US midterms 2022: the process, polling and how the results will impact 2024

President Joe Biden at a Democrats rally in August in Rockville, Maryland

Bryan Dozier/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

November elections outcome will reflect how Americans feel about Joe Biden’s performance so far

By AMRITA GILL

US citizens will head to the polls on 8 November to vote in elections that will shape the country’s next two years. 

Held at the mid-point of a president’s four-year term, the midterms see Americans electing the members of their Congress, along with state governors and a variety of other state and local offices.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs and a further 35 seats are being contested in the Senate – the two institutions that make up Congress. The Democrats currently control the House by a small margin, while the Senate is split evenly, with Vice President Kamala Harris holding the deciding vote.

Will the midterms impact the 2024 vote?

Midterms are “almost always a referendum on the incumbent president”, said The Washington Post. Although the re-election of President Joe Biden won’t be on the table for another two years, the midterm results will reflect how Americans feel about his performance so far.  

In the 2018 midterms, the Republicans lost 42 seats in Congress, and Donald Trump went on to lose the 2020 presidential race. 

On the other hand, “two years is a lifetime in politics”, said political analysis website FiveThirtyEight. A lot can and almost certainly will happen between now and 2024, with the continuing fallout of Covid, the war in Ukraine and the predicted recession likely to have significant impacts.

The candidates for the 2024 election are also undecided. Although the race looks likely to be between Biden and Trump, the latter has yet to announce his formal bid, while the incumbent will be 81 in 2024 – a major cause of concern among many Democrats. 

Gerrymandering – the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries – has also drastically changed the playing field in the midterms, with both parties redistricting to increase their chances of winning.

What the midterms will definitely determine is whether Biden will struggle to pass bills over the next two years. Since assuming office in January 2021, the president’s power has been curtailed by the Democrats’ narrow majority, stalling legislation on issues including gun control and voting rights. 

What is the expected result?

GOP leader Mitch McConnell has “downplayed expectations” of Republicans capturing control of the Senate, NBC News reported in August. “Senate races are just different – they're statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” McConnell said at a Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce event, after being asked about his projection for midterms. 

The Senate race is looking tricky for both parties. Of the 35 seats up for election, 21 are held by the GOP. But all of the 14 Democratic seats are in states that also voted for Biden in the 2020 election, “limiting Republicans’ offensive opportunities”, said Politico’s chief election reporter Steve Shepard.

As of early September, Shepard put the Senate slightly in the Republicans’ favour, with only five “toss-up” seats that the Democrats could win back.

But the Republicans’ “diminishing national tailwinds – along with some struggling candidates – have imperilled the GOP’s fight to flip the Senate”, he said.

Congress’s lower chamber, the House of Representatives, presents a different picture. The Democrats hold a narrow majority in the House, with 221 seats (218 is the minimum for a majority). The Republicans have 212, and two seats are vacant. 

In 2018, the Republicans almost toppled the Democrats’ majority, and with the 2022 playing field transformed due to redistricting, many analysts believe the GOP could succeed in that goal this time round. 

But there have been glimmers of hope for the Democrats. In five special congressional elections (where the incumbent has either resigned or died) since the Supreme Court controversially overturned Roe v. Wade in June, a party representative has triumphed and overperformed the 2020 presidential election results.

Where are the tightest competitions? 

The five “toss-up” states in the Senate race are Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In 2020, Biden won Georgia by less than 12,000 votes, becoming the first Democratic nominee to triumph in the southern state since Bill Clinton in 1992. But “Georgia is about as purple as it comes now”, said NPR, in a reference to the colour used to denote a swing state. 

Georgia’s Senate race is set to be a “nail-biter” between incumbent Democratic senator Raphael Warnock and his Republican rival, ex-NFL player Herschel Walker, who has Trump’s backing. Warnock is pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church – “the same post once held by Dr Martin Luther King Jr” – and is tipped for a narrow win, but the contest “has remained close”, the news site continued.

The GOP may also lose Pennsylvania, a seat currently held by the Republicans, after nominating controversial television doctor Mehmet Oz. Even though his Democrat opponent, John Fetterman, suffered a stroke “that kept him off the campaign trail for months”, Oz has been unable to effectively “pierce Fetterman’s brand”, NPR added.

What could change between now and November? 

Recent events in the US that are shaping campaign agendas include the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling, which “reawakened” the Democrats’ “progressive base” and “provided a wedge issue” with which to win over independent voters, said The New York Times. 

“All across America, Democrats are using abortion as a powerful cudgel in their 2022 television campaigns,” the paper reported. 

More recently, Biden’s decision to cancel $10,000 in federal student debt for most borrowers has “opened a fresh midterm front”, said CNN’s White House reporter Stephen Collinson. 

Whether the president’s plan will predominately help the GOP or the Democrats remains unclear. Many liberals who have pushed for debt forgiveness believe that Biden has not gone far enough, while Republicans argue that the plans are unfair to hard-working Americans who did not go to college. 

The economy is another key issue in the midterms, and the energy crisis will be biting harder come November, when Americans cast their votes. Fears about threats to democracy are high on voters’ agendas too, amid widespread concern about Trump and his Make America Great Again (Maga) movement.

The former president is casting a long shadow over the upcoming midterms. Many commentators have predicted that he will announce his 2024 presidential bid before voting begins, as his way of asserting “dominance over the GOP”, said The Wall Street Journal. 

But that could work in the Democrats’ favour, as an opportunity to move the narrative away from soaring inflation and Biden’s falling public approval ratings. The shift in focus could impact swing districts where, in 2018, “voters wanted a check on Mr Trump’s chaotic governance”, added the paper. 

That said, while the outcome of the 2022 midterms hangs very much in the balance, many pundits are expecting to see more of a red wave than a blue one. 

Source: The Week