Media definitions of a wave election

Wave elections (1918-2016)

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Wave analyses

What is a wave? • Evaluating 2018 • House waves • Senate waves • Gubernatorial waves • State legislative waves

Additional analyses

Multiple waves • Presidential waves • Election types • Overall waves vs. modern waves • Effectiveness of the out-of-power party • U.S. House waves since 1918

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Limitations • Data • Further analysis

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Waves in the media

Media coverage • Media definitions

2018 elections

U.S. Senate • U.S. House • Governorships • State legislatures

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Who Runs the States Competitiveness in State Legislatures

The term wave election is frequently used to describe an election cycle in which one party makes significant gains in the U.S. Senate or U.S. House.

There is no consensus on how many seats must be gained for an election to qualify as a wave, and some definitions are more expansive, also considering a party's performance in gubernatorial and state legislature races.

Factors identified as precipitators of a wave election include:

• The popularity of the president
• The number of open seats
• The success or failure of a major policy initiative

Media definitions

Many media sources and political commentators have published definitions of the term wave election, including metrics for what defines a wave election and which previous election cycles qualify. A selection of these definitions can be found below, listed in alphabetical order:

• Breitbart: "In order to take back the House, Democrats would need a 'wave' election in which one party enjoys dramatic political gains. But there is no wave on the horizon, largely because of the president’s unpopularity. There have been only four times in the past two decades in which the House saw a net seat change in the double digits. In those four election years—1994, 2006, 2008 and 2010—the wave was fueled by backlash against the incumbent president’s party."

• Brennan Center for Justice: "During the 20th century, tidal wave congressional elections were a once-a-generation occurrence. When the political waters raced down the beach destroying everything in sight, there generally was a one-sentence explanation. In 1958 it was the Republican recession; in 1974 it was Watergate; and in 1994 it was Bill Clinton's failed health-care reform proposal. But just like coastal erosion has become the new normal, so have tidal wave elections whenever the White House isn't on the ballot (2006, 2010 and now 2014).

• The Los Angeles Times: "There is no authoritative definition of a wave election. (Which is not to be confused with a realigning election, like those in 1932 and 1968, in which a party forges a new and enduring presidential coalition.) A wave election is commonly considered one in which a political party wins a large and lopsided number of House and Senate seats while sustaining minimal losses. In the past 20 years, there have been several wave elections of that type, including 1994 when Republicans netted 54 House and 10 Senate seats; 2006 when Democrats won 31 House and six Senate seats; 2008 when Democrats gained 21 House and eight Senate seats, and—most spectacularly—the last midterm vote, in 2010, when the GOP won 63 House seats and four in the Senate."

• National Review: "The 2014 GOP tsunami is the fourth time since World War II that Republicans have picked up control of at least one house of Congress in what can be called a midterm 'wave election.' In each previous case—1946, 1994, 2010—a Democrat held the White House and Republicans thought the wave presaged his subsequent defeat. Each time, however, the Democrat won reelection relatively easily."

• New Republic: "In the United States, wave elections are usually defined in terms of gains in the House and the Senate. In midterm years, strong congressional gains are often accompanied by a net gain in governorships, about two-thirds of which come up for election in the same year. Midterm wave elections generally favor the party in opposition to the president. In the quintessential wave election of 1994, Republicans made net gains of 52 seats in the House and 11 governorships. In 2006, Democrats picked up 31 House seats and 6 governorships. Most recently, in 2010, Republicans picked up 64 House seats and six governorships."

• The New Yorker: "In short, [the 2014 election] was a big protest vote, and a big defeat for President Obama. To that extent, it was a big victory for the Republicans. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader-elect, earned his moment of glory. ... But if a 'wave election' is one that signifies important changes in the underlying dynamics of the American electorate, then this wasn’t a wave election."

• RealClearPolitics: "The terms 'wave' and 'tsunami' are bandied about so often that it is easy to lose sight of the fact that there is no real definition for them. Everyone seems to agree that a 'wave' election involves big gains for one party or the other. But what counts as 'big'? ... The median wave election involves a gain of six seats, the defeat of four incumbents (without losing any), and the defeat of 58 percent of incumbents in friendly states. The median non-wave year involves gains of one seat, defeating two incumbents, and defeating 17 percent of incumbents in friendly states."

• The Rhodes Cook Letter: "And in recent years, there have been three basic ways that turnout has worked to produce the sort of 'big wave' midterm that the Democrats are hoping for now.

First, is the 'one-party surge,' where one of the parties significantly increases its vote from the previous midterm while the other party’s vote remains essentially unchanged. That is what happened in 1994, when Republicans won control of both houses of Congress. The nationwide GOP congressional vote spiked by more than 9 million votes from 1990, the biggest increase in one party’s vote from one midterm to another since World War II. Meanwhile, the Democratic total declined by 400,000 votes.

Another way to produce a big change in Congress is a 'one-party collapse,' where a huge number of voters from one of the parties simply sit out the election. That is what happened in 1974, when the dispiriting backdrop of the Watergate scandal led to a nearly 3-million vote falloff in the Republican House vote from 1970. The Democratic vote grew by barely 1 million. But the GOP drop off was so severe that it cost the Republicans nearly 50 House seats.

A third way to effect considerable change in Congress is what might be called 'unequal gains,' where both parties add votes from the previous midterm but one party gains far more than the other. That happened in 1982, President Reagan’s first midterm, when the Republican congressional vote grew by more than 3 million from 1978, but the Democratic tally swelled by more than 6 million. The result: a gain of roughly two dozen House seats for the Democrats."

• USA Today: "Historically, there have been very few post-World War II elections that would qualify as 'waves'—especially in the Senate, where seat losses by either party of more than 10 are exceedingly rare. These occurred in 1946, when Democrats lost a dozen Senate seats in Harry Truman's first midterm elections; in 1958, when they picked up 13 (a record); in 1980, when Ronald Reagan's coattails swept in a dozen new GOP senators and gave the party control of the Senate for the first time since 1954; and in 1994, when eight Democrats lost their seats in the upper chamber. No election since then has seen so sweeping a change in the number of senators. But it doesn't take an election wave of victories for one party to take control of the Senate. In fact, the majority in the Senate shifted twice in elections since 1994."

• Weekly Standard: "A wave election would hardly be a surprise in next year’s midterm voting. The first midterm of a new administration usually goes poorly for the president’s party. And the Virginia results may be a preview of a political wave in which Republicans lose the House, Senate, governorships, and state legislatures—the reverse of their success in 2010."

Historical interest in wave elections

Google Trends provides a timeline of the relative popularity of a search term. According to the website, "Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. Likewise a score of 0 means the term was less than 1% as popular as the peak."

Public interest in wave elections increases in November during presidential and midterm elections. It reached its peak in November 2016.

Related terms

• Landslide election: An election where a candidate wins by a significant majority of votes.

• Realigning election: An election which sees a shift in a party's platform and membership, leading to major and sustained changes to the partisan affiliation of the electorate.

• Undertow election: An election victory driven by an unexpected waning of support from the opposing candidate's base.