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130 Pol. Sci. Q. 1 (2015-2016)

handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry130 and id is 1 raw text is: Obama and Nationalized Electoral Politics in the 2014 Midterm GARY C. JACOBSON THE 2014 MIDTERM ELECTIONS LEFT THE Republican Party in its strongest position on Capitol Hill since the 71st Congress (1929-1930). The Republicans gained a net 13 seats in the House of Representatives to augment the majority they have held since 2010, but their most important victories were in Senate contests, where they picked up 9 Democratic seats while losing none of their own to take majority control. Republicans entered the 114th Congress (2015-2016) with House and Senate majorities of 247-188 and 54-46, respectively.1 The election results are summarized in Table 1. The election that delivered the Republican victory replicated two well- documented patterns in American electoral politics, one long standing, the other more recent. First, the electorate, in aggregate, once again treated the midterm as a referendum on the economy and the president's job perfor- mance, with predictable consequences. Second, the 2014 elections extended the trend toward increasingly partisan and nationalized congressional elec- tions, centered on the president, that has become a hallmark of the new century. The combination cost the Democrats dearly, as Barack Obama's standing with the public in the fall of 2014 was near its lowest point in his presidency, and Democrats could not escape his shadow. With that shadow so 1The two independent senators, Bernie Sanders ofVermont and Angus King of Maine, vote to organize with the Democrats and so are included in their total here. GARY C. JACOBSON is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, and has published extensively on U.S. elections and public opinion. His most recent book is A Divider Not a Uniter: George W. Bush and the American People, 2nd Edition. POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY I Volume 130 Number 1 2015 I www.psgonline.org © 2015 Academy of Political Science DOI: 10.1002/polq.12290 1

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