Dem
47
GOP
53
Since 2000, in every election save two, either one chamber of Congress or the White House changed parties. People want change. No matter who is in charge, they don't like it. Here are the "change" elections since 1900, when at least one of the three power centers changed parties. The orange elections are the ones when one of the three flipped.
As you can see, since 2000, in 11 of the 13 federal elections, at least one chamber or the White House changed hands, including the most recent six times. This is not a good omen for House Republicans. Actually, it is even worse than the graphic shows, since between the 2000 and 2002 elections, the Senate flipped several times as members jumped ship.
Since 2016, in every presidential election, the incumbent party lost the White House. In the past seven presidential elections, voters wanted the other party in the White House five times. Also in that period, the Senate flipped five times and the House flipped four times. The only elections since 2000 when nothing changed were 2004 (after 9/11) and Barack Obama's second election. Republicans who see this are probably fairly nervous, and if they are not, they are not paying attention. And these data have nothing to do with the fact that there is a historically unpopular president in the White House right now.
The last four presidents all had the trifecta when they first took office: Obama (2008), Trump (2016), Biden (2020), and Trump (2024). They all tried to exploit it quickly, knowing it wouldn't last. Obama pushed through the ACA. Trump v1.0 got a big tax cut through. Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (which wasn't about inflation at all), and Trump got his BBB in v2.0.
A lot of this is because what Tip O'Neill said ("all elections are local") is no longer true. In fact, all elections are national now. Candidates for dogcatcher have to answer reporters' questions like: "Are you going to focus on catching white dogs or brown dogs?" Coupled with an extremely even split between Republicans and Democrats, it doesn't take much to upset the applecart. (V)