Midterm elections 2018: why they are important

The 2018 US midterm elections are less than 100 days away - and Donald Trump has reason to be nervous.

The stakes for the president “are extremely high, since a Democratic victory in either the House of Representatives or the Senate would give the party the power to open investigations into various aspects of his administration”, says the Financial Times.

Sources described as being “familiar with Trump’s thinking” told CNN that he is “genuinely concerned” about the outcome of elections, most of which will take place on 6 November. “Democrats have perhaps a better than 50-50 chance of taking the House - and seriously curtailing his political power in Washington,” says the news site’s Stephen Collinson.

The question for Trump “is whether the magic can work a second and then a third time outside the confined world of his political base - especially this year, when he is not on the ballot”, Collinson adds.

What are the midterms?

The November elections will see 35 of the 100 seats in the US Senate up for grabs.

US voters will also choose all 435 members of the US House of Representatives, the lower chamber of Congress.

Democrats need a net gain of 23 seats to take control of the House of Representatives from the Republicans. And they need a net gain of two seats to take a Senate majority, “although the path to get to that number is difficult”, says CNN.

Of the 35 Senate seats up for election this year, 26 are held by Democrats (including two independents allied to them) and nine by Republicans.

In total, the US Senate is made up of 51 Republican seats and 47 Democrats, plus those two independents. This means Democrats face a steeper climb in the Senate, because they must defend all 26 of their seats up for election and take two seats from Republicans in order to win a majority. Ten of the Democratic seats are in states that Trump won in the 2016 presidential election.

Why are these elections so important?

The midterm elections are being held halfway through Trump’s presidential term, and the make-up of Congress’s two chambers could affect his ability to govern.

The state legislative elections will not only be crucial for state-level policy debates but “could also determine the fate of abortion rights if the Supreme Court moves to undercut Roe v. Wade, the future of Medicaid expansion in some states, not to mention innumerable other issues like education, taxes, and labor rights”, says Vox.

The outcome of the midterms could reduce Trump’s powers or might work in his favour. Thanks to a very favourable election map, Republicans “could conceivably pick up Senate seats even if Democrats take the House. And a gain of even a seat or two would change the entire complexion of the Senate,” says Politico.

Should that occur, Republicans “might even have another shot at repealing Obamacare or shrinking the size of the federal government”, adds the news site.

What is likely to happen?

So far, it’s difficult to predict. National polls and historical voting patterns “suggest that Democrats are only slight favourites to take the House, while early polls of individual districts, special election results and the ratings of expert prognosticators suggest that Democrats are in a stronger position”, says The New York Times.

There is even more uncertainty over the Senate landscape, “where many of the most competitive states are largely rural and voted for Trump in 2016”, says CNN.

One of the key questions is whether voter turnout - be it Democrats sending a message to Trump or the president’s base rallying to his side - will be unusually high for the midterms.

The “biggest problem for the GOP - which has played out consistently in special elections over the last year - is that Democratic voters are much more enthusiastic, and therefore more likely to vote”, says CNN.

But Trump got a welcome boost last week when it was announced that the US economy grew by 4.1% in the second quarter of this year, the best numbers since 2014. The president “will surely make that growth part of his midterms pitch to voters”, the  news site adds.