3 May 2019 — 0845 mdt

Political party control of the U.S. Presidency

Here’s an interesting — and for Democrats, ominous — statistic: since the election of 1896, a political party has been denied control of the White House after four years only once. That was in 1980 when incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter lost his re-election bid to Ronald Reagan.

And since 1953, only one party has stayed in office more than eight consecutive years. The Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush lasted from 1981 to 1993.

A lot of voters may be reflexively throwing out the bums after eight years, with rare exceptions.

Here’s a year by year breakdown of the occupancy of the White House by political party. The table displays an Excel spreadsheet that you can download.