"I told you so," he can now whisper to the rest of the Democratic leadership, and he probably is, President Joe Biden. Until a few days ago, his usual optimism seemed irrational and unsustainable. Everything that could go wrong was fatal. His great legislative plans crashed in Congress, inflation ran amok, Donald Trump grew while he fell in the polls... The Republicans faced the mid-term legislative elections as a walk.
And suddenly, almost everything got better for the president and the trends reversed; the vote expectation of the Democrats began to grow and that of the Republicans, to fall. So today is the day that Biden and his team, with the polls in hand, already hope to retain their majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate. What until June was a chimera is today an achievable challenge.
According to the demographic tracker FiveThirtyEight, which publishes the averages of five major polls, the pro-Democrat planetary alignment occurred on August 7. That day, Biden's party surpassed Trump's as the preferred party by all voters to dominate the House of Representatives. His chamber, now controlled by the Democrats with 220 seats compared to 211 Republicans (there are four vacancies), is completely renewed on November 8. As of last Sunday, the advantage for the former over the latter, in terms of voter preferences according to said tracker, was 44.3% against 43.8%: a result that is the reverse of the previous six months and similar to that of the The latest survey by the Pew Research Center, dated August 24, according to which 44% of voters would vote or lean towards the Democratic candidate in their Lower House district and 42%, for the Republican.
Another thing is the vote projections based on the study of the real perspectives of each party, state by state. There, the Republicans still maintain a certain advantage, but it is less and less. According to the latest report provided by The Cook Political Report, dated August 24, the advantage of the conservative formation in the House of Representatives has gone from up to 35 seats projected in May to a range of between 10 and 20.
As for the Senate, which in November is renewed by a third, preference polls and projections already coincide in predicting a victory for the Democratic Party; a victory that would allow him to maintain and even strengthen his now tight control of the House, where they are equal to 50 seats with the Republicans but have the tiebreaker vote of the president of the institution and vice president of the country, Kamala Harris.
The change in the perspectives for the already close November elections coincides with the exit from the well of the president in the polls on the public approval of his work. After a whole year of progressive sinking, with few ups and downs and even falling to a catastrophic 38%, Biden has just reached a still poor but relatively encouraging 44% popularity rating.
Independent analysts and strategists from both parties agree on the causes of the change in expectations for the midterms. The course – they indicate – began to change days after the Supreme Court ruling against the right to abortion, issued on June 24 and which infuriated large sectors of the population. This was demonstrated by certain primary and special elections, the latter held to fill unforeseen vacancies. The defense of the free interruption of pregnancy was key in the Democratic victories, according to the analysis of the votes.
After that apparently counterproductive ruling for conservatives, Biden managed to see his crucial social, environmental and innovation plans approved, albeit in watered-down versions. At the same time, inflation stopped. And Trump's legal problems were aggravated by the entry of the FBI into his Florida home to recover the secret papers that, with compromising information for American spies, had been taken from the White House. A large part of the most combative Republican leaders who initially reacted to that record by asking for the dismantling of the FBI chose this last weekend to ask on television to ask them about other issues.
There are just over two months left for the legislative elections. The Democrats still do not have it all with them, but it is no longer certain that they will lose control of the cameras and, with it, their best weapon to contain the opposition. And perhaps to break Trump... The latter with the help of the law.
