The Hat Trick in Senate Elections: Schumer and Menendez Could Make History

Random question I wanted answered, how often does a party gain seats in the Senate while managing to defend all of their own seats two cycles in a row.

What I found was really interesting as it’s only happened one time before since we began electing Senators and what I found could be very indicative to the future of the Democratic Party.

The 17th Amendment, which made Senator an elected position, was implemented in 1914 so that is where I start.  I also attempt to explain why a certain party had the advantage in said election and how they managed to get such a sweep.

As you can see, doing it twice in a row has only occurred only one other time, in 1932 and 1934.

The first thing to observe is that one-sided gain largely occurs in wave elections and few times else, coinciding with mid-term anti ruling feelings or wins coinciding with the winning presidential candidate’s party.  And these one sided gains are generally pretty large.

With the distinction of these being wave elections, then there are instances where the power of a wave election can be nulled, when the incumbent never won a general election or when the incumbent has become a flawed candidate and also when the seat is open and candidate recruitment trumps national trend.  

There are four such elections where large, bloodless gains were made and the opposing party was able to capture a seat.  They all feature the above characteristics of massive gains and wave elections and they all featured the opposite party only gaining one other seat with my above exceptions.  In 1924, the GOP gains five seats but also loses NM, where the GOP incumbent was appointed, won a special election in September but then lost his election to a full term three years later.  1986 wouldve been nine seats for the Dems if it hadn’t been for an open MO seat where former Gov. Bond beat the current Lt. Gov, so candidate recruitment mainly.

In 1930 the Dems gained eight seats but lost IA where the Dem incumbent actually lost the election 6 years earlier by just under 1,000 votes but he challenged the election and the Senate seated him instead of the GOP winner, who eventually won in 1930.  And in 1936, the Democrats captured six but lost their open seat in Massachusetts with a crappy candidate who FDR wouldn’t even endorse.  

While the current political climate certainly isnt portraying this, the overall political climate we are living through is similar only to that of the 1930’s, when there was the realignment from the Republicans to the Democrats, a realignment that was deep and affected our country until the conservative resurgence with Reagan.  And even with the conservative resurgence, there was never a two-cycle interval where the Republicans dominated the Democrats in such a manner, which leaves me to believe that they never had a realignment, they instead got a good two to three decade run to ________ (insert various ways they screwed up.)

If you include 1930 and 1936, then the Democrats enjoyed four consecutive cycles of bloodless Senate gains amounting in 35 Republican seats being flipped, but by the numbers, the two times in the history of Senate elections where a party has gained seats while losing none of their own are 1932 and 1934, and 2006 and 2008, with this occurrence almost always coinciding with wave elections and them being huge gains.  Again, if you include 1930 and 1936, they all seems to synch up.  2006/1930 pissed off electorate voting out incumbent party, 2008/1932 was solidifying these gains and electing a Dem president, and then hopeful thinking would be 2010/1934, large gains to finally get rid of that class of Senators who need to be Democrat-ified, and then 2012/1936 some more gains while re-electing Dem president.

What I think is most interesting is the process of the Republicans gaining back all of these losses after the hey-day of the early 30’s.  The three mid-term elections starting with FDR’s second resulted in large, bloodless gains by the GOP and coincided with each of the three Senate classes, giving the GOP a chance to reclaim their loss seats from every class in a mid-term.  This model then would show large losses in 2014, 2018, and 2022.

So with my question answered, it turns out that Schumer and Menendez could make history if the current political climate shapes up in our favor and we can manage to capitalize on the Senate map we’ve got for this cycle.  It’s certainly still quite doable but every poll makes the likelihood of the hat trick a bit dimmer.  But, the larger take away message I got from researching this was that regardless of what happens in the mid-term elections, the only comparable period in Senate elections to the one we just currently went through are that of the progressive revolution in the 1930’s, so give yourself a pat on the back all, we’re back and ready to start taking names and kicking asses.