Copper and Aluminum Prices After Midterm Elections: A Perfect Pattern That Isn't a Buying Signal

In October 2014, the month before that year's midterm, a metric ton of aluminum on the world market averaged about $1,950. A year later it averaged about $1,520. In October 2022, the month before that year's midterm, the last in the table, it averaged about $2,260, and a year later about $2,190.

Measure from the October before each midterm in which the party out of the White House took a chamber, and aluminum was lower a year later all six times since 1994. After the other two midterms in the same archive, it was higher both times: in 1998, when control of Congress held, and in 2002, when the president's own party took the Senate. It is a perfect pattern. It is not a buying signal.

Why six for six is not enough

Three problems stand in the way, and all three apply to the one-year result itself. The sample is small: six cases cannot separate an election from everything else going on in those years. The pattern was found by searching: we ran the same comparison on 45 monthly series in our archive, 34 of them with enough history to cover at least three flips, and three lined up in one direction across every flip they cover: aluminum, factory hourly earnings, which rise in most years anyway, and a fastener price index. With that many series, some can line up by chance. And it has never been tested on years it was not fitted to.

A different horizon, a different result

The two-year record is a separate observation, not a refutation. Measured over two years, aluminum was lower after five of the six flips, and two years after the 2022 midterm it was about $2,600, up 15.1%. A one-year relationship need not hold for two years, so this shows only that the pattern is specific to its window. Copper shows no consistent pattern over either window: lower a year later after three of the six flips, and two years later after four.

What else was going on

Three of the five two-year declines came alongside global shocks: the 2008 financial crisis, the 2015 commodity slump as China slowed, and the trade war of 2019 and the pandemic of 2020. The other two, after 1994 and 2010, fell for reasons our data cannot name. Those shocks help explain the two-year declines. They are not offered as the explanation for the one-year pattern. Our data do not establish an explanation for it.

The version with a mechanism

Divided government makes fiscal stimulus harder to pass, which was the market's own reading on Wednesday, CNBC reported, and less stimulus could mean less demand for metal. That holds together, and our data cannot rule it out. It cannot confirm it either. The 2022 midterm also produced divided government, and aluminum was higher two years later, which fits a real effect outweighed by other forces as well as it fits no effect at all. Six cases cannot tell those apart. The pattern does not split by party: aluminum fell in the following year after flips won by Democrats, in 2006 and 2018, and after flips won by Republicans, in 1994, 2010, 2014 and 2022.

Copper averaged $14,473 a metric ton in September 2026, its highest monthly average since our archive begins in 1992. A buyer of 1,000 metric tons a year spends about $14.5 million at that price, so a 10% move is about $1.45 million either way. That is the size of the exposure. How much of it to hedge depends on inventory, contract terms and how much risk the business can carry, not on who won the Senate.

The metal price sensitivity calculator turns a tonnage, a price and a percentage move into the dollars at stake, before any hedge. Size a metal price move

Further reading

• Global price of aluminum, PALUMUSDM and global price of copper, PCOPPUSDM, IMF via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
• Stock market today, CNBC, Nov. 4, 2026, on the market's reading of divided government.
• Global aluminum price and global copper price, the live series behind this story.