MIDTERMS. The United States is organizing new elections in 2022. The voters will have to form the House of Representatives and renew part of the Senate. Our guide to understanding it all.
[Mise à jour le 4 août 2022 à 16h06] In less than 100 days, the political life of the United States could be turned upside down. Voters in the United States are called to go to a polling station on the occasion of the Midterms, the midterm elections organized two years after the presidential election. Americans must elect their deputy who will sit in the House of Representatives for the next two years, but also renew a third of the Senate. A decisive ballot for President Joe Biden, who holds the majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives, by a short head. However, his popularity rating is at half mast: just 38% of Americans approve of his policy, in the context of record inflation following a first half of his mandate marked by the management of the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine, but also the various questions he raises given his age.
However, the Democrats, Joe Biden’s political family, could benefit from a few events: the decision of the Republicans, their political adversaries, to repeal the constitutional right of abortion, the various mass killings which have relaunched the umpteenth time debate on carrying weapons, or the announcement of the death of the leader of Al-Qaeda, killed by the CIA in Afghanistan, a few months after the decreed (and decried) withdrawal of American military troops from the country.
What are midterms?
In the United States, Americans are called to the polls much more often than the French. Thus, every two years, voters must elect the 435 deputies who sit in the House of Representatives, the equivalent of the National Assembly in France. In 2022, Americans will vote for what is called the midterms, in other words, the midterm elections. Just 24 months after deciding the composition of the lower house of Congress (Parliament, which includes the House of Representatives and the Senate) in the wake of the election of Joe Biden, they must once again vote to elect those and those who will represent their state’s district for the next two years.
But that’s not all. On the occasion of these midterms, the Americans must also renew a third of the Senate, as is customary every two years, either during the presidential election or during the midterms. In 2022, 35 senators will challenge their seats.
The US midterms will take place in November. Unlike the legislative elections in France and unlike almost all the elections we know, they will take place on a single date… and in the middle of the week! Thus, American voters will go to the polls on Tuesday, November 8, 2022 to elect their new deputies as well as some of their senators.
With 435 seats to be filled in the House of Representatives, it is at least twice as many candidates as the United States has for this election, with at least one representative from the Democrats and one from the Republicans. To which must be added several dozen independent candidates. There are therefore around a thousand people who aspire to become MPs. On the side of the Senate, 35 seats are to be filled. At least 70 applications will therefore be submitted, but the final figure should be around a hundred.
In the United States, Parliament is organized as in France, with two elected chambers: on the one hand, the House of Representatives, which is the American counterpart of the National Assembly; on the other, the Senate, identical to the one we know. A Parliament (called Congress in the United States) which runs the country alongside the president of this federal state.
Since 2020, the latter has been Joe Biden. The resident of the White House (the American Elysée) was elected with the Democratic label and also has a majority, by a very short head, in the House of Representatives (220 deputies against 210 Republicans), led by Nancy Pelosi, and in the Senate, led by Kamala Harris (50 Democratic senators, plus Kamala Harris, and 50 Republicans).
In the United States, the political division is much simpler than in France. Only two main parties compete in each election: the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The Democratic Party is rather related to the left, but also to the center. It is the formation of Joe Biden, the president, but also the one who holds power in the House of Representatives (National Assembly) and in the Senate. In history, ex-presidents Roosevelt, Kennedy, Carter, Clinton and Obama have all been elected with this label.
The Democratic Party faces the Republican Party, classified on the right, of conservative leanings. Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Bush Senior and Son, and Trump have been Republican Presidents of the United States since the end of World War II. Currently, the Republican Party is not at the head of any political institution of power.
What are the poll results for the 2022 midterms?
The 2022 midterm polls are tight. Indeed, Democrats and Republicans are only separated by a few points in the voting intentions. In mid-July, two polls estimated them in a pocket handkerchief for the House of Representatives ballot. A Yougov survey, carried out among 1,500 adults, gave victory to the Republicans with 37.51% of the vote, against… 37.23% for the Democrats. During the same period, Quinnipiac University, which questioned 1,523 people, credited the Republicans with 44% of the vote, against 43% for the Democrats.
Equally tight results for the Senate were published since Yougov gave the Democrats ahead of the Republicans in the upper house (36.03% against 35.75%), while Quinnipiac University posted the two formations at the same level, with 44% of the votes.