This decade has been missing its big-impact midterm
This article explores the historical significance of midterm elections and notes that the 2020s have yet to see a high-impact midterm cycle. It discusses how voter participation and political energy fluctuate during these non-presidential election years.
Why it matters
Understanding midterm trends is essential for predicting shifts in congressional power and state-level governance in the United States.
Given all that's happened in American politics since 2019, it may be hard to believe there's been anything missing.
But the decade of the 2020s has yet to see a midterm that mattered much — or that ranked among the impact midterms of past decades.
Only on NPR The real reason it's going to take a while to know who won in some midterm races That sets the 2020s apart, as every other decade over the past hundred years has produced at least one midterm that made a big difference in Congress and in national politics more broadly.
These big-impact midterms have also shifted power in the statehouses, often signaling changes in state and national political landscapes that have mattered and lasted.
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