Talk:Wave elections in the United States

Definition of Wave Election
I think the current definition of wave election in the article (a net gain of +20 House seats, +1 Senate seats, and not losing the presidency) is good for the last century. However, it does not work so well for previous eras. 20 seats is currently 4.6%. In the first US Congress, 20 seats was 33.9%. This makes the criteria for wave election different the further back you go, raising the standards. I would propose changing the minimum number of House seats gained to a nice round 5% of whatever the current size of the House is at that point in time. Also, I would like to pose the question of whether or not we should use wave elections in eras without clearly defined parties (the 1790s, and mid 1820s). Thunderstone99 (talk) 00:03, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Elections which would be added to the list under this scenario: 1796 (9.4% swing to the Federalists), 1804 (7.7% swing to the Democratic-Republicans), 1810 (9.7% swing to the Democratic-Republicans), 1818 (7.5% swing to the Democratic-Republicans), 1850 (7.6% swing to the Democrats), and 1880 (5.4% gain by Republicans). Elections which would be subtracted to the list if we raised the threshold from 20 seats to 5%: 2008 (since 5% of 435 is 21.75.  Unless we go by truncating instead of rounding). If, to keep 2008 on the list, we decide to use 4.6% instead of 5%, nothing would have to be added. If we decided to drop down to 4% to get a round percent, then 1826 would have to be added. Thunderstone99 (talk) 04:34, 20 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Using a percentage of House seats makes a lot of sense to me, good idea. Orser67 (talk) 01:30, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I think this article needs a tighter definition of what qualifies as a 'wave election'. It states 'wave elections are usually considered to be the exception rather than the norm', yet the list currently states that almost half the elections in the 20th century were wave elections. If they're supposed to be uncommon, perhaps we should use more restrictive criteria; as it is, the term 'wave election' isn't all that informative. Robofish (talk) 00:39, 16 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I would also like to see a better definition of a "wave election." The only reason I went with this definition is that it was the only one I could find from a reliable source that had a concrete number. One takeaway from this article though is that maybe wave elections aren't uncommon. Orser67 (talk) 04:04, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

2014 election
Should the 2014 midterms be included? While the Republicans only gained 13 seats in the house, they picked up 9 seats in the Senate, the biggest gain by a party since 1980. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:241:300:C930:A5B3:A911:69EA:77F5 (talk) 22:12, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Include 2018?
IPs going back and forth with this.--Malerooster (talk) 20:34, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
 * It was readded. We need to change/update the list definition if this is to be included. --Malerooster (talk) 23:25, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

The election has been widely described as a wave election.

We should stick to what RS say. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 14:55, 15 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I removed the entry for the 2018 elections from the list. First, the 2018 elections did not fit the definition of wave election set forth in the lede. The lede was then edited, and the definition set forth in the revised lede encompasses the 2018 elections. But there is another issue: The definition of wave election set forth directly above the list reads as follows: In the following elections, one party gained twenty or more seats in the House, picked up at least one seat in the Senate, and did not lose a Presidential election. Years in which significant gains were realized by both parties due to an increase in the size of the House or Senate are not included. There is no source provided for this definition. The 2018 elections do not fall within this definition; also, this definition is not the same as the one in the lede. As I stated in my edit summary, I think it is unnecessary to have a Wikipedia page about a term as vague and nebulous as wave election. But if we are going to have a Wikipedia page on this topic, it should be consistent. SunCrow (talk) 02:37, 16 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I just removed the following sentence from the lede: Although there is no precise definition of a wave election, the term is used in the United States when one party makes major electoral gains in the United States House of Representatives or the United States Senate. I removed it because it was not supported by any of the three sources that followed it. I replaced it with the following sentence, which is supported by those sources: There is no one consensus definition of a wave election. SunCrow (talk) 02:58, 16 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I have tagged the list of wave elections as original research due to its unsourced definition of wave election. SunCrow (talk) 03:11, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Origin of the terms "blue wave" and "red wave"
The article contains the sentence: "Matching the "red states and blue states" color coding convention since 2000, wave elections have often been described as either a "blue wave" if the Democratic Party makes significant gains, or a "red wave" if the Republican Party wins a substantial number of seats."

Searching article indexes and Google sorted by date, and also relying on personal memory, my impression is that the terms "blue wave" and "red wave" did not really exist until 2018. I found a few isolated uses of the phrase "blue wave" in 2006 (e.g. there was an article from Pew titled "Elections Bring Blue Wave and New Plans to Statehouses"[]), but it was not in any way a widely used term. And I didn't find any references to the phrase "red wave" during 2010 or 2014, both strong Republican years. What happened was that in 2018, from the beginning of the year Democrats were expected to make big gains by November, and so the term "blue wave" was seen heavily in the press and on social media. In reaction, Trump began sending out tweets screaming "RED WAVE!!!"

So I actually think the term is a Trump coinage; I don't believe it was used before 2018 at all. (Maybe there are isolated examples, but I doubt it was in any way common.) After all, "blue wave" is clearly a reference to an ocean, whereas "red wave" makes less sense as a metaphor, it just takes the "blue wave" phrase and substitutes the color of the other party. (I suppose you could argue it has martial associations of blood and war.) In any case, I think it might help to include a little info on when these terms really first appeared, though I have not yet found a clear source to support what I've described here. marbeh raglaim (talk) 01:50, 16 November 2022 (UTC)