How Democrats can defy history in 2022

The huge voter turnout over the past three elections could scramble the usual dynamics of midterm voting -- potentially providing Democrats their best chance to avoid losses next year that could cost them control of the House, the Senate or both.

The president's party has almost always lost ground in the first midterm after his election, a trend that stretches back well into the 19th century and threatens Democrats clinging to a slim majority in the House and a 50-50 split in the Senate after Joe Biden's victory in 2020. One reason for those consistent losses, political scientists and campaign operatives agree, has been that voters who support the new president typically have not felt as much urgency to turn out in the midterm elections as the voters opposed to him. That risk still looms over Democrats, but the party has a unique, rarely discussed, asset in trying to avoid that fate in 2022: the unusually large pool of voters who have backed its candidates in recent elections.