House Speaker Nancy Pelosi answers questions during a Feb. 9 press conference at the Capitol. | Win McNamee/Getty Images
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expects the Democratic Party to do better than expected in the midterms because they did worse than expected in congressional elections in 2020.
“Forget history; we’re talking about future,” she said Sunday.
Speaking to host George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week,” Pelosi said she saw reasons to believe that Democrats, who hold slender margins in both the House and the Senate, could exceed expectations for the November midterms. Though there have been exceptions, the president’s party has almost always lost seats in midterms.
Pelosi theorized that one reason the presidential party has done so poorly historically is they tend to do very well in presidential election years. Democrats suffered massive losses in both 2010 and 2014, giving back some of the seats they had won in preceding years. But Democrats actually lost 12 seats in the House in 2020 as Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump.