It is an unchanging quote from American political life. This Tuesday, two years after the presidential elections in the United States, American voters are once again called to the polls as part of the partial examsThey include the mid-term elections, a vote in which, among other things, the members of Congress will be appointed.
BFMTV.com takes stock of the operation and issues of this very special election, which could deprive current President Joe Biden of any freedom to apply his political program at the end of his term in the event of a Republican victory.
• Who do we choose during midterms?
The President of the United States will not be on the ballot this fall. As happens every two years, all 435 seats in the US House of Representatives are up for grabs.
In contrast, in the Senate, which has 100 elected members, terms last six years. More than a third will be renewed on November 8: 35 seats. The newly elected will begin their term on January 3, 2023.
Americans will also elect some of their governors and a host of local elected officials, who decide their state’s policies on abortion, environmental regulation and more.
• What is at stake on the ballot?
The impact of these elections could be decisive throughout the country during the next two years. Democrats currently have tenuous control of Congress. In the House of Representatives, they are only eight seats ahead, while Kamala Harris, the vice president, had to cast her “101” vote to give her camp control of the Senate, where the equality was perfect with 50 seats in both. sides
Only, if one of these two chambers fell into the hands of the Republicans, they could then severely curb the room for action of Joe Biden and his government. Should they take over the House of Representatives, Republicans would have the ability to block several pieces of legislation. The president’s actions would be limited to foreign and military policy.
On the side of the Senate, the majority party has the right to total legislative blockade, as does the House of Representatives. It also has a key role in appointing justices to the Supreme Court, the nerve center of American power.
The stakes are high and Joe Biden is not wrong. In recent weeks, the White House strongman has pleaded with Americans to give him majorities large enough to bypass congressional rules that currently prevent him from legalizing abortion nationwide or banning assault rifles.
An important detail to take into account a few days before the elections, this parliamentary majority also allows the opening of parliamentary investigations, as the Democrats had done against Donald Trump.
In response, “Grand Old Party” candidates have promised to open investigations into Joe Biden, his pandemic adviser Anthony Fauci and his Attorney General Merrick Garland. They also plan to bury the work of the commission investigating the attack on the US Congress by supporters of Donald Trump.
Implicitly, this vote is also a life-size test for the political future of Donald Trump, who plunged headlong into the campaign, multiplying meetings across the country. For these two men, who are flirting with a candidacy for the 2024 elections, the result could be a cut, stopping the momentum of one or, on the contrary, accelerating that of the other.
• What do the surveys say?
In early October, according to opinion polls, the Republican opposition has a good chance of winning at least 10 to 20 seats in the House of Representatives, enough to be a majority there. To date, according to the FiveThirtyEight site, Republicans have an 84% chance of taking over the lower house. In detail, they could get between 230 and 250 seats, which would give them a majority.
On the other hand, the ballot promises to be much tighter with respect to the Senate. If the Democrats hope to maintain their narrow majority there, the same pollsters estimate that the opposition has 52% to seize the upper house and obtain between 21 and 23 seats in the election. If these forecasts are fulfilled, then the setback would be total for Joe Biden.
As has been pointed out by Huffington Post, several Democratic senators could be defeated, particularly those from Georgia and Nevada. Victory in one of these states would be enough to give the upper house to the opposition.
Also according to FiveThirtyEight, Republicans would have a 52% chance of winning both chambers, a figure that drops to less than 1% for a double Democratic win. But, illustrating a close election, Democrats have 33% to win at least the Senate.
• What happened in 2018?
It is customary to say that the partial exams they are a means of punishing the incumbent president. However, according to polling aggregator RealClearPolitics, more and more Americans are unhappy with Joe Biden’s performance leading the country. Last survey to date, that of the Quinnipac Institute, which reports an increase of 17 points in dissatisfied people.
A hypothesis that was proven in 2018, when the Democrats took possession of the House of Representatives by occupying at least 218 of its 435 seats while the Republicans kept the Senate with 51 seats. Despite this mixed result, Donald Trump had claimed immense electoral success and thanked his supporters.
Source: BFM TV
