It appears that the curse of the two-term incumbent president’s party getting thrashed in US midterm elections will hold true when voters head to the polls on November 4. Despite the seemingly positive macroeconomic factors that supporters of President Obama and his party can point to, polls tracking the odds of a Republican takeover of the Senate have been ticking upwards over the past few weeks, with Nate Silver’s FiveThiryEight model currently standing at 73% and the Washington Post even more confident at 96% odds that the Republicans will win a majority.

The American people are poised to punish the ruling party after a Congressional term that took the word ‘ineffectual’ to a whole new level. In all, the 113^th United States Congress passed 22 bills into law, all covering the more inane aspects of governance such as the naming of bridges and routine spending rather than the critical issues facing the United States like immigration and tax reform.

Partisan bickering gave rise to policy deadlock over the course of the 113^th Congress, but a Republican majority on Tuesday won’t necessarily unclog the legislative pipes in Washington. On one side there will be the constant threat of a presidential veto over the next two years, and on the other there will be a new kind of bickering in the form of power struggles between the activist and moderate wings of the Republican Party. Ted Cruz, a Republican senator belonging to the activist Tea Party faction, has already vowed to circumvent majority leader Mitch McConnell (himself facing a strong challenge at the polls) in pursuing his own agenda to shrink US government.

The result will be a sustained, albeit occasionally fractured push against the pillars of President Obama’s legacy.