Why did the Democrats lose so badly in 2010?

[Sir Mohamed]

I never quite understood why the Democrats lost so badly in 2010 midterm elections. I mean, really badly. Less than two years before President Obama got into office with unbelievable enthusiasm. How did it come so far? Democrats held 257 house seats, that’s ten more than the GOP currently holds. Meaning, they could have lost more than 35 seats and still maintain a majority. Why did it happen so fast? Such big losses are, if at all, more common in the midterm elections during a second presidential term, but not the first.

I often heard that it was due to the slow economic recovery in Obama’s first two years. However, I found an analogy in history that tells a different story: In 1932, during a great recession, a Democratic president was elected with great enthusiasm, Democrats won large majorities in congress and the administration consequently passed major reforms to battle the economic downturn. The public mainly blamed previous Republican administrations for the crisis. Very similar to 2008. But as it is well known, the US economy did just slightly improve until the late 1930s. The New Deal helped a lot, but it took WW2 to take the country entirely out of the depression. But unlike in 2010, the 1934 midterms saw practically no changes in congress (Dems even made minor gains), although the economy just slightly got better. The voters didn’t lose patience with FDR so fast; they even reelected him by a record margin in 1936 and further expanded the congressional majorities.

Didn’t low voter turnout play a bigger role? And the fact that Republicans were less obstructionist against FDR than Obama?