  • Midterm electorates are typically older, whiter, and more educated than presidential electorates.
  • The non-presidential party usually wins a higher share of the two-party House vote in the midterm than that party did in the preceding presidential election.
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goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

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Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.

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