Control of Government Since WWII

 This post will be a bit different as I do not have a dialog or point to make specifically. Our government is divided into three separate but equal parts - the legislative branch - the House and Senate, the judicial branch - the Supreme Court, and the Executive - the Presidency and all departments and cabinet.

We normally speak of "control" of government relating to what party has the majority in the House, Senate, and the Presidency. Control of all three, along with the power of the Presidency to nominate Supreme Court judges and the Senate's power of approval of the nominees means that control of the Congress and Presidency is a powerful thing indeed. 

I was thinking about what party has controlled Congress and the Presidency in recent times. I defined "recent" as after WWII - 1947 to current - 2025 as I write this. I came up with a chart showing the party in majority in the House, in the Senate, and holding the office of the President for each two year term of the House.  It looks like this:

You can see that in the seventy-eight years since WWII the Presidency has been pretty evenly divided. (this does NOT include the current Congress or Presidency that just started this year) The Democrats have had the office for thirty-eight years and the Republicans for forty. The House and Senate are very different. The Democratic party has had the House for fifty-two of those seventy-eight and the Senate for fifty-one. 

More telling is the period of "total unified control" of Congress and the Presidency. The Democratic party has has control for twenty-two, the Republican party for eight, and it has been divided for forty-seven of the seventy-eight years or just a tad over sixty percent of the time.

As I mentioned at the outset, I do not have a real narrative on this chart. Just consider it a public service and information for any interested folks.