Hostname: page-component-6bb9c88b65-6scc2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-25T06:41:55.236Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Political History Forecast of the 2024 US Congressional Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2024

Michael S. Lewis-Beck  and
Stephen Quinlan Open the ORCID record for Stephen Quinlan [Opens in a new window]
Michael S. Lewis-Beck
Affiliation:
University of Iowa, USA
Stephen Quinlan
Affiliation:
GESIS–Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Statesman and scholar Alexis de Tocqueville (1876) once noted, “History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.” In other words, history has a habit of repeating itself, and we can deduce cycles and patterns that likely will recur. Such stability and inertia should bode well for prediction. Nevertheless, when it comes to election forecasting, especially in the United States, most prognostications rely on short-term political fundamentals measuring macroeconomic performance or government or leader popularity. In this contribution, we adopt a structural approach but depart from existing literature by focusing on historical party and governance dynamics in the vein of de Tocqueville to establish whether they offer solid guidance regarding the performance of Democrats in US congressional elections. Our ex-post political history models provide solid predictions of which party will control Congress and the Democrats’ seat tally in each chamber between 1946 and 2022. This creates conditions to assume that political history may help us forecast Campaign 2024. Our study applied this political history model to predict the 2024 congressional elections. It forecast Democrats to lose control of the Senate with a net loss of three seats and estimated an exceptionally close race for House control, with the point estimate for the House suggesting that the Democrats would fall short of winning control.

Information

Type
Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 58 , Issue 2: Forecasting the 2024 US Election , April 2025 , pp. 274 - 279
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

