A BLUE WAVE SWEEPS THE U.S. MIDTERM ELECTIONS

A national verdict on the Trump presidency was delivered this week when American voters went to the polls in midterm elections for the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate on Tuesday, November 3rd. By the following morning, it made dismal reading for President Trump and the Republican Party.

In what can only be described as a tsunami of an upset, Democrats have gained control of both chambers of the United States Congress, with margins that have defied expectations.

An overwhelming ‘blue wave’ has flipped several once hardline ‘red’ Republican states, including Texas, into the ‘blue’ zone of the Democrats.

With 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 218 needed for a majority, the Democrats had already surpassed that by sweeping up 239 seats and were projected to win a convincing majority of 258 to 177 for the Republicans.

Of the 100 seats in the Senate, where 35 were up for re-election, the Democrats have also regained control of that chamber with 54 seats to 44 for the Republicans. The other two seats are held by independents who caucus with the Democrats.

In the gubernatorial (governor) elections, the Democrats picked up five seats from the Republicans, leading by 28 seats to 20.

In all cases, the upsets were not only numerical but also social, with notably history-making demographic changes, including generational, ethnic, gender and other diversity shifts.

The policies of President Donald Trump a key factor in Tuesday’s midterms, as a personal referendum and repudiation of the president and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. In addition to state concerns, the policies of the Trump administration, both its national and international agenda, are said to have been defining factors in the defeat of the Republicans.

Cost of living issues, especially those impacted by fuel prices due to his ongoing war in Iran, other international interventions, relations with Russia, and hardline immigration policies, and some of his fiscal policies which are under scrutiny, were matched alongside several state and local issues. Among these are healthcare and the impacts of water-and-energy-guzzling data centres, which were said to be on the minds of voters as they went to the polls in historically large numbers for a midterm election.

Blame has also been pointed at what some see as an overall excessively aggressive tone of the Trump administration, particularly on the international stage, which has isolated many of America’s traditionally closest allies.

President Trump himself, while initially appearing to accept the scale of the rejection of the Republican Party, has however sidestepped taking any responsibility for it.

In a typical bellicose social media post, he wrote: “I wasn’t on the ballot, and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!”

Elsewhere, he also stated that he was “a little bit surprised” by the results, adding that “I thought we would do better. We had tremendous rallies, thousands of people outside let alone inside that couldn’t get in.”

Midterm elections are held in the United States every two years in the middle of a presidential term.

With two years left in the current Trump second presidency and both houses of Congress now under the control of the Democrats, speculation is already running high that the coming period could be very fractious in American politics.