In the four-year political cycle defined by the term of office of the President of the United States, the midterm elections are always a particularly critical node.
In these, the entire House of Representatives is elected (the term there is two years), a third of the Senate (senators are elected for a six-year term), while they always coincide with several elections for State governor and also with elections for State legislatures. It is also a convenient date for holding various referendums.
The main contention of elections for the House and Senate, which make up the US Congress, is control over the legislative process. We remind you that the proposed laws first start in the House of Representatives and are then debated and ratified by the Senate, before they get the president’s signature and become laws.
The two bodies have different characteristics. The House of Representatives is elected from a number of narrow unicameral districts apportioned according to population, although there is often an effort to shape their boundaries (which districts include, whether they include more black or white voters, etc.) to allow for a influencing the result. In this election, it is estimated that the Republicans will gain up to three seats from the geographic redistricting of congressional seats.
On the other hand, the Senate consists of two senators per State, elected for a six-year term, regardless of its population. This also explains why we can see different trends as the results in the two bodies.
Why does the President want control of Congress?
For each President and his government, the control of the legislative bodies is important. First of all, it needs to have the majority of the Parliament, in order to be able to have legislative initiatives. He needs the majority of the Senate to be able to proceed with passed bills and to be able to “pass” the choices of persons he makes, e.g. of supreme court judges. Here we should note that in the Senate there is almost always a negotiation and there is some kind of cross-party consensus, since in practice the body does not operate on the principle of 50%+1, since a strong minority can always filibuster, a drawn-out process that in the end invalidates a law and which can only be overcome by a strong majority. In borderline cases there is the possibility to break the filibuster with a simple majority. But generally the practice is that it takes a majority of 60 senators to break when it comes to legislative issues. This basically defines the intended correlation each time, which also explains why in the end compromise and “shortened” versions of the laws passed by the House are often passed in the Senate.
This complex legislative process explains, for example, why the packages of economic measures initially proposed by Joe Biden were much larger than those that were finally passed.
If a president has a hostile Congress, then he has the ability to refuse to sign a law that has been passed. A presidential veto is only overturned by a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate (unless the presidential veto is followed by a congressional recess, in which case the veto is not overridden).
The importance of midterms in relation to presidential elections
By-elections always capture the appeal of a government and often show its decay. It is also in many cases a way for voters to show their dissatisfaction with the government. This explains why they traditionally favor the opposition.
If a government loses Congress it is obvious that it also loses the ability to have big initiatives and so it will go to the next election with a more difficult field and without presenting all the legislative work that it would like. This means that it is also much more vulnerable to pressure and blackmail from the opposition, which has every reason to demand major concessions on its own agenda to allow the government to proceed with its agenda. That is why even when the opposition wins the midterms, this can be a harbinger for the presidential elections. This happened in 2006 when the “Democratic wave” in the elections showed the momentum that two years later led to the election of Barack Obama.
Of course, there are many examples where presidents were able to be re-elected despite having a hostile Congress. In 1994 the Republicans won Congress for the first time since 1952. However, in 1996 Bill Clinton managed to be re-elected president.
However, the special importance of the elections of November 8, 2022 can also be seen from the fact that the advertising expenditure for them is particularly high.
The return of the Republicans
Everything shows that the Republicans are preparing to have a positive result especially in the House of Representatives, where the forecasts show that they will be able to get the majority. Things are more difficult in the Senate where not everyone agrees that the outcome cannot be predicted with certainty.
As for the governor elections, 36 governors will be elected in this election. In some states, changes are expected: Massachusetts and Maryland are expected to return to the Democrats. The Republicans have a good chance of winning Nevada, Wisconsin and maybe Oregon, in other cases, like in Michigan and Pennsylvania their candidates were rather weak. However, the Republicans will also have positive results: Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis is expected to have a comfortable victory, while he is also considered a possible candidate for the presidency. And Republicans will likely re-elect governors in Texas and Georgia.
Of particular interest is that alongside the 36 governors, 27 secretaries of State will also be elected. This position, equivalent to a State “Minister of the Interior” is of particular importance, because these officials are responsible for validating the elections. If “deniers” (deniers) are elected there, i.e. with views close to those of Donald Trump (and his conspiracy theories), then this will play a role if we have a Trump-Biden battle in 2024 and Trump again tries a line of questioning the results.
At the same time, the elections held for the State legislatures are also important. For example in Wisconsin a state with a Democratic governor and which has voted Democratic in presidential elections the Republicans are close enough to having two-thirds majorities in the state House and State Senate which means they will be able to override any vetoes by the governor, should that Republican candidate Tim Mitchells is not elected. And of course we should not forget that State legislatures have become more important, as they can make important decisions on issues such as abortion, gun ownership and of course voting rights.
