Two issues push the future of the US Senate in opposite directions — consequently, the future of the Joe Biden administration, and some say even the future of American democracy: abortion and the economy.
These are the two issues that most mobilize voters according to opinion polls on the eve of the midterms, next Tuesday’s midterm elections, which will renew the House and part of the Senate – both now under the control of the Democratic Party. .
Midterms are considered a government thermometer, and Biden, who has low approval ratings, is on fire. But if Democrats have any chance of retaining a majority in the Senate, giving the president a breather, they can thank the conservative Supreme Court justices.
Until half of the year, polls showed that Biden’s defeat in the Senate was clear. In late June, however, the Supreme Court reversed a 49-year-old ruling and ruled that abortion is not a right guaranteed by the Constitution, sparking a wave of bans on voluntary termination of pregnancy across the country — abortion is now banned in almost all cases in 13 states and has restrictions in five.
Contrary to what analysts expected, the defense of abortion rights turned out to be a more important issue for voters — and female voters — than had been imagined, and subsequent polls showed a reversal in the trend for the Senate. The issue encouraged female voters to register to vote — voting is not mandatory in the US — and in early August a referendum in the conservative state of Kansas rejected changing the rules for the procedure.
Throughout the summer in the Northern Hemisphere, abortion was touted as the most important issue, so the campaign changed its tone, and Republicans even began to tone down their positions on the issue. In September, statistics website FiveThirtyEight even calculated that Democrats had a 71% chance of retaining the Senate, with 51 out of 100 seats.
But at the end of October, that trend began to reverse and the race tied again — with a bias towards Republicans, who now have a 55% chance of winning a majority, according to the same poll aggregator. That’s because, if abortion is the second most important topic today, cited by 10% of voters in the most recent poll by Quinnipiac University, at the top is the economy – inflation, for example, is the most urgent topic for 36% of voters. in the same survey, carried out a week before the election.
Biden has even managed to show better results in recent weeks. After two consecutive quarters of decline, US GDP recovered and grew 2.6% in the 3rd quarter. Even inflation, currently at 8.2% in the 12-month period through September, is lower than the peak of 9.1% in June. The price of gasoline has also dropped — after peaking at $5 a gallon in June, it’s at $3.80.
Even with this relief, levels are still high for American levels, and the perception that the country is not in the right direction grows with each survey. As a result, voters tend to punish the party in charge of the country, says political analyst John Zogby, an expert in opinion polls.
“Inflation is in the category of uncontrolled inflation and is the big question in national surveys because it affects everyone, not just one target or one segment,” he says. “The biggest advantage Republicans have is that they’re out of power,” adds Zogby, noting that Republicans also don’t have a clear blueprint for dealing with the problem other than a platform to cut government spending.
In addition to the economy, Republicans also hit on immigration issues and public safety, criticizing demands from more left-wing Democrats to reduce police funding. On the other hand, in addition to abortion, Democrats are focusing their campaign on the defense of American democracy, which would be at stake if radical Republicans regained space in power.
“In all previous elections, there was a common set of problems that everyone agreed existed, and they differed on how to respond to that. The difference today is that there are two parties with two different sets of problems in two different realities. planets orbiting the Sun in different orbits,” says Zogby.
These are the same themes that influence the design of the House next year, where the chance of Republicans taking control is much higher, at 84% according to FiveThirtyEight — the number of seats has varied in polls over the last year. semester, but there was never a threat to the majority of the Republican Party. The portal points out that the legend of Donald Trump should reach 230 of the 435 seats. Today, the party has 212 seats, and with another 6 it already has a majority.
If he loses the House, but retains the Senate, Biden is in the same situation as Trump from 2018, which is useful to avoid a loss of office in a possible serious political crisis – as happened with Trump, who had two impeachments approved in the Chamber, but barred from the Senate.
But that doesn’t mean the Democrat will have little headache. First, without a majority at the beginning of the government, Biden would not have approved projects expensive to his administration, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, which contained the largest climate change mitigation incentive package in the country’s history. He might also forget about tightening gun controls or passing federal legislation legalizing abortion.
Second, because Republicans are already talking about opening commissions to investigate their government, similar to the one that investigates the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Among the possible findings would be the process of withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan or an alleged political use of the Department of Justice in cases against Trump.
Losing control of the legislature mid-term is common. Since Jimmy Carter (1981-1989), only George W. Bush (2001-2009) has managed to maintain a majority of Congress in the midterms, in 2002, post-9/11 — a majority he lost in another election in 2006.
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