House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is predicting Democrats will buck the historical trend of the president’s party losing seats in midterm elections.
During a press conference on Thursday, Pelosi said, “I have absolutely no intention of the Democrats not winning the House in November.”
“I think that in terms of the work that this president has done, he’s been a great president. I don’t know about polls. But I do know about winning the races one district at a time,” she continued.
The California Democrat went on:
“When we won in ’18, we won 40 seats — 31 in Trump districts…He wasn’t on the ballot. I said, ‘Now comes the hard part cause he’s now on the ballot in 2020.’ So we lost about a third of those seats. But the ones who won are practically iron-clad.”
Additionally, she predicted that Democrats would actually increase their majority in the House.
Watch the video below:
“I have absolutely no intention of the Democrats not winning the House in November.”
— The Recount (@therecount) May 19, 2022
— House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she expects the Democrat House majority to grow after the midterm elections. pic.twitter.com/5W00wvcRpM
According to Gallup, “The president’s party almost always suffers a net loss of U.S. House seats in midterm elections. However, losses tend to be much steeper when the president is unpopular.”
“In Gallup’s polling history, presidents with job approval ratings below 50% have seen their party lose 37 House seats, on average, in midterm elections. That compares with an average loss of 14 seats when presidents had approval ratings above 50%,” it added.
According to RealClearPolitics’ average of polls, President Joe Biden’s approval rating sits at 41.1%, with 54.1% disapproval.
If Democrats lost 14 seats, they would lose control of the chamber.
In a March interview with Time Magazine, Pelosi dismissed the “conventional wisdom” about midterm losses.
“There’s nothing conventional anymore,” she argued, “Because of the way people communicate, social media, and how they receive their information, how they’re called to action, how they’re called to meetings and the rest is quite different.”
She added, “We have a vision of victory. We have a plan to get it done. We’re going to own the ground.”
Additionally, Pelosi suggested, “If anything we’ll pick up seats rather than lose 10 to 15, which conventional wisdom said that we would.”
“There’s nothing conventional anymore, and it certainly ain’t wisdom,” she reiterated.