Inflation, the importance of the economy and the partial disapproval of Joe Biden
These elections are the first “post-pandemic” elections. This is also shown by the fact that, unlike the 2020 elections, the pandemic is now very low on the voters’ list. This is a disadvantage for Joe Biden because it means that the positive opinion about his handling of the pandemic will not translate electorally.
What worries Americans the most is the economy. Rising inflation, the prospect of even bigger interest rate hikes (hitting the real estate market), the pervasive sense of an impending recession on the horizon all contribute to this concern, even though the US maintains relatively high growth rates and has not even saw an increase in unemployment (on the contrary, it remains at impressively low levels). Furthermore, problems with supply chains have not stopped. Very recently, China announced a lockdown in the city where iPhones are assembled at FoXconn’s factories.
Americans are also quite concerned about the rise in crime, an element that traditionally favors the more conservative views of Republicans.
The Republicans, for their part, in addition to criticizing Joe Biden’s economic policy, have also invested heavily in issues related to security and crime, as well as the issue of abortion. After all, the election is being held in the shadow of the Supreme Court’s decision that overturned the historic Roe v. Wade which essentially legalized abortion. In fact, although at first the Democrats wanted to use this decision, which was considered a big setback for reproductive rights, to mobilize their voters for the need to maintain control of Congress, then the Republicans came to do the same arguing that if they control Congress they will try to pass federal regulation banning abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy. And now Democrats are seeing the weight of abortion as a rallying issue recede.
Biden emphatically poses the danger facing democracy
In an effort to mobilize Democratic voters, Joe Biden has presented the November 8 election as a battle for democracy. The occasion was the recent incident of the attack on the home of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, which resulted in the serious injury of her husband, and which attack was attributed precisely to the toxic climate created by Donald Trump’s questioning of the outcome of the 2020 election, questioning which also led to the unprecedented deviations of January 6, 2021.
Biden called on voters to elect those who will not question the outcome of the election and defend democracy, arguing that a reversal of the correlation would actually favor Donald Trump’s plans.
However, despite the appeal of both democracy and reproductive rights issues, this cannot offset the weight of voters’ anxiety about the election.
The shadow of Donald Trump
Donald Trump is not running for office in this election. He has not even officially announced that he will run in 2024. However, his shadow looms large in this election. After all, he remains highly popular among his party’s voters, who at a rate of 64% want the former President to continue to have a significant influence in shaping the direction of his party.
And a large number of Republicans running for some sort of federal or state office in this election are his supporters. According to a count of the 552 Republican candidates vying for office on Nov. 8, 199 reject the legitimacy of the 2020 election and embrace Trump’s narrative.
However, many in the Republican Party worry that some candidate choices that were heavily supported by Trump may end up doing more damage, e.g. former Georgia State football star Herschel Walker who probably won’t be able to pull off the upset.
Anyway, Trump in his speeches has raised the tone in relation to his eventual candidacy and there are reports that especially if the Republicans do well in the mid-term elections, he will announce his candidacy in November.
A country in a dilemma of choice
In fact, these elections show that we are dealing with a country that is faced with open questions. First of all, it is a divided country, with deep political, value and cultural differences, for a long time without a common narrative. On critical issues such as the role of religion in people’s lives, gun ownership, the treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers, abortion, the death penalty, it remains a country of great controversy and conflict. Its economic elites have conflicting views on the issue of dealing with climate change. Its judiciary is beginning to polarize between those who support a more progressive understanding and the Supreme Court’s deeply conservative reading of the constitution.
It is no accident that Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories resonate, or that for the first time since the 19th century, the concept of civil war is returning as a marginal possibility.
Then there is a country that is looking for a way for the economy. The Fed’s interventions may be giving direction to inflation, but there are all the open problems in terms of productivity, profitability, the relationship between the real economy and the overinflated financial sector, the growing volatility in markets like bond markets.
And of course it is a country that oscillates in terms of international politics. Why might the US have chosen a more aggressive line e.g. in the war in Ukraine, or have chosen an escalation of the conflict with China, or are thinking about new sanctions against Iran, but at the same time their leadership begins to be limited to the boundaries of the “West” and at the same time they are unable to articulate a coherent narrative about the world. Accordingly, it remains to be seen if a strengthening of the Republican position will also entail a shift to more “isolationist” policies in the manner of Donald Trump himself.
