Seeking to temper expectations for his party’s midterm performance on Tuesday, President Obama explained that the Democrat’s probable Senate defeat this evening isn’t due to his policies, but to a slate of open seats that are among the worst the Democratic party has seen in 50 years.

Obama was asked about this year’s electoral map during an appearance on Connecticut public radio on Election Day, with the host noting that red states and blue states are so set that “you can pretty much predict a lot of them in advance.”

The president agreed. “There’s no doubt that when you look at the Senate races, because of the fact that only a third of the Senate is up at any given time it tends to be a little arbitrary which seats are really going to be contested, which aren’t,” he said. ”So, for example, in this election cycle this is probably the worst possible group of states for Democrats since Dwight Eisenhower. There are a lot of states that are being contested where they just tend to tilt Republican and Democrats are competitive but they tend to tilt that way.”

Incumbent Republican president Dwight Eisenhower lost a whopping 13 Senate seats to his Democratic rivals in 1958, with the Democrats picking up an additional two seats in Alaska’s first senatorial election.