A major test, two years before the next presidential election in the United States. Americans are called to the polls, Tuesday 8 November, for the traditional mid-term elections. During these midterms, they will have to express themselves on referendums, sometimes choose their representatives in the local assemblies, and especially designate their elected representatives in Congress. This is a crucial moment for the Democrats, who must keep their very narrow parliamentary majority if they want to allow Joe Biden to continue his program.
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If the midterms usually benefit the opposition, the presidential party hopes to mobilize voters around the right to abortion. For their part, the conservatives are counting on dissatisfaction with galloping inflation to win seats in Congress. Franceinfo summarizes the stakes of these elections.
Almost the entire Federal Congress will be renewed
Midterm elections are held, as their name suggests, in the middle of the presidential term. And it is a major meeting of American politics. In the United States, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and a third of the 100 Senate seats are renewed every two years (the senators being elected for six years), recalls the washington post*. The Americans will therefore renew almost all of Congress.
But that’s not all. In most states, voters will also have to appoint their governor, mayor, members of local assemblies, magistrates or even sheriffs. Many will also be called upon to speak on nerd initiatives, referendums to change local legislation. According to the specialized site Ballotpedia*, 129 proposals will be put to the vote of the Americans on 8 November, in 36 states. They cover subjects as varied as the legalization of cannabis, the right to abortion or the financing of the fight against forest fires.
As a result, the ballot (which is unique and includes all the ballots) will generally be spread over several pages. In the Californian county of Santa Clara, voters will thus have to express their choice in around thirty elections or referendums, as shown in this example*.
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Joe Biden wants to keep his (short) parliamentary majority…
Currently, the Democrats control Congress by very little. They have only nine more seats than Republicans in the House of Representatives, notes the Guardian*. The situation is even more complex in the Senate, divided between a group of 50 Republicans and a group of 50 Democrats and independents. In the event of a perfect tie in the upper house, the US Constitution provides that the vice-president decides. So this is the number 2 of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, who for the moment gives the advantage to the Democrats. In particular, it enabled them to adopt, at the beginning of August, a massive investment plan in the climate and health sectors.
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With almost all of Congress in the hot seat, the outcome of the midterms will determine Joe Biden’s ability to implement the rest of his political agenda. “If the Democrats lost both houses, they would be forced to rely on veto power. [du président] to block measures they disapprove of”, decrypts the Vox* site. If they only have a majority in one of the assemblies, many reforms will be blocked by the Republicans. On the other hand, if they retain full control of Congress, Joe Biden and his party have already promised to pass laws endorsing the right to abortion or protecting the voting rights of minorities.
… but midterms usually favor the opposition
Very often, the midterm elections look like a referendum for or against the tenant of the White House. And the latter rarely emerges victorious : the presidential party has lost seats in the House of Representatives in 17 of the last 19 midterms, reveals Vox*. This trend is partly explained by the desire of voters to put in place a stronger counter-power against the head of state, details the American site.
According to projections by FiveThirtyEight*, the Democrats are indeed in danger of losing the majority in the House of Representatives. If they keep the 212 seats they already have, the Republicans only need to take six from their opponents to reach a majority of 218 votes. They have a good chance of doing so in 11 constituencies, according to estimates by FiveThirtyEight*. Conversely, the Democrats seem in a position to take only two seats from the Republicans. In 20 cases, the duel also promises to be so close that the two parties have as many chances of winning, completes CNN*. In theory, the Conservatives therefore have multiple opportunities to impose themselves in the House of Representatives.
And in the other assembly ? Of the 35 seats at stake in the Senate, ten duels promise to be disputed, analyzes the New York Times*. Four states in particular are considered “open”, with no advantage for one party or the other : Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Nevada. The Democrats, who have only 14 seats to defend (compared to 21 for the Republicans) once seemed to have the advantage. But on the eve of the election, the projections are now so tight that it is impossible to advance on the party which will obtain the majority in the Senate, concludes FiveThirtyEight*.
The economy and abortion are at the heart of the debate
The economy is the theme that has most preoccupied American voters in recent months, according to a series of polls by the Gallup Institute*. They are particularly worried about inflation, which reached 8.2% in September in the United States. Republicans have made it their main campaign argument, criticizing the inability of Joe Biden and the Democrats to limit the soaring prices of consumer goods, reports the New York Times*. And the strategy could pay off. At the end of September, a majority of Americans doubted the effectiveness of the measures adopted by Congress to reduce inflation, reports the Gallup Institute*.
There is another topic, however, that may influence the outcome of the election. : abortion. At the end of June, the Supreme Court reversed its judgment guaranteeing this right at the federal level. Since that decision, 13 states have banned the procedure entirely and five others have reduced the legal time limits for terminating a pregnancy, according to a count of the New York Times*. Eventually, the Guttmacher Institute* estimates that half of the fifty American states will strongly hinder the right to abortion.
This problem is “very important” Where “one of the most important” of the campaign for 62% of voters, according to a poll for the washington post and the string ABC*. And this plays especially in favor of the Democratic candidates, who promise a federal law protecting the right to abortion. “We are currently missing a handful of votes” to achieve this, Joe Biden again insisted in early October. While a majority of Americans disapprove of the Supreme Court’s decision, the issue of abortion could therefore motivate Democratic voters to go to the polls, underlines the Washington Post*.
Pro-Trumps challenging Biden’s legitimacy are candidates (and could be elected)
This is the big question of the midterm elections : how much denarii (from English to deny“deny”, “refuse”) will access key positions ? These Republicans, supporters of former President Donald Trump, like him, dispute the validity of the results of the 2020 presidential election. The billionaire has supported dozens of them in the last weeks of the campaign, which he sees as a life-size test for his potential return to the race for the White House in 2024, reports the BBC*.
According to the FiveThirtyEight* site, about 60% of Americans have at least one candidate contesting the election of Joe Biden on their ballot. “Of the 552 Republicans running, we found 200 who totally denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election.”, specifies the American media. Sixty-two others “questioned” publicly about possible electoral fraud, despite the lack of evidence.
The majority of these denarii are in a position to be elected on 8 November, assesses the Brookings Institution*. In the Democratic camp, we fear the influence they could have on the next elections. The governors of each state and the elected representatives of Congress have a role to play in certifying the results of the presidential election, recalls Reuters*. It is precisely this process that Donald Trump’s supporters tried to interrupt when they stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021. If denarii are elected governors, they could “refuse to certify the result of the presidential election” of 2024, even “claim that the losing candidate has won their state”continues Reuters.
“It is a disease that extends to the entire political process, and the consequences are profound,” alert Larry Jacobs, political scientist at the University of Minnesota, interviewed by the Washington Post*. “Now it’s not about Donald Trump. It’s about the electoral system as a whole and what constitutes a legitimate ballot.”
* Links marked with an asterisk refer to content in English.