As the sun set on 4 November 1986, retiring House Speaker Thomas P. ‘Tip’ O’Neill (D-MA) triumphantly declared to the press that the midterm election results had produced one clear message: ‘If there was a Reagan Revolution, it’s over.’ While Democratic politicians had tried to claim this at earlier points in the decade, Reagan had framed the 1986 midterms as a pivotal ideological contest to protect the revolution, presenting the election to the public as a decision ‘whether to hand the government back to the liberals or to move forward with the conservative agenda into the 1990s’. He had campaigned across the country, hoping to make the midterms a national referendum and recast them as a replay of 1980, the year that Reagan – and the Republicans – clinched the presidency and the Senate, and made decisive gains in the House. Moreover, Reagan believed he was in a strong position going into the midterms – following a landslide victory in the 1984 presidential elections, he entered 1986 with historically high levels of support (66 per cent in a Washington Post–ABC News pre-election poll) and the economy was finishing its third year of unbroken growth.

Nevertheless, to many political commentators’ surprise, the Republicans suffered heavy congressional losses on election day. Although seat losses in the House were, at five, not particularly damaging, the Democrats’ gains left them with a large majority there (258–177). More significantly, a net loss of eight seats in the Senate returned the majority back to the Democrats (by a margin of 55–45). With the Democrats now in full control of the legislative branch for the first time during his presidency, the Reagan Revolution seemed to be stalling. The Republican class of 1980 witnessed seven of its twelve freshman senators lose their re-election bids, a development the New York Times noted was an indication that the power of Reagan and his revolutionary guard ‘had crested and fallen back’. Moreover, scratch at the surface of Reagan’s landslide re-election in the 1984 elections and it is evident that the revolution was already in jeopardy. Indeed, despite the lopsided presidential race, Reagan’s coat-tails were clipped on election day – the Democrats retained a commanding majority in the House and gained two seats in the Senate, though the Republicans remained in control of the chamber.