New York, Oct 27 (IANS) A week before midterm elections, polls project grim prospects for President Donald Trump, who is weighed down by the economic fallout of his tariff war and the Iran conflict on US voters.
The consensus among major poll analysts is that his Republican Party will lose control of the House of Representatives while the Senate outcome is hovering in the realm of a toss-up.
Trump’s next two years in office will depend on which party controls either chamber of Congress or both.
If Democrats control either, they can try to obstruct his policies and actions, or Trump can vehemently defy them, a standoff that could bring judicial intervention.
At the very least, the US could see a replay of his first term when the Democrat-controlled House impeached him — and he warned his supporters could happen again.
Signs of his desperation are his offer of $5,000 to every American adult if the Republicans win the midterms, and not only lifting sanctions placed on Russia for its Ukraine invasion — after having imposed a 100 per cent tariff on India at one time — but also entering into a deal with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to buy diesel.
Trump has declared the midterms a referendum on the first 20 months of his second administration, telling citizens to vote as if he was on the ballot, even though many Republicans are distancing themselves from him because of his low ratings.
Republican New Hampshire Senate candidate John Sununu, for example, said in an ad, “When the president’s policies are bad for New Hampshire, I’ll oppose them, just like I opposed the war in Iran and the trade war with Canada”.
Trump seems to have admitted the popularity of his party — and him — is dimming even in their electoral fortresses, by concentrating his campaign in the reliably red states that he carried in the presidential election in order to shore up support for Republican candidates, rather than take the battle to blue states to topple Democrats.
“Every single place I go, people that are down are now winning”, he asserted recently about his “Trumpapaloozas”, the rallies he is holding from Alaska in the north to Texas in the South.
And his Justice Department has taken the unusual step of filing a case to stop the Senate election in Alaska officially declared if the Republican candidate Dan S. Sullivan loses, because, the Trump administration says, there is another candidate with a similar name, Daniel J. Sullivan, on the ballot, and it confuses voters.
The voting is already in progress, and as of Monday, nearly 30 million citizens had voted either through postal ballots or at in-person early voting stations.
There are 217 million registered voters, and the turnout in midterm election is usually low, recording 46.2 per cent in 2022 and 50 per cent in 2018.
Democrats flipping the House majority would be in line with the historical trend of the president’s party losing the midterms, but the size of the majority would matter.
RealClear Politics (RCP), which aggregates polls, reported that only 38.2 per cent of likely voters approve of Trump’s job performance, while 60.2 per cent disapprove of Trump job.
And, tellingly, 57 per cent say Trump policies are making them financially worse off.
That would echo worldwide sentiments about the impacts of the Iran conflict that Trump launched alongside Israel, and the tariff war, but hit closer to home for Trump.
The inflation rate was 3.7 per cent last month (up from 3.4 per cent in August), but it bites consumers much harder than would be expected due to the soaring prices of petroleum, especially diesel, and its multiplier effect on food and other items of daily use, as well as the impact of tariffs on many items of everyday use.
This stings because during the 2024 election campaign, he had boasted he would bring down the price of petrol to $2 a gallon (53 cents per litre), but now the average price is $4.28 a gallon ($1.13 per litre), and diesel is $6.28 a gallon ($1.66 per litre).
In this scenario, RCP gave Democrats a majority with 227 seats in the 435-member House, even with 25 seats it put in the “toss-up category” where neither party has a clear lead and can go either way.
Cook Political Report, an authoritative source for non-partisan analysis, projects 220 seats for Democrats, with 17 tossups.
Its editor for House elections, Erin Covey, was forthright about the outcome: “Republicans’ path to keeping control of the House has all but evaporated”.
CBS News said Democrats could get 229 seats for Democrats and Republicans 206, with the caveat because of previous polls being off the mark: “Republicans do still have a very narrow path to hold the majority, too”.
That’s because, according to CBS News, “There isn’t a growing [Democratic] wave” and “the still undecided or uncertain voters tend to profile as more Republican”.
The Senate scenario doesn’t have a clear winner.
Only 35 seats are up for election this year under the system in which about a third of the 100 seats come up for election every two years because senators have six-year terms.
CBS News, taking into account the seats not up for election, tallies 46 for Democrats and 44 for Republicans, with 10 categorised as tossups, but going by the trends in tossup states, it sees Democrats getting 52 seats to Republicans’ 48.
Cook Political Report projects 15 of them for Republicans with 13 for Democrats and seven stuck in the tossup category.
Trump, who is an indefatigable campaigner and can outrun far younger politicians, has focused his campaign on the states where he had clear victories in the 2024 presidential elections but is now concerned with erosion of support.
On Tuesday, he is scheduled to hold two rallies Texas, which he won by 14 per cent but where his hand-picked candidate Ken Paxton is trailing Democrat James Talarico by 1.5 per cent, an erosion of about 12 per cent.
Trump held a rally on Monday in Mississippi that he had carried by 24 per cent, Sunday in Michigan where he had a nearly 1.5 per cent lead, on Friday in Florida that gave him a nearly 13 per cent lead, and Thursday in Iowa where he also had led by 13 per cent.
–IANS
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