New York: US voters will deliver on Tuesday their verdicts on President Donald Trump’s 21 months in his second term which has been marked by economic upheavals in from his tariffs and the Iran conflict that have hit citizens in this country and people around the world.
Polls predict the Democratic Party taking control of the House of Representatives, while the Senate’s future hangs in the balance with last-minute turmoil in that party.
Trump appeared resigned on Monday to the possibility that his party might fare poorly in the midterm election, as many polls have indicated.
He said in his final rally before Tuesday’s balloting: “For some reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms, but we gave this a very strong shot.”
He did indefatigably, holding 30 rallies across 20 states in 32 days. According to the White House, he cancelled a rally in Michigan for the final campaign meeting in Washington.
Speaking in front of the Washington Reflecting Pool, he denounced the Democrats as “communists”, and “jihadists and Muslim Brotherhood members” who would “blow up” his achievements.
With pictures of his efforts, most of his speech was about beautifying the nation’s capital and hardly a mention of the economic issues roiling the electorate.
Polls show a big slide for Trump, who won the 2024 election with 49.8 per cent of the votes, and now RealClear Politics (RCP) aggregation of polls show overall support for Democrats in the Congressional elections at 52.1 per cent.
According to the RCP average, the job approval rating has slumped from 50.3 per cent in the first week of his second term to 39.1 per cent now, and the disapproval rate has risen to 58.8 per cent.
The midterm election pitches his hold on his base and the others who had elected him against the realities of affordability, the shorthand for people’s distress at the rise in prices.
Although the economy grew by 3.4 per cent in the latest quarter — a number considered by economists as a good performance — the inflation rate was 3.7 per cent in September, and its impact felt more strongly in prices of food and other everyday consumer items.
That impact is propelled by both the tariffs Trump has imposed on imports and the multiplier effect of the spurt in petrol and diesel prices because of the conflict in the Hormuz Strait that he started with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Of the total electorate of about 174 million, 57 million had already voted either by mail or at early voting booths by Monday evening, and the rest will have a chance to have their say on Tuesday.
Forty-six per cent of the early voters registered along party lines were Democrats and 39 per cent Republicans, according to NBC News tracking. (In the US, citizens can register as members of a party to enable them to vote in the primaries, the intra-party election to select candidates to represent the party.)
Trump will need a surge of his supporters at the polling booths on Tuesday to counter the early trend.
Three analyses from RCP, CBS News, and Cook Political Report (CPR) based on polls forecast a majority for the Democrats in the 435-member House of Representatives, making it a forgone conclusion.
They range from Democrats getting at least 222 seats (CPR) to 229 (CBS) and 227 (RCP).
Trump’s hope for avoiding a complete rout lies in the Senate races, which, according to most polls and analyses, are stuck in the too-close-to-call category without a clear winner.
But The New York Times’ latest Senate poll published on Sunday had Democrats leading in six of the seven key elections that could determine the majority, and getting comfortable margins in most of them.
Democrats will have to overcome three controversies if they are to capture the 100-member upper chamber, where they now have 47 seats.
One of them is a last-minute development in Michigan, where the Democratic Party leader who narrowly lost the Senate primary switched sides on Sunday and announced she would support the Republican on the ballot.
The Michigan seat is now held by the Democrats.
Haley Stevens, who lost the Democratic nomination to Abdul El-Sayed and has been feuding with him, stunned her party by announcing her support for Republican Mike Rogers.
A reason for that is that she had been disinvited from a conciliatory meeting in a church and because a group supporting the Democrat had run an ad blaming Israel for the rise in prices of everyday items.
In Alaska, the Democratic Party has been accused of getting an independent with the same name as the Republican candidate, Dan Stevens, separated by only a middle initial, on the ballot to confuse voters.
A judge threw out a case filed by the Trump administration to block the election if the Republican lost, and it is expected to fester with more appeals and suits should he lose.
The Democrats fumbled in Maine, where their original candidate had to withdraw amid allegations of sexual misbehaviour, and they scrambled to find a replacement to run against the moderate Republican Susan Collins, a 30-year veteran of the Senate seeking her sixth term.
Alaska and Maine follow the ranked-choice system in which citizens vote for their candidate and mark a second choice that will be considered if no candidate gets at least 50 per cent of the votes in the first round.
(IANS)
