Why sudden shifts in power have become the new norm In American politics...

One of the most potent trends in American politics of the 21st century is more likely to continue in the 2026 midterm elections given President Donald Trump's falling approval ratings.

The president's steady decline in popularity has made it more likely that Democrats will win the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate in November. In 11 of the 13 elections that have taken place since 2000, Democrats have held control of either the House, the Senate, or the White House. This extraordinary streak of volatility will continue if Democrats win control of either chamber. In contrast, only five of the final 13 elections of the 20th century and only seven of the last 20 elections dating back to 1960 saw a change in control of either the congressional chamber or the White House. Political analysts typically focus on the president and his party's immediate decisions whenever voters turn against the party in power. But the pattern of rapid reversals has become so entrenched that it appears driven less by tactical decisions than by deeper forces in the economy, society and the electorate that show no sign of abating.

Doug Sosnik, a former White House political adviser for Bill Clinton who has observed the trend, stated, "If we are having this conversation, it will probably be 14 out of 16 elections with people voting for change in five or six years." Part of the explanation for this volatility is that whenever they do win power, both parties usually have only managed to scratch out small majorities.  They have little cushion for the midterm losses that the president's party has always suffered due to these smaller majorities. According to Stanford University political scientist and senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, Brandice Canes-Wrone, "the midterm loss phenomenon is not new to the 21st century, but often the party in power absorbed the losses" and preserved its majority. Now, she said, “the majorities are so tight” that even small reversals flip control.

 A similar dynamic is evident in the White House’s revolving door.  Each party has reliably locked down so much of the Electoral College that small shifts in the handful of swing states now decide elections.

But while narrow congressional and Electoral College margins can explain the frequent shifts in power, that raises another question: What explains the narrow margins?

Income disparity grows as a result of fewer swing voters. In their book “Identity Crisis,” UCLA political scientist Lynn Vavreck and co-authors John Sides and Michael Tesler, argued that the 2016 election culminated a long-term shift in the basic conflict between the parties from economic to cultural issues.  They wrote that Trump "tipped the axis of political debate to competing visions of American identity and inclusiveness" around polarizing issues like immigration, racial diversity, and LGBTQ rights. Vavreck stated, "For the most part of our lives, politics was contested over the New Deal issues—the size and role of government." Those times are so long gone. We are not (primarily) fighting over the tax rate anymore.  In 2016, Trump raised these identity-inflected issues (and) now … we are fighting about who deserves to be an American.”

Vavreck and her colleagues argued that a political order based on such divergent notions of the nation's identity makes it harder for the majority of voters to imagine switching parties. She stated that when "the differences between the parties in the early 1990s" revolved around the role of government, more voters who supported one party could envision "not hate" living in a country run by the other.