Government trifecta

Opponents argue that trifectas discourage policing of those in power by the opposition and that they do not limit spending and the expansion of undesirable laws, which sometimes can even trigger democratic backsliding.

[3] Opponents also argue that government trifectas do not tend to lead to compromise since one party can simply implement its goals unopposed.

In systems that use fusion of powers and where the executive has to rely on the confidence of the legislature, the executive is almost always composed of members of the party or coalition that controls the lower house of the legislature, essentially creating a situation where there always is a government trifecta, assuming the upper chamber is in the same party's control.

The term is primarily used in the United States, where the federal government level consists of the president and the Congress with its two chambers, the House and the Senate.

The longest trifectas were two stints of 14 years, one for each major party: 1932–1946 for the Democrats, coinciding with Franklin D. Roosevelt's three terms plus Harry S. Truman's first two years, and 1897–1911 for the Republicans, spanning the presidencies of William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.