Divided nation faces turning point
Polls favour Democrats but retaking House or Senate may be tough
WASHINGTON— One way or another, Nov. 6 will mark a turning point in Donald Trump’s presidency.
Americans will vote in midterm congressional elections that will shape the remaining two years of Trump’s term. Trump will not be on the ballot, but his level of popularity may well be the primary factor in the outcome.
Early signs have been positive for the Democrats, prompting talk of a looming “blue wave.” Trump insists, with scant evidence, that there will be a Republican “red wave.”
Many Republicans are just hoping to avoid a big loss.
What are Americans voting on?
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives. Thirty-five of the 100 seats in the Senate. Thirty-six of the 50 state governorships. And state referendums on a variety of issues, from marijuana to Medicaid health insurance.
What’s the situation in the House and Senate?
Republicans are trying to maintain control of both chambers of Congress. Democrats are trying to win back control of at least one of them.
The president’s party typically loses seats in midterm elections — the Democrats lost 63 House seats in Obama’s first midterm in 2010 — but seizing either chamber this year will be a challenge for the Democrats.
The easier of the two challenges, relatively speaking, is the House. Democrats have 193 seats to Republicans’ 236, and previously won two of the six seats that are vacant, for a total of 195. That means Democrats have to make a net gain of 23 seats to win a 218-member majority in the 435-seat chamber. Such a gain would be right about average for the president’s opposition in a post-Second World War midterm.
The Democrats are down 51 to 49 in the Senate, which means they need to pick up just two seats for a majority.
But this year’s roster of Senate races is especially tough for the party.
Democrats are defending 26 of the 35 seats being contested, Republicans just nine. In other words, there are far more opportunities for Republican gains than Democratic gains. And many of the Republican opportunities are pretty good: 10 of the 26 incumbent Democrats are in states Trump won in 2016.
What’s at stake in the congressional elections?
If the Republicans gain any additional Senate seats, they might be able to dismantle key parts of Obamacare. Their efforts failed by just one vote in 2017.
If Democrats win control of either chamber, they could stop all or almost all of Trump’s legislative agenda. That means, for example, no border wall and no major cuts to the social safety net.
Democrats would also gain extensive oversight powers by winning either chamber. They could compel Trump appointees and associates to testify under oath, force the administration to produce documents, and launch investigations into the actions of Trump and his team.
And if Democrats win the House, they could potentially impeach Trump. (There is no sign this would be imminent, and there is virtually no chance Democrats would have the votes necessary to remove Trump from office even if he were impeached by the House: they’d need two-thirds of the Senate.)
How are things looking?
A lot can change by November. But the general consensus of election analysts is that the Senate is likely to stay Republican, though Democrats have an outside chance to win it, while Democrats have somewhere between a slightly-better-than-50 per cent chance and a 76 per cent chance to take the House.
Democrats have held a consistent lead in “generic ballot” polls asking people which party they intend to support. That lead was eight points (47.7 per cent to 39.9 per cent) as of Friday, according to the statistical analysis website FiveThirtyEight.
Trump’s approval rating has rebounded slightly from the depths of last fall, but it remains low: 43 per cent, according to the RealClearPolitics average, lower than Obama’s 45 per cent on the same date before his 2010 midterm disaster.
All metrics suggest the Democratic base is far more enthusiastic about voting than the Republican base.
Democrats have excelled in state-level elections and in special elections to replace departing members of Congress; while Republicans have won most of these special elections, which have mostly been held in very conservative areas, their vote share in even the victories has fallen substantially from 2016. For example, Troy Balderson is currently leading in last week’s still-not-decided special House election in Ohio by less than one percentage point; Trump won the district by 11 points.
On the flip side, the Trumpera economy is humming along. Republicans also have a signif- icant structural advantage: because Democratic voters tend to be clustered in a smaller number of areas, and because Republican state politicians have designed congressional maps to their advantage, Democrats may have to win the national popular vote by more than five percentage points to win the House.
What are the key House races?
Analysts at the Cook Political Report rate only 64 of the 435 House races as competitive at this point. Of those, 29 are considered “toss-ups” that could easily go either way.
The 64 competitive races are sprinkled around the country. In the mid-terms, there are important swing races even in states that are not swing states at the presidential level.
Some of Democrats’ best targets are the 25 districts that voted for Hillary Clinton over Trump but still elected a Republican representative. California has the highest number of these districts, with seven. There are others in Democratic-leaning states such as Virginia, New Jersey, Washington and Colorado.
Democrats will also try to take advantage of a flurry of Republican retirements, since incumbents tend to do better than new candidates. Nineteen of the 64 competitive seats are open.
What are the key Senate races?
Republicans have a chance to unseat several Democrats in deep-red states. Among their targets: Sen. Joe Manchin in West Virginia, which went for Trump by 42 points; Sen. Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, which Trump won by 36 points; Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri, which Trump won by 20 points; and Sen. Joe Donnelly in Indiana, which Trump won by 19 points. They also have a strong candidate, Gov. Rick Scott, against Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson.
Democrats see one strong opportunity for a gain: Republican Sen. Dean Heller’s seat in Nevada, the only Clinton-won state where a Republican senator is up for re-election this year. They see two decent opportunities in Republican-leaning states: the seat being vacated by Sen. Jeff Flake in Arizona, where Rep. Kyrsten Sinema leads in early polls (Republicans haven’t yet chosen their candidate), and the seat being vacated by Sen. Bob Corker in Tennessee, where the Democratic candidate is popular former governor Phil Bredesen.
Democrats are also trying to reach for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s district, where underdog Democrat Beto O’Rourke has amassed a huge fundraising haul.