ABBA. 1974. “Waterloo.” Music composed by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson; lyrics written by Stikkan Anderson. London: Polydor Records.Google Scholar
Abramowitz, Alan I., and Saunders, Kyle L.. 1998. “Ideological Realignment in the U.S. Electorate.” Journal of Politics 60 (3): 634–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Algara, Carlos, Gomez, Lisette, Headington, Edward, Liu, Hengjiang, and Nigri, Bianca. 2024. “Forecasting Partisan Collective Accountability During the 2024 U.S. Presidential and Congressional Elections.” PS: Political Science & Politics. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096524000854. Accessed December 10, 2024.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ballotpedia. 2022. “Ballotpedia Encyclopedia of American Elections and Politics.” https://ballotpedia.org.Google Scholar
Brownstein, Ronald. 2023. “Trump’s Threat to Democracy Is Now Systemic.” The Atlantic, August 2. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/donald-trump-indictment-gop-jan-6/674895.Google Scholar
Campbell, James E. 2006. “Party Systems and Realignments in the United States, 1868–2004.” Social Science History 30 (3): 359–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colvin, Jill, and Barrow, Bill. 2024. “Trump Keeps Making Incendiary Statements. His Campaign Says That Won’t Change.” Associated Press, March 3. https://apnews.com/article/trump-biden-republicans-pivot-e1d9ff3444ce5c7cc942250cff057be5.Google Scholar
Cuzan, Alfred G. 2015. “Five Laws of Politics.” PS: Political Science & Politics 48:415–19.Google Scholar
Dassonneville, Ruth, Lewis-Beck, Michael S., and Mongrain, Philippe. 2017. “Forecasting Dutch Elections: An Initial Model from the March 2017 Legislative Contests.” Research & Politics 4 (3). DOI:10.1177/2053168017720023.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Homans, Charles. 2024. “Donald Trump Has Never Sounded Like This.” New York Times, April 27. www.nytimes.com/2024/04/27/magazine/trump-rallies-rhetoric.html.Google Scholar
Jérôme, Bruno, Jérôme-Speziari, Veronique, and Lewis-Beck, Michael S.. 2022. “Forecasting the 2021 German Election: A Win for Armin Laschet?” PS: Political Science & Politics 55 (1):73–78.Google Scholar
Keilis-Borok, Vladimir, and Lichtman, Allan. 1981. “Pattern Recognition Applied to Presidential Elections in the United States, 1890–1980: The Role of Integral Social, Economic, and Political Traits.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 78:7230–34.Google Scholar
Key, Valdimer O. 1959. “Secular Realignment and the Party System.” Journal of Politics 21:198–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael S. 2005. “Election Forecasting: Principles and Practice.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 7:145–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael S., and Tien, Charles S.. 2004. “Jobs and the Job of President: Forecast for 2004.” PS: Political Science & Politics 37 (4): 753–58.Google Scholar
Lockerbie, Brad. 2023. “Economic Pessimism and the 2022 Election: A Postmortem.” Polity 55 (3): 629–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lockerbie, Brad. 2024. “The Challenge of Forecasting the 2024 Presidential and House Elections: Economic Pessimism and Election Outcomes.” PS: Political Science & Politics. https://doi.org/10.1017/S104909652400091X. Accessed December 10, 2024.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Madison, James. 1788a. “Federalist No. 39: The Conformity of the Plan to Republican Principles.” https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-31-40#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493394.Google Scholar
Madison, James. 1788b. “Federalist No. 45: The Alleged Danger from the Powers of the Union to the State Governments Considered.” https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-41-50#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493409.Google Scholar
Matland, Richard E., and Studlar, Donley T.. 2004. “Determinants of Legislative Turnover: A Cross-National Analysis.” British Journal of Political Science 34:87–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nadeau, Richard, and Lewis-Beck, Michael S.. 2020. “Election Forecasts: Cracking the Danish Case.” International Journal of Forecasting 36 (3): 892–98. DOI:10.1016/j.ijforecast.2019.09.007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nannestad, Peter, and Paldam, Martin. 2002. “The Cost of Ruling: A Foundation Stone for Two Theories.” In Economic Voting, ed. Han, Dorussen and Michael, Taylor, 17–44. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Norpoth, Helmut. 1991. “The Popularity of the Thatcher Government: A Matter of War and Economy.” In Economics and Politics: The Calculus of Support, ed. Norpoth, Helmut, Lafay, Jean-Dominique, and Lewis-Beck, Michael S., 141–60. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Office of the Clerk, US House of Representatives. 2022. “Office of the Clerk–United States Federal Election Statistics: 1920 to Present.” https://history.house.gov/Institution/Election-Statistics/Election-Statistics.Google Scholar
Petrocik, John R. 1987. “Realignment: New Party Coalitions and the Nationalization of the South.” Journal of Politics 49:347–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierson, Paul. 2000. “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics.” American Political Science Review 94 (2): 251–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pildes, Richard H. 2011. “Why the Center Does Not Hold: The Causes of Hyperpolarized Democracy in America.” California Law Review 99 (2): 273–333.Google Scholar
Quinlan, Stephen. 2024. “Replication Data for ‘A Political History Forecast of the 2024 US Congressional Elections.’” PS: Political Science & Politics. DOI: 10.7910/DVN/O7VAHB.Google Scholar
Quinlan, Stephen, and Lewis-Beck, Michael S.. 2023. “A Political-History Forecast Model of Congressional Elections: Lessons Learned from Campaign 2022.” Polity 55 (3).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinlan, Stephen, and Lewis-Beck, Michael S.. 2024. “Predicting Bloc Support in Irish General Elections 1951–2020: A Political-History Model.” Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties 34 (1): 136–57. DOI:10.1080/17457289.2022.2120884.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinlan, Stephen, Schnaudt, Christian, and Lewis-Beck, Michael S.. 2021. “Forecasting Bloc Support in German Federal Elections: A Political-History Model.” PS: Political Science & Politics 55 (1): 91–96.Google Scholar
Tien, Charles S., and Lewis-Beck, Michael S.. 2023. “Referendum Model Forecasts: Trump and the 2022 Midterm Errors.” Polity 55 (3): 616–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Tocqueville, Alexis. 1876. “Democracy in America.” The New American Cyclopedia, Vol. 8, 234. New York: D. Appleton and Company.Google Scholar
Tufte, Edward R. 1975. “Determinants of the Outcomes of Midterm Congressional Elections.” American Political Science Review 69 (3): 812–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
West, Darrell M. 2022. Power Politics: Trump and the Assault on American Democracy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Wlezien, Christopher. 2016. “Policy (Mis)Representation and the Cost of Ruling: U.S. Presidential Elections in Comparative Perspective.” Comparative Political Studies 50 (6): 711–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Lewis-Beck and Quinlan supplementary material

Lewis-Beck and Quinlan supplementary material
Download Lewis-Beck and Quinlan supplementary material(File)
File 852.8 KB