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.
In the House of Representatives, all 435 seats are at stake. The members are elected for two-year terms and the number of members from each state is distributed based on population.
In the Senate, there are 35 out of 100 seats. Senators are elected to six-year terms that do not run parallel to each other. Approximately one third of the assembly is re-elected in elections held every two years. In this year’s election, 34 mandate periods expire, while one mandate must be filled after a resignation. Two senators are elected from each state.
39 governors are to be elected in states and US territories. Referendums on abortion legislation are also being held in six states.
The Democrats currently have a majority in the Senate where they have 48 seats, supported by two independent senators, as well as 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.
Joe Biden has so far – halfway into his term – been able to lean on a Congress controlled by his party mates in the Democrats, who have not posed any major obstacles to his reforms. But that could change in Tuesday’s mid-term elections.
Voters are unhappy. The opposition almost always advances in mid-term elections. And it doesn’t take many mandates for the Republicans to tip the scales and get more say.
In the House of Representatives, the parties are currently separated by five mandates. In the Senate, it is about one thing.
The distribution of mandates in the two chambers of the American Congress, as it looks before the election. Angry Obama moves in
The president is on the defensive.
Instead of appearing in the most hotly contested states, he goes to several of the Democrats’ stronger strongholds – California, Illinois and New Mexico – where he himself won by a wide margin in the presidential election two years ago.
It may also be due to the public’s failing trust in the 79-year-old’s rule. Since last summer, a majority of Americans have been dissatisfied with his work.
In states where there is a fierce battle for the mandates, Biden thus risks becoming a sinkhole for Democratic candidates.
In several such states, Barack Obama has appeared in his place. In a speech in MilwaukeeWis., last week the former president wide-eyed the audience and raised his voice against Republican senatorial candidate Ron Johnson:
— If he understands tax cuts for private jets better than he understands how to make sure that elderly people who have worked all their lives can retire with dignity and respect, then he is not the person who thinks about you, knows you and sees you, and then he should not be your senator from Wisconsin.
Johnson, who has not given any clear indication of whether he will respect the election results, has been leading in several opinion polls in recent weeks.
Former US President Barack Obama has gone out on the campaign trail and traveled around the country, while Joe Biden has stayed in the background. Here he is speaking in Milwaukee last Saturday. Proxy war in Pennsylvania
Joe Biden himself travels to the wave champion state of Pennsylvania in the final stages of the election campaign. So does Donald Trump. American media describe it as a flared “proxy war” between the president and his predecessor.
There is the fight for a senate seat that currently belongs to the Republicans – and which is one of the few that the Democrats are judged to be able to squeeze in the mid-term elections. Democratic candidate John Fetterman is rematching with Trump-backed Republican Mehmet Oz, who is known to most Americans as the TV doctor “Doctor Oz.”
The shadow of the Biden administration clearly fell over a televised debate between the two. Oz caught fire with rising inflation and increasing crime. Fetterman suffered a stroke earlier this year and apologized in advance for any speech difficulties, but also had difficulty giving coherent answers, not least about his own health.
Trump campaign has linked Fetterman to Biden in ads, describing them as ‘clueless’ and ‘weak,’ reports Politico. After the televised debate, support for Oz grew and the candidates are about evenly matched.
Democrat John Fetterman, on the poster at left in picture, and Republican Mehmet Oz, on the television screen. The two Pennsylvania politicians are fighting for a very important seat in the US Senate. Predictable elections
Joe Biden states that the midterm elections are absolutely decisive for America’s democracy. Many of the Republican candidates—those with Donald Trump’s blessing—are openly disputing the results of the last presidential election.
The polarization in the US is reflected in the electoral map. In the vast majority of elections to the House of Representatives’ 435 seats – more than 80 percent of them – the result is already clear in advance, according to The New York Times. Therefore, great emphasis is placed on swing states and districts where the electorate breaks the patterns.
The major opinion polls do not give a clear answer as to which way it is leaning. The sites Five Thirty Eight, Politico and Real Clear Politics everyone judges that it is very even in the battle for the Senate, with several hard-to-assess wave master states. The Republicans are believed to have an upper hand in the battle for the House of Representatives.
Election workers test equipment at a polling place in Miami, Florida. The photo was taken on October 19.