Will the Republicans sweep the House of Representatives? Will Joe Biden save his Senate majority? Is Donald Trump playing his political future? Many crucial questions arise for the future of the United States, but also of the world, on the eve of the mid-term elections to be held this Tuesday, November 8.
These elections take place two years after that of the president and, more precisely, on the Tuesday following the first Monday of November. This November 8, 2022 will be a great election day, since the entire House of Representatives (435 seats), a third of the Senate (35 seats), the secretaries of 27 states and the governors of 36 of them will be renewed. them. In addition, local referendums are organized, relating to education, taxes, but also abortion, which could be prohibited in several States.
All citizens aged 18 and over will be able to vote. Some have even already done so: 46 states allow their residents to vote in advance. For example, since the end of September, it has been possible to vote in Virginia, Wyoming or even South Dakota. During the last midterms, in 2018, more than 117 million Americans had voted, i.e. a participation rate of more than 50%, a record since 1978. As for the key states, those whose result serves as a national mirror , let us cite in priority Pennsylvania and Georgia.
- Republicans favorite to win House of Representatives
Currently, the distribution of seats in the House of Representatives is as follows: 221 for Democrats, 212 for Republicans and two vacant. Out of a total of 435 seats, President Joe Biden’s party therefore has a minimal majority, which he will have a hard time keeping. The mid-term elections resemble, in effect, a referendum for or against the incumbent president. However, according to a latest poll by the Gallup Institute, Biden’s popularity rating is only 40%. Worse, the FiveThirtyEight data site gives the Republicans a landslide victory, 225 seats to 210. And while the polls are used to off by six points in House elections, the stats are against Joe Biden : Since 1860, the ruling party has almost always lost midterm elections.
Threatened in the House, can blue – the color of the Democratic Party – remain in the majority in the Senate? There too, the current majority is extremely weak, since it is the double voice of Vice-President Kamala Harris that allows the Democrats to take over. According to the FiveThirty Eight model, the Republican Party has a 55% chance of winning on Tuesday. But Biden’s hope lies in the outcome in Pennsylvania, where the climactic battle between Democrat John Fetterman and Donald Trump-backed Republican Mehmet Oz is being played out. FiveThirtEight estimates the probability of the Republican candidate winning at 53%. With the margin of error, there is therefore hope for the Democrats…
- Inflation, the subject of the elections
The disadvantage of being in power before an election is certain, all the ills of the country being attributed to you. And as there are currently many of them, Joe Biden suffers the wrath of a large part of the population. Inflation is around 8% and is strangling households, who complain in particular about the price of gasoline. At $2.39 when Biden was inaugurated in January 2021, a gallon of gasoline has now reached $3.78, a jump of nearly 60%. The Republicans do not hesitate to use the international situation to torpedo Biden’s policy, and in particular his choice to cancel the construction of the Keystone XI pipeline, which was to transport oil extracted from Canada to the United States.
And when the president decides to take oil from the strategic reserve in order to lower prices at the pump, he is accused of “fooling Americans just before the election”, according to the words of Mark Healy, a biker questioned by Release. A survey carried out by the CNBC television channel indicates, in this sense, that 56% of voters disapprove of the way in which the president manages the economy.
- Can support for Ukraine be called into question?
During the vote, last May, of an envelope of 40 billion dollars of aid to Ukraine, 57 Republican deputies voted against, that is to say nearly 30% of the total. The taking of the chamber by the Republicans could therefore worry Ukraine, and the other countries of Europe, in search of unity against Russia. The Republican candidates, who are campaigning on the promise of stopping inflation, do not intend to sign a “blank check” in kyiv, according to the expression of Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the Republican party in the House of Representatives. They know they can hardly criticize Joe Biden’s policy by proposing the same…
Above all, Republicans know that American public opinion does not really feel concerned by the war in Ukraine. A survey by the Pew Research Center indicated in September that 20% of Americans considered that the aid allocated to Ukraine was too much. Traveling to Washington at the end of October, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Catherine Colonna, worried about a change of course after November 8, also insisted on recalling the importance of opposing a united front to Russia.
- A crucial election for Donald Trump
Mined by business, Donald Trump intends to assert his authority over the Republican Party during his elections. He fought for relatives to be the candidates for the Old Party. Result: a hundred candidates in the race are defended by the former president. It’s not huge, but the success rate of the latter will show how much Trump holds in the hearts of Republicans. At the end of September, an NBC network poll reported that 56% of Republican voters no longer wanted to be labeled as Trumpists.
For the specialist in the United States Jean-Eric Branaa, interviewed on September 30 by L’Express, this election will allow us to know if Trump has a small chance of being a candidate in the presidential elections of 2024. “All his chances rest on the fate of its candidates”, he explained. “You have to follow the fate of Blake Masters in Arizona, Herschel Walker in Georgia and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania.” This last state therefore seems to be the main ring of the new political fight between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.