Democrats and Republicans could respectively give up their control of the Senate and the House of Representatives
In addition to voting for their new president, Americans will decide on November 5th the composition of the new US Congress with the election of a third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives in elections that could lead to an exchange of chambers, an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of elections in the country.
The Democrats only need to win four more local elections than the Republicans to take over the House of Representatives (the lower chamber of Congress, with 435 seats). To do so, it would be enough for them to recover four constituencies in the state of New York, where they currently have a slight advantage thanks to a recent redrawing of the electoral district map, and which will also benefit the Republicans in states such as Alabama, Georgia or Louisiana.
Polls, including a recent one by YouGov, give Democrats between 218 and 219 seats, above the necessary majority, but no poll gives them as clear winners. In fact, simulations carried out by analysts on the electoral website FiveThirtyEight give Republicans a 51 percent chance of winning the lower house. The option of an absolute Republican victory in November, with victories in the presidency and both chambers, remains viable.
The Republicans’ prospects are much more optimistic regarding the partial elections to the Senate, which will renew a third of the composition of the upper chamber by putting 34 of the 100 seats that make up the chamber at stake. Right now there are 51 Democratic senators in the chamber, but they will almost certainly lose one after the resignation of Joe Manchin in West Virginia, a Republican stronghold, and they could lose more seats in Montana, Wisconsin, Michigan or Pennsylvania.
In this 50-50 scenario that Manchin’s withdrawal draws, the figure of the vice president’s vote to break ties is fundamental: a Republican victory here will mean that they will only need one more seat. If Democrat Kamala Harris wins and, therefore, her nominee, Tim Walz, is elected vice president, they will need two.
The most notable aspect of a possible exchange of chambers is the repetition of a divided congress, as it has been for the last two years, with the consequent clashes and traffic jams.
AMENDMENTS TO THE LOCAL CONSTITUTION
The presidential and legislative partial elections are accompanied by a series of votes where each state submits amendments to its respective local constitution to a plebiscite. The issues are of enormous variety.
Florida, for example, will submit to a referendum everything from the possession of marijuana for those over 21 to the legalization of abortion up to the viability of the fetus (around 23 weeks). Massachusetts will vote on granting a union to the state’s truckers. In Texas, its citizens will vote on more than a dozen issues, most of them related to the allocation of infrastructure funds.
