Most analyses overstate the Democrats’ down-ballot losses under Obama because they only start counting after he took office in 2009. That denies him credit for the candidates he helped elect during his resounding first win in 2008. As I’ve written before, the fairest way to measure a president’s impact on his party is to compare its electoral position just before he first appeared on the ballot with its position just after the election to succeed him. That gives the president responsibility for any other officials initially swept in with him, the outcomes during his tenure, and the shadow he casts over the election to replace him.

Under that approach, we would measure Obama by comparing the Democrats’ standing after the 2006 election—just before his first race—with its position after November’s contest. Using that standard, Democrats will end the Obama era with 39 fewer House seats (233 to 194), three fewer Senate seats (51 to 48), and 12 fewer governorships (28 to 16).

Those losses are formidable, but hardly unique. Parties almost always lose ground elsewhere while they hold the White House. In two-term presidencies since World War II, the incumbent president’s party lost more House seats than Democrats did with Obama under Bill Clinton (54), George W. Bush (45), and Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (44). The president’s party lost the same number of seats as Obama did under John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (39) and fewer seats under Dwight Eisenhower (26). Senate losses exceeded Obama’s under Bush (14), Eisenhower (11), Kennedy and Johnson (8), and Clinton (6), while Republicans gained two senators under the Nixon and Ford administrations.

Obama lost fewer governorships than presidents’ parties surrendered under Kennedy and Johnson (15) and the Nixon and Ford administrations (13)—and lost more than under Eisenhower, Clinton, and Bush (nine each). Only in lost state legislative seats (850) did Obama significantly exceed any of these predecessors, according to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Ronald Reagan was the great exception to all this: During his two terms, Republicans gained 18 House seats, four senators, four governors, and 237 state legislators. Reagan was also the only two-term president since World War II whose party held the White House when he left.

Yet it is understandable why many Democrats join Matt Bennett of the centrist group Third Way in believing “the party is in worse shape” after Obama than it was after Bill Clinton. Though the party’s relative losses were comparable under each president, Democrats now hold a smaller absolute number of House and state legislative seats, as well as Senate seats and governorships, than in 2001. And for Democrats, losing the 2016 race to a candidate as flawed as Trump “is much, much worse than losing a basically tied election to Bush in 2000,” as Bennett told me.