ABSTRACT
The 1992 election proved to be the lull before the storm in the Fourth District and across most of North Carolina. Nationally the anti-institutional sentiment and anti-incumbent voting evident in 1990 intensified. To these anti-institutional stirrings were added the effects of the post-1990 congressional redistricting and the discontent stirred up by a weak economy. The result was the departure of the largest number of House incumbents since 1948. Fifty-two members, many of them anticipating electoral trouble, retired; nineteen were defeated in primaries, and sixteen Democratic and eight Republican incumbents were defeated in the general election. Nationwide, the 1998 elections produced little change in the margins of party control in Congress but a much greater upheaval politically, because Democratic performance far exceeded predictions and expectations. Republicans, like Democrats in 1998, broke from the historical pattern of midterm losses for the president’s party, ending at three the streak of elections since 1996 that had produced Democratic gains in the House.
