ANALYSIS Midterm election in the United States

analysis

REPUBLICAN HOUSE, DEMOCRAT SENATE?

AN EVER MORE LIKELY COMPETITIVE MIDTERM ELECTION IN THE UNITED STATES

BY TAMÁS MAGYARICS

As the British Labor politician and two times Prime Minister Harold Wilson once famously remarked: “a week is a long time in politics.” In fact, the predictions for the Democrats and the Republicans for the upcoming congressional (and gubernatorial) elections in early November haven’t changed overnight, but the last few months have brought about a marked shift in the chances of the two parties. The conventional wisdom is that the midterm elections are sort of referendums on the incumbent President. Recent patterns also suggest that there is a backlash against the party in power. Thus, the Democrats lost their majority in the House of Representatives in 2010, while the Republicans likewise lost control of the House in 2018. It is also a widely shared wisdom that if the incumbent President’s approval rate is below 50%, then, his party is bound to be defeated in the congressional elections. The poor approval rating of President Biden’s a few months ago, in the upper 30s, indicated a massive Republican victory in the midterm elections, and – consequently – their retaking both Houses. This time, the picture is not so clear.

Biden’s upward trajectory

If we start with the numbers, President Biden’s approval rate has improved quite considerably recently. By mid-September, it climbed to the mid-40s – though the disapproval rate is higher by almost ten points. However, if we consider the trajectory, the President may have a chance that his popularity will go even higher, though it is quite unlikely that the approval rate will exceed the disapproval rate. Arguably, the single most important factor behind this shift is the legislative successes of the Democrats. More specifically, they were able to pass the Inflation Reduction Act (Manchin-Schumer Act), a USD 750 billion health care, tax and climate bill, which was long demanded by the Democratic Party core voters. The President’s tough stand against the Russian invasion of Ukraine has also met general approval among the electorate. The Democrats have pulled a rabbit out of the hat by trying to turn the midterm elections on a referendum not on the incumbent President, but on his predecessor in the White House. They are busy reminding the public of Donald Trump’s questionable political decisions and the sometimes unethical business behavior. The house search at Mar-a-Lago, the congressional investigation of the events of January 6, 2021, and the ongoing court procedure into his business dealings and potential tax evasions in a New York court all serve the same purpose: anyone supporting Donald Trump and, by implication, the Republican candidates he has endorsed is on the side of lawlessness. They also resort to scare tactics: President Biden in a speech delivered in Philadelphia warned that Donald Trump and the ’Make America Great Again’ movement are threats to the American democracy.

Potential game changer issues

The Democrats’ hopes have been given a boost by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the Roe vs. Wade ruling (1973) and the federal protection of abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy. In point of fact, it returned the individual states the right to regulate abortion; therefore, in some states, the rules may be even more liberal than under Roe, while in others, abortion may be made illegal altogether. One of the consequences of the Dobbs ruling is that the issue of abortion is becoming one of the important questions to decide a certain number of congressional contests besides such ’bread-and-butter’ ones as inflation, high energy prices, rising cost-of-living, etc. It is especially the suburban women who have been ’fired up’ by the decision, and their votes may be game changers in a number of contested seats. Another potential problem for the Republicans, especially in the senatorial elections, is the lack of ’quality’ candidates – if we can believe the current Republican Minority Leader in the upper house, Mitch McConnell who is one of the most experienced politicians on Capitol Hill, and if someone really knows the Republican candidates, it is him. Sen. McConnell, by implication, criticized Donald Trump with this comment as practically all the candidates he referred to were endorsed by the former President. Beyond the qualifications of the various candidates, the real problem of the Republicans is the role of Donald Trump. The dilemma for them is that Mr. Trump may be the most popular politician with the majority of the Republican voters, but his standing among the independents (and even among the moderate Republicans), who are instrumental in winning elections, is much more unstable.

Immigration and Kulturkampf

Nevertheless, there are a number of issues which the Republicans are able to campaign on. First among them is the state of the economy, more specifically the high inflation, the high gas price (though it has decreased somewhat recently), the potential disruption of supply chains, and the like. The confused handling of the immigration question by the Biden administration also works in favor of the Republicans who are urging tougher regulations and, traditionally, are standing on the platform of ’law and order.’ A kind of Kulturkampf is also under way in the U.S., quite a number of people are not in agreement with the rather vocal so-called progressive wing of the Democratic Party and the excesses of woke culture, critical race theory, cancel culture, and so on.

Republican House, Democrat Senate?

Overall, even many Democrats still think that the Republicans will retake the House, though not with a large majority as it was expected a couple of months ago. In this case, the octogenarian leadership of the House Democrats (Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, James E. Clyburn) is likely to be replaced by younger politicians (for instance, Hakeem Jeffries, who may succeed Nancy Pelosi as the leader of the House Democrats). As for the Senate, recent polls suggest that the Democrats have quite a good chance to retain the majority there. The numbers do not really favor the Republicans: they have to defend 20 seats, and they have to get at least one more seat to attain majority, in contrast with the Democrats, who have to defend only 14 seats, and it is enough for them to keep them to have the technical majority (with VP Kamala Harris’s votes in case of a tie). Moreover, the personality problem identified by Sen. McConnell affects predominantly the senatorial candidates whose personalities generally count more than those of the representatives whose party affiliation plays, in general, more important role in the elections than in the case of the senators’.