Fact: US midterm elections
In the mid-term elections, which will be held on November 8, it will be decided which party will gain power in Washington. Then Americans elect their states’ representatives to the two chambers of Congress: the Senate and the House of Representatives.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate are at stake. In addition, governors are to be voted for in 36 states.
The Democrats currently have a majority in the Senate where they have 50 seats and Vice President Kamala Harris as the deciding vote, against 50 seats for the Republicans.
Even in the House of Representatives, the Democrats currently have a majority with 221 to 212 seats.
The mid-term elections are seen as a referendum on how the president conducts himself. The party to which the sitting president belongs usually loses seats in the mid-term elections.
The Republicans are doing well in the polls. If the party takes power in both chambers of Congress, it will be difficult for President Joe Biden to get much done after January 2023.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose husband Paul Pelosi was attacked with a hammer in the couple’s San Francisco home a week ago, made her first public appearance since the attack Friday night.
— People ask me: “What can we do to make you feel better?” I answer: “Vote”. I think this race is possible to win, she says according to AP.
She, like President Joe Biden, refuses to admit defeat in advance.
— I don’t buy the assumption that we are in a bad place. I think we’re going to win, I really do, the president said at a rally in Chicago.
Much speaks against it
But there is much going against the Democrats in the election next Tuesday, and the party is at risk of losing the majority in both houses of Congress. One is history. The party in power loses an average of 28 seats in the House of Representatives and four seats in the Senate in the midterm elections, according to UC Santa Barbara. That is easily enough to lose the majority in both chambers.
Another problem is Biden himself, whose opinion numbers are low.
— The lower the support for the president, the more seats the party tends to lose. And when things don’t go so well – Americans are worried about inflation at the moment – people tend to blame the party in power, says Travis Ridout, political science professor at Washington State University, to TT.
The president’s low numbers have meant that many of the Democratic candidates simply avoid talking about him.
— Even if he comes to their state, they might happen to be somewhere else that day. They try to distance themselves from him.
Early voting in Miami on Monday. Inflation and abortion
Republicans have hammered home the message that wasteful Democrats have driven up inflation and that crime is on the rise. The Democrats have campaigned around the right to abortion and singled out the opponents as a threat to democracy.
The big packages that the Democrats got through in Congress – a huge infrastructure package and another that, among other things, means high-cost protection for certain medicines – the candidates seem to have failed to make a dent.
— You might think that the Democrats would succeed in selling it, but the Republicans have succeeded in turning it into the fact that government spending is what drives up prices in grocery stores, says Travis Ridout.
But the Republicans also have some difficulties.
— The biggest thing they face is a lack of good candidates, especially in the Senate race. They have nominated some who are quite extreme, who have no political experience, and who did not recognize the election results, he says.
Ex-President Trump attracts supporters, but is also controversial in some more moderate Republican camps.
— Some have been wary of embracing Trump, given that he does not attract independent voters, or is so strong among impressionable voters. So it may depend on the politics of the respective district or state, whether the candidates embrace him or try to avoid him, Ridout said.