History offers Democrats little 2028 comfort after Tuesday's blue wave

Democrats got their wave Tuesday. Whether it's a runner — surfer talk for a swell that keeps rolling — is another question, and CNBC went digging through the history books to answer it. Using an estimate of 41 House seats flipped by the opposition party with some races still being counted, the network ranks this as the tenth-biggest midterm wave since 1938. It's also the heaviest House loss for the party holding the White House since 2018, but it only just squeezes into the historical Top 10.

The record holder is a blowout from another era. In 1938, Democrats shed 72 House seats as a fresh recession, backlash to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's court-packing plan and his running feud with his own party's conservatives all piled on. Roosevelt still won reelection two years later.

Modern waves tell a similarly defiant story. Republicans stormed the House in 2010, two years into Barack Obama's first term, with Democrats dropping 64 seats while hanging onto the Senate. Obama cruised to a second term in 2012. Across the four biggest wave elections on CNBC's list — all of them landing before a president's final term — the incumbent went on to win again every single time.

Then the pattern flips. The next five waves were followed by the White House changing hands, according to CNBC's analysis. Republicans lost seats under President Dwight Eisenhower in 1958; two years later John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon. Republicans lost seats in 2018; two years later Joe Biden beat Donald Trump.

Jay Campbell, a partner at Hart Associates and the Democratic pollster behind the CNBC All-America Economic Survey, says the disconnect comes down to personalities. A lot can shift in two years, and while presidential races ride the broader political mood, they hinge on who's actually on the ballot. If candidate quality matters in congressional contests, he said, it matters a thousand times more in presidential ones.

So the wave is real, and it's gnarly. But 2028 is still a long paddle out, and statistically this thing could fizzle just as easily as it could carry Democrats all the way back to the White House.