The legislative elections this Tuesday in the United States will serve to measure support for Donald Trump’s Administration and will have an immediate effect on its capacity for action, while at the same time marking the unofficial start of the contest for the 2028 Presidency. The Congress that emerges from the polls will be decisive and the polls agree that the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, will likely pass into Democratic hands.
Despite having thrown himself into the campaign to mobilize his bases, Trump has reiterated that the outcome does not concern him. Even if the Democrats wrest control of one or both chambers from the Republicans, the president has made clear that he will veto any legislative bill they send him and that he will put obstacles in the way of investigations that are launched against his allies.
The real headache falls on the Republican Party. Trump cannot run for a third term, no matter how much he toys with that idea, and two years of Democratic offensive from Capitol Hill can become eternal with an eye on 2028, especially if the party ends up ceding both chambers.
Losing the Senate would mean a much deeper blow: it would imply that the Republicans have let slip states considered safe until Trump’s popularity finally collapsed in February, after the war with Iran and the rise in fuel prices.
Even so, the party still has options. Republicans have shown on other occasions their ability to defy the polls and it is not ruled out that they will retain control of Congress after the 3rd. However, the mere fact that the turnaround is plausible shows the wear and tear that the president’s figure is causing within the party, which is forced to start thinking, from that night onward, about a horizon without the leader who has propelled it over the last decade.
These elections are being held, moreover, on an electoral map altered by an intense battle over redistricting. The White House, with Trump at the helm, has promoted a remaking of the districts to squeeze out every last seat, while the Democrats have responded with their own plans to redraw the electoral college. It remains to be seen whether this war of maps will bear fruit for either of the two blocs.
TWO CHAMBERS AND NINE STATES IN DISPUTE
On November 3, the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are elected —mainly in charge of pushing legislation and opening investigations into members of the Executive— and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate, a key piece also in the legislative process and responsible for major appointments. At present, the Republicans dominate the lower house with 218 representatives against 214 Democrats, and they likewise control the Senate with 53 senators against 45.
The RealClearPolitics polling average points to the fact that in the House of Representatives the Democrats will secure at least 227 seats against 182 for the Republicans, with 26 districts still up in the air (six of them leaning toward the Democrats). No relevant poll foresees a Democratic defeat in this chamber, which fits with the historical pattern of U.S. politics: with Trump or without him, midterm elections usually function as a vote of punishment against the incumbent government.
The outlook in the Senate is considerably more tangled. The Democrats have practically locked down 42 seats and another five are very much on track. The Republicans, for their part, have a minimum of 41 and could easily add another three.
In this context, nine states have become true battlegrounds and in four of them the outcome is a total unknown: Iowa, Michigan, South Carolina and Texas. There is no clear winner either in Alaska, Kansas, Maine, Ohio or Nebraska. With this scenario, it is impossible to anticipate whether the Democrats will maintain the current distribution or whether, in an almost unbelievable optimal scenario, they could reach 57 seats, an unprecedented figure since 2008.
The Republicans, by contrast, only need to secure 50 seats, since Vice President JD Vance presides over the Senate and can break any tie with his vote. Moreover, in eight of the nine contested states they start with a slight advantage, so, as of today, they have no compelling reasons to panic.
The look toward the 2028 presidential elections, however, draws a different board. Those nine states concentrate dozens of decisive electoral votes to tip the balance toward the White House. That Texas —traditional "red" stronghold with 40 electoral votes— is right now in play and that the Democrats have become an increasingly viable option after years of doubts and paralysis (in part thanks to the push of progressivism, their "leftist" current) should at least set off alarm bells in the Republican Party.
THE DEMOCRATIC PROGRESSIVISM AND TRUMP’S STRATEGIES
Another key factor in the battle for the Senate is the symbolic weight it will have in the country’s political narrative. The new Democratic wave has two referents in these elections: the Senate aspirants for Michigan, Abdul El Sayed, and for Texas, James Talarico, turned into a priority target of Donald Trump from the first day of the campaign.
El Sayed, as had already happened to the mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, has devoted a large part of his events to dismantling the accusations of his Republican rival, Mike Rogers, who attributes ties with Islamist groups to him. Talarico embodies the most advanced version of progressivism possible in Texas: a Christian democrat whose campaign website is a whole declaration of principles. "It is time to overturn the tables," he proclaims, evoking Jesus’ gesture against the merchants who profaned the temple.
On the Republican side, one of the great unknowns is whether the veteran senator from Maine, Susan Collins, will manage to contain the push of her Democratic opponent, Troy Jackson, in a contest marked by low blows.
Collins presents herself as moderate and has questioned some decisions of the Executive, although she almost always ends up aligning with the White House in key votes. Jackson, for his part, replaces an emerging promise of the party, Graham Platner, who was forced to withdraw in July after a cascade of scandals, among them the display of Nazi symbols (which Platner described as involuntary) and rape accusations, denied by him and still pending clarification.
The case of Alaska illustrates to what extent the political climate has become tense and how each ballot can prove decisive.
In this state, the United States Department of Justice has filed a motion to annul the Senate elections if the Republican Dan Sullivan loses, alleging that one of his independent rivals has an excessively similar name and could lead to confusion among voters.
The Democratic candidate for the seat, Mary Peltola, has assured that she has no knowledge whatsoever of a supposed "plan" orchestrated by her party in relation to this matter.