Any election loss warrants some degree of self-evaluation and I’m certain that Democrats have been engaging in a thorough post-mortem. However, the suggestions that the Democrats are at a crossroads or that they have suffered a crushing defeat that necessitates a reevaluation of what the party stands for are misplaced. Not every electoral loss must be followed by a period of soul-searching or rebuilding. The Democrats will bounce back and they’ll bounce back quite quickly if history is any guide.

In November 2008, I participated in a post-election panel to discuss the implications of Barack Obama’s sweeping victory. There was much talk at the time about the supposed political realignment that had swept Obama into office and the Republicans out. I began my comments by reading an excerpt from a New York Times column:

“The Democrats came out of the political wilderness on Tuesday. The Republicans entered it … Ahead is the challenge of governing, and the clear accountability that comes with controlling Congress and the White House … But the Republicans face the hard, brutal struggle of deciding who they are …”

As the audience nodded in agreement I revealed that the quote was from an article written in November 1992, two days after Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush. As any student of American politics knows, the GOP’s sojourn in the political wilderness and their brutal struggle of self-discovery lasted all of two years. In 1994 Republicans gained 54 House and eight Senate seats and gained unified control of Congress for the first time in a generation. So folks need to be more cautious about reading too much into any one election. Indeed, just two years after Obama’s victory, Republicans took back control of the House by flipping 63 seats in 2010.

Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 led to dire warnings about Democrats in disarray as well. Two years later, they reclaimed the House and in 2020, Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump. So please forgive me if I’m dismissive of any talk of Democrats facing a reckoning and a long rebuilding. The reality is that we go down this path every time an incumbent party loses the White House, but instead of a long rebuilding, the recovery usually occurs within two years. I’m so certain of the Democrats’ miraculous recovery that on the Thursday after Election Day, I promised the 33 students in my Road to the White House class that if Democrats fail to recapture the House in 2026 I’ll give each of them $5. I have no concerns that I’ll need to come up with the $165.

How can I be so confident? Recent history is one reason, but data analysis is the other. Every four years, I run an analysis of the presidential election results by examining the correlation, or relationship, between the two-party vote shares in each state. The closer the correlation value is to 1, the more stable the American electoral patterns. The further you move away from 1 and toward 0 the more upheaval in the electorate.

The correlation between the 2024 and 2020 elections (based on the preliminary state-by-state data) is .994. Not only is that pretty darn close to 1, but it’s also the highest correlation value between two successive presidential elections in 40 years! The reality is that the electorate that sent Joe Biden to the White House four years ago is little changed from the electorate that just elected Donald Trump. If that sounds unbelievable, just consider that a shift in the vote choice of roughly 118,500 voters across Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, less than one-tenth of 1% of the total votes cast in this election, would’ve meant victory for Vice President Kamala Harris and defeat for Donald Trump. The election was hardly an electoral rout.

The truth is that American electoral politics are quite stable and extremely competitive and have been for several decades. That’s not likely to change anytime soon. Yes, Republicans are doing a bit better among some core Democratic voting blocs. But much of those gains have been offset by Democrats gaining among once key Republican voters. And these offsetting swaps are happening within states. The result is a competitive but stable electoral map with only a handful of swing states. So sure, Democrats should take some time to ponder the implications of this loss, but they should spend far more time preparing for their likely comeback in 2026.

Todd Eberly is a professor of political science at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and co-author of “The Trump Presidency: Outsider in the Oval Office.”