Forecasting the 2014 Midterm Elections: "The Sixth Year Itch"

I thought RealClearPolitics did an interesting forecast of the 2014 midterm elections. They looked back at all of the sixth year midterm elections of two term presidents and identified a pattern. The pattern suggests that the Democrats will not take too big of a hit when 2014 rolls around. Take a look.

I’ve highlighted elections where the president’s party lost more than 10 percent of its caucus in the midterm. The pattern is this: Two-term presidents almost always get thumped in one midterm election, but they almost never get thumped twice. The one exception is the Republicans in 1870 and 1874, and that first loss was almost entirely due to the party’s unsustainable strength in the South.