The United States is 100 days away from Sunday’s midterm legislative elections that will determine control of Congress and therefore the content of Donald Trump’s remaining two years in the White House.
On November 3, Americans will renew the terms of all their members in the House of Representatives and 35 of their 100 senators.
Republicans currently hold only a handful of seats in both chambers.
Traditionally, the party that wins the White House “almost always loses seats in midterm elections, but especially when the president is unpopular,” Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University, reminds AFP.
In fact, Donald Trump has only 39% positive opinions compared to 59% negative, according to a polling average conducted by New York Times.
And the trend in recent polls is also almost unanimous: Democrats prefer to take back the House of Representatives.
However, their chances were somewhat diminished by Donald Trump’s reapportionment campaign in several Republican states. An old political strategy in the United States called fraud ”, which has reduced the number of elections in which Democrats can truly compete.
Only 18 to 20 of the House of Representatives’ 435 districts, or less than 5% of the vote, are expected to actually leave results uncertain, Sarah Binder points out.
“Fraudsters”
In the Senate, if their chances of regaining a majority are lower than in the House, Democrats nevertheless look increasingly optimistic, hoping in particular to flip seats in North Carolina, Maine or even Iowa and Ohio, or even Alaska.
So after 19 months of an unopposed presidency, Donald Trump faces the prospect of losing his majority in Congress and being unable to impose his legislative agenda.
A Democratic majority would also mean increased investigative powers, especially in government cases.
“Our promise to the American people is that we are going to hold the crooks accountable,” Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, said Thursday in a thinly veiled threat to Republican officials.
Faced with such bleak prospects for his party, Donald Trump appears ready to renew his accusations of election fraud.
“We have a very important election ahead of us. We want this election to be fair,” he said in a speech in mid-July, during which he renewed his baseless accusations about the 2020 election, which he said was stolen in favor of Democrat Joe Biden.
According to Sarah Binder, “the president is still replaying the 2020 game even though his Republican legislators are asking him to focus on 2026.”
“Common sense”
Democrats, for their part, want to highlight the campaign’s central issue: the cost of living.
A problem inherited from the Biden presidency but persisting under Donald Trump and exacerbated by his decision to go to war against Iran, causing prices to skyrocket.
Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has vowed to campaign to lower food, housing, gas, and health care prices.
On the other hand, the Republican Party has sought to highlight the Trump administration’s achievements on anti-immigration or tax cuts and tried to portray the opposing camp as increasingly extreme. The president and his allies have no qualms about calling Democrats communists, a scary word in the United States.
“Common sense versus insanity, and Democrats are on the wrong side every time,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday.
According to Sarah Binder, “once we get to the fall, when voters can pay more attention,” Republicans should focus their attention on social issues.
“I think you’ll see more attacks and messages related to the culture wars,” and “transgender issues” in particular, she said.