The midterm elections will be held in the United States on Tuesday. And the problem, with American votes, is always the same: they don’t work the way we’re used to seeing elections work, whoever gets the most votes wins. Votes, in US elections, are not enough to take them. You have to see where to get it. Not only that: due to the way the system works, the rooms are not renovated all together, but are fragmented, split, and overlapping.
Let’s try to shed some light on Tuesday’s vote, what’s at stake and what to watch to understand how things really are.
What are the midterm elections?
These are the elections that take place, in one form or another, two years after the election of the president. It is considered a semi-referendum on the presidency of the Republic in progress. In fact, this is not a wholly correct perception, because the constituent fathers conceived them thinking more about emergency curbs than referendum, and because their value in recent decades as a “referendum” has been greatly watered down.
Approximately Since the days of Jimmy Carter (with the exception of George W. Bush) there are no conditions for an incumbent president to win his party in the midterm elections.. And since that never happens, no one cares about it. Also because at the time, history and statistics teach that presidents (with the exception of George Bush and Donald Trump) who also lost the midterm elections, then, when they run again, win without much concern.
The reason for this unwritten rule of American politics (“the incumbent president loses the midterm elections”) occurs mostly because Americans dissatisfied with voting and low turnout (almost never reach 50%): For obvious reasons, Those who lost the presidential election are more motivated to vote because they are looking for revenge. But for the same and opposite reason, supporters of the president’s party tend to abandon the ballot box. Therefore, taking this vote as necessarily indicative of how the next presidential election will play out is a gamble. The midterm elections can give more indication of the strength of the opposition than the incumbent president.
What do you vote for?
There is a vote for the full renewal of the Senate (which remains in office only for two years) and for one-third of the Senate (senators remain in office for six years, but they go to vote in a staggered fashion, so that every two years the Senate is renewed by one-third). In addition to these votes of the federal (i.e. central) government, there are Dozens of other local and local sounds, to officials of various importance and roles. The most prominent of these local officials are, for obvious reasons, conservatives.
What do polls and predictions say
Opinion polls, and what’s more, forecast models, have assigned a House victory to Republicans, while the Senate appears to be in equilibrium (but with a trend toward a Republican victory). The same is true of conservative races, which Republicans are expected to win, according to opinion polls.
But be careful: Many decisive battles (in the so-called swing states) are in a state of fundamental equality. For this, polling and politics website FiveThirtyEight, a few days ago, put out a headline: “Republicans are far from victory. Or from defeat.”
Another thing that also needs to be said: In recent years, polls have tended to Inflating the Democrats’ consensus And although investigative techniques have improved and improved over time, many believe that even the polls conducted in these weeks (which put Democrats on a par with Republicans) can pay for the same problem and be, again, big in size.
What will happen to Biden’s presidency if this election goes wrong?
As mentioned, the fact that the president is losing the midterm elections is orderly and no one seems really bothered by it. At least until 2024.
But the problem is that we still have two years from now to 2024. Two years in which a lot of decisions will have to be made. The powers of the President of the United States are very limited. Its laws must pass through the councils which have the power (especially the Senate) to change or reject them.
For this reason, although the statistics indicate that there is no need to worry about the outcome of the parliamentary elections, President Biden knows he can’t sleep peacefully: Because he knows that with a Republican-majority parliament (actually: Trumpian) there will be no room for negotiation and agreement, but only permanent subversion of the laws that can allow his electoral promises to be fulfilled.
Not only that, there is a hypothesis (far but tangible) that Parliament controlled by a loyal majority and Donald Trump could request the impeachment of Joe Biden, on false charges of election theft (evidence would be needed, but even polarizing politics don’t matter to anyone). It’s a hypothesis that seems really remote and looks like an electoral gamble (moreover, the numbers won’t be there anyway), but the mere fact of talking about it, gives an idea of the air it’s pulling and how the Republican Party, since it’s been under Trump’s auspices, has lost even the slightest touch with reality and rationality of things.
What countries to watch
Those who follow US elections regularly know that in the vast majority of cases the election has a written history already. There are areas so deeply rooted in Republicans and Democrats that real games are played in the summer, with primaries. Actual elections, then, serve only to ratify what was decided by the internal elections of the strongest party in that field.
However, there are some exceptions, i.e. countries that do not have a strong and clear political belief and which, on the contrary, tend to change from one voice to another. They are the so-called swing states, those in which, in essence, the game is determined. Over the years, the list of swing states has changed several times. Until a few years ago, Florida and Ohio were in the balance.
Today, however, The game seems to have all been played in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Wisconsin. If the Democrats win at least three of these races, the Senate will remain and the Biden presidency can continue to march. If all four win, Joe Biden opens up the champagne. On the off chance that two or more are missing, Donald Trump opens up the champagne, perhaps five minutes before he announces his candidacy for 2024.
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