One-Sided Government
Republicans, in name, hold the trifecta in Washington—a majority in the House, a majority in the Senate, and the White House. For obvious reasons, namely the lack of progress on virtually anything, there’s dissatisfaction with the current trifecta. Come to think of it, the same thing happened at this point in the first Trump presidency—making the case about the depth of the D.C. Swamp.
A group called USAFacts sent out a news release a few days ago. The group mapped party margins in every Congress since 1789, using the Congressional Biographical Directory.
Their data shows that since 1995, neither party has started a Congress with more than 59 percent of either chamber—so while the super-thin majorities we have today are relatively unique, it’s been a while since one party held firm control of either the House or Senate.
It also shows that since 1857, before the Civil War, more than three-quarters of the time–76.5 percent–Congress opened a two-year session with both chambers under unified control. That sort of makes sense, that the mood of the voters would be consistent. But in the last quarter-century, since 2001, no unified stretch has lasted more than four years. The current one, shaky though it is, started in 2023.
And USAFacts points out that since 2025, when the current Senate convened, Republicans held a majority of seats, and it would have taken six seats changing hands to flip that majority. But a flip in the House would have taken only three.
But that’s nothing like the Congress in place during the second half of President Hoover’s term. Republicans won a narrow majority in the 1930 election, but by the time the Congress was sworn in, a number of Representatives-elect had died; the resulting special elections threw the majority to the Democrats.
