US midterm elections are here: A beginner's guide to the polls that will dictate Joe Biden's future

Amid the Russia-Ukraine war and a global economic slowdown, all eyes turn to America as it goes to poll in the crucial midterm elections today (8 November).

Today, the American public will choose who controls US Congress – Democrats or Republicans – and with it the very future of the Biden presidency.

But what are midterm elections? Why do they matter? And what can we expect?

Let’s take a closer look:

What are midterm elections?

Midterm elections are named thus because they fall in the middle of the sitting US president’s term of office.

Up for grabs are seats in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate.

The House of Representatives elects all of its 435 members every two years.

The US Senate, meanwhile, has just 100 members – all serving six year terms.

Which means that all seats of the US House are in play, while just a third of the seats in the Senate are on offer.

Right now, the Democrats hold a slender majority in the House over the Republicans – 220 to 209.

In the Senate, things are balanced on a knife’s edge with a 50-50 split between the two parties with Vice-President Kamala Harris having to break ties in favour of the Democrats.

What does history show?

Midterms frequently serve as a referendum on the president.

The party in power, to quote former president Barack Obama, is usually in for a “shellacking” during the midterms.

In 2018, under Donald Trump, the Republicans lost 41 seats in what amounted to a repudiation of the businessman-turned-politico.

Even that pales in comparison to the Democrats losing an incredible 63 seats just two years after Obama’s historic victory in 2008.

In 2006, George W Bush famously said his Republicans took what he called a “thumping” in the midterms.

Less than half of the country – 40 per cent – approves of Joe Biden’s job performance, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted on 31 October-1 November. That same poll showed that 69 per cent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, compared with just 18 per cent  who said it was on the right track.

Like Biden, Trump is not on the ballot. But the former president has backed a slate of like-minded candidates as he attempts to remain the de facto leader of his party ahead of another possible White House bid in 2024.

Democrats have been buoyed by the fallout from the US Supreme Court’s decision overturning the constitutional abortion protections of Roe v Wade, which resulted in a surge of Democratic protest votes in a Kansas referendum and sparked a rise in voter registrations among women nationwide.

But opinion polls show the economy remains a much higher concern for voters, suggesting that anger over the abortion decision will not be enough to save Democrats.

Democrats also hope that Trump’s legal problems stemming from his potential misuse of classified documents and probes into his role in the push to overturn the 2020 presidential election result will make swing voters less inclined to support Republican candidates.

With Election Day approaching, some Democrats were again portraying their Republican opponents as election deniers and supporters of the US Capitol attack.

What’s the forecast?

The Democrats are battling strong headwinds.

While 53 House races are widely viewed as tight contests on Tuesday, according to an aggregate of leading election analysts, Republicans stand a strong chance of taking control of the chamber.

Remember, the Republicans need only to gain five seats to assume the majority in the 435-member chamber.

Fearing a Republican takeover, 31 House Democrats announced they were retiring or seeking other office, the most for the party since 1992.

By comparison, 20 Republican House members announced retirement or that they were seeking another office.

In the Senate, things are a lot more uncertain.

First-time, Trump-backed candidates including television doctor Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and former football star Herschel Walker in Georgia have proven more formidable than Democrats expected.

Campaigns for Democratic-held seats in Arizona and Nevada also are tightly contested.

Sean Trende, Senior Election Analyst at Real Clear Politics told CNBC, “At this point you see momentum on the Republican side. A lot of these races really are breaking towards Republicans. In the House of Representatives most serious analysts agree that the Republicans are going to win it. In the senate there is momentum on the Republican side, but if that momentum shifts by Election Day then Democrats would keep the senate. If the current momentum continues then you could be looking at unified Republican control of Congress.”

However, the election website 538 describes the Senate as a ‘toss-up’.

Regardless, Republicans’ prospects of winning have been enhanced through gerrymandering, the practice by which one party manipulates congressional district lines to entrench its own power during the once-a-decade redistricting process.

Republican state lawmakers passed advantageous new maps in large states such as Texas and Florida, while Democrats in New York had their own aggressive map invalidated by the state’s high court.

Independent experts estimated that Republicans gained around three seats through redistricting, a smaller edge than in past cycles but one that could have a huge impact given the Democrats’ razor-thin majority in the House.

What’s at stake?

Only the very future of Joe Biden’s presidency.

Republican control of either chamber would be enough to derail most legislation Biden and his fellow Democrats want to enact.

Worse, for the Democrats, it would propel a flood of congressional probes of his administration.

And for the rest of the country, everything from abortion rights to US support for the war in Ukraine is up for grabs.

Reproductive rights once appeared to be the issue that would decide the election. Voter registrations, particularly among women, surged after the US Supreme Court ended federal protections for abortion access in June.

But it has lost salience as a campaign issue, sparking concern among Democrats that they may have relied too heavily on the subject to the detriment of “kitchen table” fare like inflation and crime.

The party has tried to pivot in the closing weeks of the campaign, but soaring consumer prices up 8.2 per cent in a year, have undermined Biden’s attempt to sell himself as the president for the American worker.

The Democrats have called on former president Barack Obama, still the party’s biggest draw, to mobilise the troops.

The pair are scheduled to appear together Saturday in hotly-contested Pennsylvania.

With inputs from agencies

Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .