2026 midterms: what the Democratic wave means for 2028

In surfer slang, a wave that lasts a long time is a “runner.” A key question for investors is whether the blue wave that swept across the country on Tuesday was that kind of wave, and could it lead Democrats to victory in 2028.

Statistically, the answer is that it should have little effect.

CNBC has analyzed elections since 1938 and looked at the largest midterm election wave in which the party in the White House lost seats to determine whether that bodes well for the presidential election two years later.

Tuesday’s election was the incumbent party’s biggest loss of seats in the White House since 2018, but it barely made the historic Top 10. She ranks 10th in CNBC’s analysis using an estimate of 41 House seats won by the opposition party while close races are still being counted. The largest loss occurred in 1938, when Democrats lost 72 House seats amid a renewed recession, opposition to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s legal attempts, and the president’s battle with conservatives in his own party. Roosevelt was re-elected two years later, in 1940.

In more modern times, Republicans rose to power in the House of Representatives in 2010, two years after Barack Obama’s first presidential term, with Democrats losing 64 seats, while retaining control of the Senate. Obama was re-elected two years later. Among the first four waves of elections, all of which took place before a president’s final term, the incumbent president was re-elected each time.

But in the next five waves, the incumbent party lost, including John F. Kennedy defeating Richard Nixon in 1960 after Republicans lost seats under President Dwight Eisenhower in 1958; and Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020 after Republicans lost their seats in 2018.

Jay Campbell, a partner at Hart Associates, the Democratic pollster for the CNBC All-America economic survey, said the reason the midterm surges may not continue is the importance of individual characters in presidential elections.

“A lot can happen in two years. And while presidential elections are certainly subject to the overall political environment, they also depend a lot on each party’s nominee,” Campbell said. “If candidate quality matters in congressional elections, it matters 1,000 times more in presidential elections.”

It’s a long road to 2028, and that wave, as turbulent as it may have been, could statistically run out of steam as easily as it could return the Democrats to the White House.