Democrats under Biden likely to lose less than a dozen House seats

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden could well have bragging rights for one of the best p erformances by an incumbent in a midterm poll. Indications are that the Democratic Party could lose less than a dozen House seats (they were +5 in the outgoing Congress) in the midterm polls. By way of comparison, Bill Clinton bled House 52 seats in the 1994 midterm polls and Barack Obama lost a record 63 in 2010. Even Trump lost 40 House seats in the 2018 midterms.
A spectacular win in Florida by the incumbent Republican governor Ron DeSantis meant the rise of a new challenger within the party to former Pr esident Donald Trump’s hopes for another crack at the White House.
Many Trump surrogates lost on Tuesday night, despite predictions that a MAGA-fuelled red sweep would turbocharge his bid for another term in the White House. In one of the most compelling races in a battleground state, Democrat John Fetterman won an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania vacated by a Republican defeating Trump-back Dr Mehmet Oz.
Democrats also won the governor’s race, three swing congressional seats, and are on track to flip the state house in astate that has seen a ferocious face-off between largely urban and suburban liberal votersand mostly rural MAGA forces. Democrats also flipped the state senate in Michigan — another toss-up state — for the first time since 1983.
In the end, it was not a red wave, much less a red tsunami that pollsters had projected; it was barely a red puddle that set off recrimination and finger-pointing within the GOP with even Trump supporters ackn owledging it was more of a “pink wave”.
It certainly left the former president red-faced with reports surfacing of rage-filled outbursts, including at his wife Melania, who apparently persu aded him to endorse Dr Mehmet Oz, a TV star who lost to a Democrat who suffered a stroke in the middle of the election campaign.
Despite the imminent loss of the House, Democrats rejoiced over staunching the bleeding and sparking off bloodletting within the Republican Party. Retaining control of the Senate would be an unexpected bonus. Senate races in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, all too close to call, could determine the outcome, with the first one headed for a run-off election in December because neither candidate reached a 50% threshold. The result still meant Republicans, with their control of the House, can impair Biden’s agenda over the next two years, rendering him a lame-duck president.