The United States is on Sunday 100 days away from the mid-term legislative elections which will decide control of Congress and therefore the content of Donald Trump’s remaining two years in the White House.
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On November 3, the Americans will renew all of their deputies in the House of Representatives and 35 of their 100 senators.
Republicans currently have only a handful of seats ahead in both chambers.
Traditionally, the party that holds the White House “almost always loses seats in mid-term elections, but particularly when the president is unpopular,” Sarah Binder, professor of political science at George Washington University, reminds AFP.
Donald Trump actually has only 39% favorable opinions compared to 59% unfavorable, according to an average of surveys carried out by the New York Times.
And the trend in recent polls is also almost unanimous: the Democrats are favored to retake the House.
Their chances were, however, somewhat diminished by the electoral redistribution campaign ordered by Donald Trump in several Republican states. An old political strategy in the United States, called “gerrymandering,” that has reduced the number of elections in which Democrats can truly compete.
The results are indeed expected to be undecided for only 18 to 20 constituencies out of 435 in the House, or less than 5% of the votes, underlines Sarah Binder.
“Scammers”
In the Senate, if their chances of regaining the majority are lower than in the House, the Democrats are however appearing more and more optimistic, hoping in particular to flip seats in North Carolina, in Maine, or even in Iowa and Ohio, or even Alaska.
After 19 months of unfiltered presidency, Donald Trump therefore faces the prospect of losing his majority in Congress and finding himself unable to impose his legislative program.
A Democratic majority would also mean increased investigative power, particularly in government matters.
“Our promise to the American people is that we are going to hold the crooks accountable,” Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democrats in the House, said Thursday in a thinly veiled threat to Republican officials.
Faced with these darkened prospects for his party, Donald Trump seems ready to relaunch his accusations of electoral fraud.
“We have a very important election coming up. We want these elections to be honest,” he said in a speech in mid-July during which he relaunched his unfounded allegations about the 2020 election, according to him stolen for the benefit of Democrat Joe Biden.
For Sarah Binder, “the president is still replaying the 2020 game, even though his Republican parliamentarians are asking him to focus on 2026.”
“Common sense”
The Democrats, for their part, want to emphasize a central issue in this campaign: the cost of living.
A problem inherited from the Biden presidency, but which persists under Donald Trump and is aggravated by his choice to start war against Iran, causing prices to jump at the pump.
Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has promised a campaign focused on lowering the costs of food, housing, gasoline, but also health.
On the other hand, the Republican Party is keen to highlight the achievements of the Trump administration in the fight against immigration or lowering taxes, and tries to portray the opposing camp as increasingly extremist. The president and his allies do not hesitate to describe the Democrats as communists, a bogey word in the United States.
“It’s common sense against crazy, and Democrats are on the wrong side every time,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday.
According to Sarah Binder, “once we get to the fall, when voters may be paying more attention,” Republicans should focus their attention on social issues.
“I think you will see more attacks and messages related to the culture wars”, and in particular “transgender issues”, she believes.
