Concerned about the economy and especially about inflation, Americans go to the polls this Tuesday to elect representatives, senators and governors.
Concerned about the progress of the economy and especially about inflationAmericans go to the polls this Tuesday to elect representatives, senators and governors, amid a climate of tension and fears of violence in elections that will mark the government of Joe Biden, the course of the country and the fight for the White House by 2024.
Is renewed the entire House of Representatives (435 deputies) and a third of the Senate (34 senators), as well as 36 governors and authorities in each state.
Democrats risk their majority in Congress in an election that President Joe Biden has described as “defining” for American democracy, although current issues such as inflation, abortion and democracy have dominated the campaign.
The picture looks very complicated for the Democrats. The latest polls indicate that the Republican opposition leads the ruling party between 3 and 4 points nationally, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
This means that the Republicans they could take control of the House of Representatives and also the Senate from the Democratswhich would greatly hinder Biden’s governability in the last stretch of his term.
¿”Ola roja”?
Democrats currently have a majority in both chambers., but in the Senate they win only by one vote, that of Vice President Kamala Harris. Although the senatorial elections in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Ohio are very close, the FiveThirtyEight site predicts that the Republicans could win in some of those states and recover up to 5 seats in the Senate.
But it is already known that polls and predictions can fail, and a lot.
Some numbers that have already come to light they predict that there could be a “red wave”. But they are not definitive. For weeks now it has been possible to vote in advance and for example in Miami-Dade County, Florida, which has been in the hands of the Democrats for 20 years, more registered Republicans have cast their vote than Democrats (although it is not known even who they voted for).
It is likely that the general results will not be known this Tuesday since the count in general is slow and there are places where the situation is so close that it is possible that the votes will be observed one by one.
Although the opposition party usually wins in the mid-term elections, these elections put much more at stake than that given the unprecedented level of polarization and tension that is observed in the United States.
In a tense climate, there were hundreds of threats against candidates and their families and electoral authorities, as well as hooded and armed men seen near early voting sites. The attack on the husband of Nancy Pelosi, head of the Chamber of Deputies and personality hated by conservatives, was just one of the most relevant episodes, but not the only one.
The main concern of Americans ahead of the vote, according to the polls, is the state of the economy and unprecedented inflation, which has reached levels not seen for 40 years. With price increases of 8.2% per year (with peaks of 9%) it is to be expected that they will vote with their pockets.
The majority (59%) of Americans blame Biden for the performance of the economy and 61% do not agree with the handling of inflationabove the general disapproval levels of the president (54.9).
The Democrats have done everything possible to divert attention from this axis that bothers them. Biden assures that the Republicans will try to ban abortion in all states and take away more civil rights. Furthermore, he argues that what is at stake this Tuesday is not only the ability of his party to maintain power and advance its agenda, but the very government of the United States is at stake.
There are those who imagine that a scenario like in 2020 will repeat itself, when Donald Trump lost the elections and denounced fraud, which was finally dismissed by justice. The former president then entrenched himself in the White House, did not do much to stop his supporters who stormed the Capitol, and did not formally hand over power to Biden.
Trump on the run
This unprecedented situation is not part of the past because 80% of Republicans who support Trump still believe the elections were illegitimateyes And the most serious thing is that the candidates who deny the result of those elections will advance this Tuesday in several key positions to supervise, defend or certify the elections of the future.
According to States Unites Action, in the 27-state races for governor, attorneys general and secretary of state, there is at least one candidate who denies the election.
It is certain that Republican victories would complicate the president’s agenda and they would trigger a series of investigations against him (for the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the handling of the pandemic, for example) and would impact Biden’s re-election decision in 2024.
But this Tuesday’s elections will also define the Republican race. Trump has been flirting with announcing that he will seek to return to the presidency and it has already transpired that, excited by a wave of red votes, he could soon announce that he is running again for the White House.
However, these elections may be the springboard for a possible internal adversary: Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, who according to the polls will sweep his state. Attentive to this phenomenon, Biden did not hesitate to describe it as “The reincarnation of Donald Trump”.