How the Obama years left Democrats in their worst electoral position in nearly 100 years

Obama is leaving the White House worse off for democrats.

(Image credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

published 4 March 2016

President Obama's time in office may have been marked by some major policy wins for Democrats — the passage of ObamaCare, for instance, or the Supreme Court's decision on gay marriage — but that doesn't mean the outgoing president's party is in good shape. On the contrary, Obama's time in office has seen record electoral losses for Democrats, putting the party in its worst position in nearly a century:

During Obama's eight years in office, the Democrats have lost more House, Senate, state legislative and governors seats than under any other president.When Obama took office, there were 60 Democratic senators; now there are 46. The number of House seats held by Democrats has shrunk from 257 to 188.There are now nine fewer Democratic governors than in 2009. Democrats currently hold fewer elected offices nationwide than at any time since the 1920s. [NPR]

While every president's tenure tends to push the electorate toward the opposition, Obama's era has caused his party to suffer a uniquely hard hit. Contributing factors include redistricting, low midterm turnout in typically blue demographics, and uneven distribution of Democratic voters in urban vs. rural areas.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.