United States midterm election

On the ballot are many mayors, other local public offices, and a wide variety of citizen and legislatively referred initiatives.

[4] While Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution sets the U.S. president's term of office to four years, Article I, Section 2, Clause 1 sets a two-year term for congressmembers elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

[6] Midterm elections are regarded as a referendum on the sitting president's and/or incumbent party's performance.

[7][8] The party of the incumbent president tends to lose ground during midterm elections:[9] since World War II, the president's party has lost an average of 26 seats in the House, and an average of four seats in the Senate.

Moreover, since direct public midterm elections were introduced, in only eight of those (under presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden) has the president's party gained seats in the House or the Senate, and of those only two (1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and 2002, George W. Bush) have seen the president's party gain seats in both houses.