US Congress still too close to call

WASHINGTON/PHOENIX: Republicans edged closer on Thursday to securing a majority in the US House of Representatives while control of the Senate hinged on a few tight races, two days after Democrats staved off an anticipated “red wave” of Republican gains in midterm elections.

Republicans have captured at least 209 House seats, CNN projected, seven short of the 218 needed to wrest the House away from Democrats and effectively halt President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.

While Republicans remain favoured, there were 33 House contests yet to be decided including 21 of the 53 most competitive races, based on a Reuters analysis of the leading nonpartisan forecasters - likely ensuring the final outcome will not be determined for some time. The fate of the Senate was far less certain.

Either party could seize control by winning too-close-to-call races in Nevada and Arizona, where officials are tallying thousands of uncounted ballots.

The party in power historically suffers heavy casualties in a president’s first midterm election and Tuesday’s results suggested voters were punishing Biden for the steepest inflation in 40 years.

Biden on Wednesday celebrated the better-than-expected performance of the Democratic Party as a marker of his administration’s success, saying the results of the midterm elections were good for democracy, and that he would not change any of his policies going forward, even as he recognised voter concerns around inflation and crime.

“While the press and the pundits are predicting a giant red wave, it didn’t happen…We lost fewer seats in the House of Representatives than any Democratic president’s first midterm election in the last 40 years. And we had the best midterms for governors since 1986,” Biden said, at a press conference on Wednesday.

Biden credited young voters, who are seen as having played a key role in enabling the Democratic victory, for making their voices heard, and suggested that the world was looking at the US to see if it was stable and democratic after the events of the past few years, ostensibly referring to the claims of voter fraud by former President Donald Trump and the insurrection at the Capitol by his supporters looking to disrupt the certification of Biden’s presidential victory in 2020.

“I especially want to thank the young people of this nation, who, I am told, voted in historic numbers again, just as they did two years ago. They voted to continue addressing the climate crisis, gun violence, their personal rights and freedoms, and the student debt relief.”

He called the generation between 18 and 30 the “best-educated, least-prejudiced, most engaged and most involved generation in American history”, and acknowledged the election of the youngest leader to the House, 25-year-old Maxwell Alejandro Frost.