Americans began heading to the polls on Tuesday for crucial midterm elections that could give Republicans a parliamentary majority, limit the powers of Democratic President Joe Biden for the next two years and pave the way for a return of Donald. Trump.
Joe Biden called on the country to “stand up for democracy” as his Republican predecessor promised a “very big announcement” next week – hinting at another bid for the White House in 2024.
The first polls opened at 6 a.m. local time on the East Coast on the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November, as is tradition for national elections in the United States.
More than 40 million voters have already voted in advance in the country for this election where the entire House of Representatives, a third of the Senate and a whole series of local elected positions are at stake. Referendums on the right abortion are also organized in four states: California, Vermont, Kentucky and Michigan.
After a fierce campaign centered on inflation, Republicans are showing growing confidence in their chances of stripping Joe Biden of his congressional majorities.
“If you want to end the destruction of our country and save the American dream, you must vote Republican tomorrow,” pleaded former President Donald Trump, omnipresent in this campaign, during a final meeting Monday evening in the Ohio, one of the country’s industrial strongholds.
Surrounded by the tide of red caps he loves, the 76-year-old billionaire announced that he would make “a very big announcement on Tuesday November 15 at Mar-a-Lago”, his residence in Florida, well aware that a victory of his lieutenants in the polls on Tuesday could offer him the ideal springboard for a presidential candidacy in 2024.
Inflation, more than anything
Organized two years after the 2020 presidential election, these midterm elections are also a referendum on the occupant of the White House. The president’s party rarely escapes the sanction vote.
Until the end, Joe Biden’s camp sought to garner votes left and center by portraying the Republican opposition as a threat to democracy and societal achievements such as the right to abortion.
“We viscerally know that our democracy is in danger,” pleaded the 79-year-old president during a last meeting Monday evening in Maryland, on the outskirts of Washington.
But the rise in prices – 8.2% on average over one year – remains by far the main concern of Americans and Joe Biden’s efforts to pose as “president of the middle class” do not seem to have borne fruit.
According to the most recent opinion polls, the Republican opposition has a good chance of winning at least 10 to 25 seats in the lower house – more than enough to be in the majority there. Pollsters are more mixed about the fate of the Senate, but the Republicans seem to have the advantage there too.
Losing control of both houses of Congress would have serious consequences for the Democrat, who has so far said he “intends” to run again in 2024, foreshadowing a possible resumption of the 2020 duel.
Monday evening, the president assured to be “optimistic” on the outcome of the ballot. He conceded, however, that keeping control of the House would be “difficult”.
Sign of the interest of Americans for this election: more than 43 million of them had already voted Monday evening in these elections, in anticipation or by correspondence.
The results of some of the closer duels, however, could take days to be announced.
Breathtaking duels
Concretely, the midterm elections are being played out in a handful of key states – the same ones that were already at stake in the 2020 presidential election.
All the spotlights are thus on Pennsylvania, a former bastion of the steel industry, where the multi-millionaire Republican surgeon Mehmet Oz, dubbed by Donald Trump, faces the bald colossus and former Democratic mayor of a small town, John Fetterman, for the post the first. most disputed of the Senate.
Because on this seat very possibly depends the balance of powers of this upper chamber, with immense power.
As in 2020, Georgia is also at the heart of all desires. Democrat Raphael Warnock, the first black senator ever elected in this southern state with a heavy segregationist past, is trying to get re-elected against Herschel Walker, a former African-American sportsman, also supported by the former president.
Arizona, Ohio, Nevada, Wisconsin and North Carolina are also the scene of intense struggles, where Democrats everywhere are opposed to the candidates of Donald Trump, who swear absolute loyalty to the former tenant of the White House.
These breathless duels were all fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars, making this election the most expensive midterm elections in US history.