US midterms 2022: the process, polling and how results will affect 2024

The Republican Party is looking to make major gains in Congress in tomorrow’s midterm elections.

US President Joe Biden has been on the campaign trail fighting for Democratic votes and is due to appear later today at a rally in Maryland after appearing in New York last night, said the BBC. Both areas are normally considered Democratic strongholds.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump will be at a Republican rally in Ohio for J.D. Vance, a one-time critic of the former president who was able to secure the GOP’s nomination for a Senate seat through Trump’s backing.

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With “more than 41 million ballots already cast”, the last-minute campaigning is likely to focus on “ensuring that supporters either meet early voting deadlines or make plans to show up in person on Tuesday”, said Al Jazeera.

But the results are set to have a “powerful effect” on the remaining years of Biden’s presidency, “shaping policy on everything from government spending to military support for Ukraine”.

Election forecasts suggest that it is highly likely that the GOP will take control of the House of Representatives, while the Democrats’ control of the Senate hangs in the balance.

When are the midterms and what is up for grabs?

US citizens will head to the polls on 8 November to vote in elections that will shape the country’s next two years.

Held at the mid-point of a president’s four-year term, the midterms see Americans electing the members of their Congress, along with state governors and a variety of other state and local offices.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs and a further 35 seats are being contested in the Senate – the two institutions that make up Congress. The Democrats currently control the House by a small margin, while the Senate is split evenly, with Vice-President Kamala Harris holding the deciding vote. But Biden faces the very real possibility of losing control of both houses.

Will the midterms impact the 2024 vote?

Midterms are “almost always a referendum on the incumbent president”, said The Washington Post. Although the re-election of Biden won’t be on the table for another two years, the midterm results will reflect how Americans feel about his performance so far.

In the 2018 midterms, the Republicans lost 42 seats in Congress, and Donald Trump went on to lose the 2020 presidential race.

On the other hand, “two years is a lifetime in politics”, said political analysis website FiveThirtyEight. A lot can and almost certainly will happen between now and 2024, with the continuing fallout of Covid, the war in Ukraine and the predicted recession likely to have significant impacts.

The candidates for the 2024 election are also undecided. Although the race looks likely to be between Biden and Trump, the latter has yet to announce his formal bid, while the incumbent will be 82 just after the 2024 election – a major cause of concern among many Democrats.

Axios reported that Trump is gearing up to announce another run for the presidency, in an attempt to “surf the GOP’s expected post-midterm euphoria” and “build momentum for his own effort to retake the White House”. Trump could launch his presidential campaign on 14 November, the news site reported.

Biden is also yet to formally declare a run for re-election, but has been “quietly” preparing a “potential 2024 reelection bid” with a “small group” of senior advisers, reported The Washington Post.

Gerrymandering – the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries – has also drastically changed the playing field in the midterms, with both parties “redistricting” to increase their chances of winning.

What the midterms will definitely determine is whether Biden will struggle to pass bills over the next two years. Since assuming office in January 2021, the president’s power has been curtailed by the Democrats’ narrow majority, stalling legislation on issues including gun control and voting rights.

What is the expected result?

The final national NBC News poll ahead of the midterms found a “highly competitive campaign landscape” as Democratic voters “pulled even” with Republicans in terms of their interest in the elections.

Polling suggests that both Democrats and Republicans are highly interested in the vote, with 73% of voters from both parties registering either a “9” or “10” on a 10-point scale, said NBC.

Some 48% of voters said that they would prefer a Democratic controlled Congress as the outcome of Tuesday’s vote, while 47% prefer Republicans to be in charge. This is a “reversal from October” when 48% wanted to see the GOP gain control of Congress, while 47% wanted Democrats to have overall control. However, “the shift is well within the poll’s margin of error”, said the news site.

Midterm elections frequently “favour the party that is out of power”, said Jeffrey M. Jones and Lydia Saad in their analysis for Gallup, “and if that pattern holds, the Republican Party will win back their majority in the US House of Representatives, if not also the US Senate”.

