Republicans and Democrats are in a tight race for control of Congress, as counting continues following the midterm elections on Tuesday.
Republicans made modest gains in the midterm elections, but Democrats performed better than expected. There was no “red wave” of Republican voting.
It was a good night for President Joe Biden and a miserable one for former president Donald Trump. While they underperformed, Republicans are still poised to win the House of Representatives.
The fight for the Senate is on a knife edge, leaving control of Congress and the future of President Joe Biden’s agenda unclear.
One big takeaway is that Trump is damaged goods. Trump is still the dominant figure in the Republican Party, and he’ll be the favorite to win the party nomination for president if, as expected, he runs again.
But Trump’s place in the party is far weaker after the midterms.
Experts said that if it were not for Trump’s interventions, the night could have been a lot better for the GOP. Analysts and experts pointed to how Trump candidates fared in states where more traditionalist Republicans were on the same ballot.
Poor performances by some candidates allied to Trump indicated exhaustion with the kind of electoral and governing chaos fomented by the former Republican president, raising questions about the viability of his possible run for the White House in 2024.
The results appeared to show voters punishing Biden for presiding over an economy hit by steep inflation, while also lashing out against Republican moves to ban abortion.
While Democrats’ performance defied expectations, they still face the possibility of losing their meager majorities to Republicans in the House of Representatives and maybe even the Senate, putting Biden’s legislative agenda in jeopardy.
Tuesday’s election was also framed as a test of U.S. democracy as a whole, at a time when many Republicans continue to embrace Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. A number of so-called election deniers who backed Trump’s claims were elected to office on Tuesday, but fears of violence or other major disruptions by far-right poll watchers at voting stations did not materialize.
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