Democrats largely prevailed in the 1992 presidential elections; two years later, Republicans crushed them. Democrats won again in 1996 and 1998; the 2000 election was a tie; then Republicans triumphed in 2002 and 2004. Democrats came back in 2006 and 2008; Republicans won in 2010, and Democrats were back in 2012.

Sean Trende, a political scientist and numbers-cruncher at RealClearPolitics, doesn’t buy the idea that Republicans are as bad off today as Democrats were in 2004: “Yes, they lost the presidential election by a similar margin, but Democrats were a minority in the House and well off of their peak in the states.”

Republicans are almost at a postwar high in the House of Representatives, with only 1946 and 2010 resulting in a larger share of the chamber being held by them; the postwar highs also are true if you look at the number of statehouse seats held by the party and its 30 governorships.

“The House numbers are somewhat due to redistricting,” explained Trende. “But even if you assume that redistricting saved the party 20 seats – a very generous assumption – the GOP would find itself only a slight minority in the lower chamber, and well above its postwar average.”