MADRID, 6 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nevada will occupy much of the attention on the election night of November 8, when the United States will decide the new composition of the two houses of Congress in a vote that will irrevocably mark the last two years of Joe Biden’s term before the 2024 presidential elections.
Six states whose electoral races, either to the Senate, to the chambers, to the governorships or even the additional votes that will also be held there on issues as important as abortion or the right to vote, capture the electoral reality of elections of great importance from doors inwards.
To begin with, these elections decide 35 seats (approximately a third) of a Senate in which the Democrats need at least 50 seats to maintain control. Republicans need 51 because Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris can impose a decisive tiebreaker vote.
The situation is as follows in the upper house: the Democrats need 14 seats to maintain their majority. The Republicans, 22 to take it away. Of the 35 seats in the running, the favorite Republicans would win 20 seats to 12 for the Democrats, and three would remain up in the air. That is to say, both parties are two seats “unknown” to win, according to the polls that CNN shuffles.
In the House of Representatives, where all 435 seats are at stake, the Republicans have it easier: for now they would take 216 seats, just two away from gaining control of the chamber, while the Democrats would win 199 seats. A total of 20 seats remain to be decided. Practically all the polls show the Republicans as favorites to wrest control of the lower house from their Democratic rivals.
Although the situation in general seems to be tending towards the Republican red, some races could break the forecasts and it should not be forgotten that legislative elections serve to draw a tight political map and, at the local level, mark the entire course of a country, because they also choose to state governors and state secretaries with great influence in future presidential elections, as they are the ones who ratify the vote count.
The race in Arizona, Georgia or Pennsylvania will be particularly tough. In Georgia, Raphael Warnock (D) and Herschel Walker (R) are tied on voting intent at 48 percent in their Senate race. If none exceeds 50 percent, there will be a second round in December. The same is true in Arizona, where Democrat Mark Kelly leads Republican Blake Masters by one to two percentage points.
In Pennsylvania, one of the most unusual races for the Senate due to the distance from traditional politics shown by its contenders, everything indicates that the “giant” John Fetterman, a Democrat, will obtain victory over the Republican candidate, the surgeon and television presenter Mehmet Oz, but the latter, like Walker, have emerged in the light of Trumpism and could inherit from him the fondness of this current for taking electoral turns at the last minute.
Nevada starts as the great “experiment” state to demonstrate whether the Republican campaign for these elections, based on criticism of Biden for his inability to contain inflation, has had the expected effect. Republican candidate Adam Laxalt is campaigning against incumbent Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto, whom he has accused of “complicity in Washington’s inflationary policies.”
Wisconsin, on the other hand, represents the Achilles’ heel of the Republican campaign. There, its senator Ron Johnson is seeking a third term as the only Republican who is running for re-election in a state won by Biden in 2020. However, his conspiracy positions, especially in relation to the pandemic, could alienate the moderate sector from the Republicans and bring about their defeat at the hands of a rising star of the Democratic Party like Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, who could become the first black senator in the history of the state.
The case of Michigan, finally, will be a clear example of local politics and a general assessment of the Biden doctrine since his arrival at the White House. Everything seems to indicate Democratic victories in the races for the House of Representatives and the Senate, but the eyes will be on the fight for the Governorship between the Democrat Gretchen Whitmer and the conservative analyst and Trumpist Tudor Dixon, two diametrically opposed positions on how to govern a North American state.
Regarding the impact of local policies, it should be noted in this regard that Wisconsin is also going to vote on two so-called “ballot measures”, amendments on state interpretations of the law, in this case two regulations that are at the center of the attention of the American population.
First, the right to abortion — after the setback given by the Supreme Court –. The people of Wisconsin, along with California, Vermont, Kentucky, Michigan and Montana will vote on how they want to give this right within the state. In a second vote, the citizens of the state will decide on another amendment to define their voting rights policies, amid criticism from Democratic sectors across the country in the face of Republican efforts to make the voting process more difficult for the most disadvantaged sectors.