Its analysis found that “all national mood indicators similar to, if not worse than, what they have been in other years when the incumbent party fared poorly in midterms”, pointing to some major victories on the horizon for the GOP. As the US heads into the midterms “40% of Americans approve of the job Joe Biden is doing as president, 17% are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S. 49% describe the health of the economy as poor (compared with 14% saying it is excellent or good), and 21% approve of the job the Democratically led Congress is doing”, said the pollster.

According to the latest analysis from FiveThirtyEight, the Republicans are poised to win control of the House of Representatives, with their statistical model – which simulates the election 40,000 times using polling data – returning a Republican victory in the House 82 times out of 100.

But the model suggests a “dead heat” between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to control of the Senate, with the pollster describing the race as a “toss-up”. The modelling suggests a roughly 50/50 split in the number of wins secured by each party in 100 simulations of the race.

While the Democrats hold a narrow majority in the House, with 221 seats (218 is the minimum for a majority), compared to 212 held by Republicans, the GOP came close to toppling the Democrats’ majority in 2018. With the 2022 playing field transformed due to redistricting – the redrawing of electoral boundaries – many analysts believe the GOP could succeed in that goal this time round.

But there have been glimmers of hope for the Democrats. In five special congressional elections (where the incumbent has either resigned or died) since the Supreme Court controversially overturned Roe vs. Wade in June, a party representative has triumphed and overperformed the 2020 presidential election results.

Where are the tightest competitions?

The five “toss-up” states in the Senate race are Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In 2020, Biden won Georgia by less than 12,000 votes, becoming the first Democratic nominee to triumph in the southern state since Bill Clinton in 1992. But “Georgia is about as purple as it comes now”, said NPR, in a reference to the colour used to denote a swing state.

Georgia’s Senate race is set to be a “nail-biter” between incumbent Democratic senator Raphael Warnock and his Republican rival, ex-NFL player Herschel Walker, who has Trump’s backing. Warnock is pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church – “the same post once held by Dr Martin Luther King Jr” – and is tipped for a narrow win, but the contest “has remained close”, the news site continued.

The GOP may also lose Pennsylvania, a seat currently held by the Republicans, after nominating controversial television doctor Mehmet Oz. Even though his Democrat opponent, John Fetterman, suffered a stroke “that kept him off the campaign trail for months”, Oz has been unable to effectively “pierce Fetterman’s brand”, NPR added. This is “despite a halting performance” from Fetterman at last week’s debate with Oz “that raised questions about his health”, said The Hill.

What will prove the decisive factors?

Threats to democracy and the economy were high on the list of voter issues when polled by NBC this week. When voters were asked what they considered the most important issue facing the US, 23% answered with “threats to democracy”, 20% said jobs and the economy, and 17% replied with the cost of living, according to polling.

When asked which issues were more important in deciding their vote, “50% of voters said a candidate’s position on abortion, threats to democracy and addressing the cost of living by raising taxes on corporations” – issues which largely echo Democratic messaging – compared to “44% who picked a candidate’s position on crime, the situation at the border and addressing the cost of living by cutting government spending”, echoing Republican messaging, said NBC.

“The mood is dark in America”, with the atmosphere on the campaign trail “one of fear” among voters who believe the country is “on the brink”, said Sky’s international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn.

And it is “not just a fear of the other side winning”. Democrats are terrified that democracy in the US is “about to be subverted” as “people who claim the electoral system is rigged are running for key positions that will give them power over that system”. Meanwhile, Republican voters are “equally passionate” in their fears that the US is “being taken in the wrong direction by elites that are unaware how much the ordinary American is hurting”.

There has been a febrile atmosphere in the US in the run up to the midterms, with the “fault lines” in American society now running “alarmingly deep”, said Sky News US correspondent Mark Stone. “It would be wrong to think America can just muddle its way through this inflection point in its history”, he said, noting that “recent polling suggests that a growing number of Americans believe political violence is acceptable”.

The Democratic speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, was apparently targeted at her San Francisco home, where her husband was seriously injured by a hammer-wielding assailant.

The attacker reportedly searched for her at one point during the assault, shouting: “Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?” The US Justice Department has charged 42-year-old David DePape with assault and attempted kidnapping.