President Obama claims he could have won a third term if he had been allowed to run, but many Democrats in down ballot races haven’t been as successful during Obama’s presidency.
Democrats lost a total of 1,042 seats at the state and federal level, including congressional and state legislative seats, governorships, and the presidency, Fox News reported.
Obama’s popularity failed to bring support for his allies. Although Hillary Clinton brought out the first family for numerous campaign appearances, the country voted for President-elect Donald Trump.
The presidency wasn’t the only place that saw a partisan change since Obama took office in 2009.
Democratic U.S. Senate seats dropped from 55 to 46, their share of House seats fell from 256 seats to 194, and Democratic governorships fell from 28 to 16, according to figures from Ballotpedia.
Over the Obama years, Democrats lost 958 state legislative seats in the Tea Party wave of 2010 and the new movement that’s coalescing around Trump that has yet to be defined.
Even with declining numbers of Democrats holding office during his tenure, Obama said he would have been successful had he run for a third term.
“I am confident in this vision because I’m confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” Obama told ex-adviser David Axelrod for “The Axe Files” podcast.
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