What happened to Trump in his last midterm elections?

President Donald Trump is facing a potentially disastrous midterms Election Day Tuesday, with his Republican Party set to lose its majority in the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate too, according to current polling. The nationwide vote sees all 435 House seats and 35 of the 100 Senate seats up for grabs, with the Democrats requiring a net gain of just three seats to win the House and four to take back the Senate.The electorate typically punishes the party of the president at the midterms and the last time Trump was involved during his first term, on November 6, 2018, the opposition took back the House but the Republicans just managed to cling onto the Senate.The run-up to that vote was dominated by the issue of national security and Trump’s attempts to secure the southern border with Mexico by building an enormous border wall that was never completed.In October 2018, the president had sent 5,200 members of the National Guard to the border, adding to the 2,100 he had already stationed there, in order to meet a “migrant caravan” of refugees said to be making the perilous journey north from Honduras to a checkpoint in McAllen, Texas.President Donald Trump had a mixed night the last time his party contested the midterms when he was president, losing the House of Representatives but hanging on to the Senate (AFP/Getty)Trump, a huge advocate for Twitter at the time, tweeted two weeks before the elections that “Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in” with the exodus, later characterizing those participating as “Gang Members and some very bad people,” without offering any evidence for the speculation. It was nevertheless covered in breathless style on conservative media right up until Election Day in the hope of scaring up votes.Immigration is no longer such a strong issue for Trump eight years on due to the public backlash ICE has attracted since the killing of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota in January this year.Back in 2018, the Democrats needed to pick up 23 seats to win back the House and, ultimately, comfortably surpassed that total to end up with a majority of 232 to 198 taking them into the 116th Congress.They ultimately used their power to launch impeachment proceedings against Trump in September 2019 after a whistleblower reported him for threatening to withhold $400 million in congressionally-approved military aid to Ukraine on an official call with that country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, unless the latter opened an investigation into Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s business dealings in his country.While the House voted to impeach the president, he went on to be acquitted in the Senate, where Republicans had managed to hang onto a 53-47 majority.Trump and his allies in conservative media went into overdrive whipping up hysteria about a ‘migrant caravan’ heading for Texas from Central America during the 2018 midterms season (AFP/Getty)Other noteworthy occurrences at the 2018 midterms included the election of more women than ever before, with 88 female Democrats, 13 Republicans and 10 independents winning their races. Among their number was progressive New Yorker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, now being tipped as a presidential candidate for 2028, as well as fellow “Squad” members Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressely of Massachusetts and Minnestota’s Ilhan Omar, who remains a particular enemy of Trump and recently had her D.C. home raided by Homeland Security.It also saw the highest voter turnout since 1914, illustrating Trump’s capacity to motivate people to get out and vote, be that for his party or against it.Other trends revealed by that vote included a sharp racial divide, with a majority of White voters backing Trump’s Republicans but Black voters overwhelmingly supporting Democrats.The president’s party also conquered the rural vote, his populist, anti-establishment message continuing to chime with Americans who felt alienated by metropolitan liberal values.Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, now tipped as a possible 2028 presidential candidate, was one of a record-breaking number of women elected to Congress in November 2018 (Reuters)Trump may struggle to repeat that feat this time, with his full-throated endorsement of data centers and dismissive attitude towards affordability concerns much more likely to frustrate conservatives who expected more help from him.Should the Democrats wrestle back control of Congress again this time, they are expected to begin swiftly launching investigations into the Trump administration and may possibly seek to impeach the president or a high-ranking member of his Cabinet like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.They will also have the power to block Trump’s legislative agenda, rendering him a lame duck reliant on executive orders to try to get his goals met.Although Trump himself is not on the ballot, he has repeatedly encouraged voters to pretend he is in order to encourage turnout, touring red states throughout October to try to whip up enthusiasm.Making the campaign a referendum on his second term could prove a risky strategy, however, given Trump’s dire approval ratings.He is unlikely to accept the blame should a “blue wave” materialize as predicted and may even seek to challenge the results, as he did in 2020 when he lost the presidential election to Biden, setting in motion a chain of events that led to his supporters storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021.