Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Midterm Elections Used To Gauge President's Reelection Chances, Desmond D. Wallace

Honors Theses

Conventional analysis of midterm elections is usually in relation to the previous presidential election, or the issues or events leading up towards a presidential election. Rarely is midterm elections considered in terms of whether the president, or his party in some cases, would retain the White House in the next presidential election. The focus of this research is to determine whether midterm elections can serve as a predictive indicator of the outcome in the following presidential election. For decades, scholars have speculated as to why the president's party suffers losses at the midterm election. An examination of these theories can …