The Battle for America

An almost unbreakable rule of American politics is that the president’s party takes a beating in the midterm elections. The margins between Democrats and Republicans—and therefore between triumph and humiliation—are generally tight. The burst of legislating that new administrations embark on is usually enough to alienate a meaningful fraction of their voters. Tough circumstances, especially economic ones, make this almost inevitable, especially if the president is seen to respond inadequately. In 36 of the 39 electoral cycles that America has witnessed since its Civil War, the party in control of the White House has lost seats.

This did not augur well for President Joe Biden’s party ahead of the midterm elections held on November 8. The margin of his victory in 2020 was especially tight. Despite Donald Trump’s deranged mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic, Biden won the three states that gave him victory in the Electoral College (Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin) by less than 45,000 votes in total. He has since alarmed centrist voters by pursuing an aggressively left-leaning fiscal policy. And he has done so while American consumers have struggled with the highest inflation in 40 years.

The 79-year-old president, who seems increasingly prone to mental lapses, has proved unable to mollify them. With a wretchedly low approval rating of 41 per cent, he is vying with Trump to be the most unpopular president at this stage of his term. And as if that were not bad enough, the congressional majorities Biden’s Democratic Party was defending in the midterms are pathetically slender. The Democrats had a majority of six in the House of Representatives and because the Senate was evenly split, controlled that chamber only thanks to a casting vote from Vice President Kamala Harris.

Most prognosticators expected the Democrats to be crushed in the midterms. But things have turned out differently. Though it has lost ground overall, Biden’s party appears to have been on the receiving end of the most modest swing to the opposition seen in any midterm election for over two decades. Exit polls suggest the Democrats lost the popular vote by a mere 2.5 percentage points. With final results still coming in as this magazine went to press, the Republicans were expected to squeak control of the House. Yet, the Democrats had a good shot of keeping control of the Senate, perhaps with a slightly bigger margin, having picked up a formerly Republican-held seat in Pennsylvania.

A win is a win. With control of the House, the Republicans could gum up the Democrats’ legislative agenda. They have also signalled that, instead of lawmaking, they mean to pass the time softening up Biden and Kamala Harris with an eye to the next presidential election. They mean to launch investigations into the influence-peddling of the president’s son, Hunter Biden, for example. But that is the bare minimum of mischief-making House Republicans had been plotting. Some had also hoped to impeach Biden which, in the absence of any serious reason to do so, would be hard without a bigger majority than they can now hope for.

The party’s failure to take the Senate—assuming that transpires—would be a bigger blow. It means that Biden would be able to carry on getting his nominated judges and other senior officials confirmed by the upper chamber. And the president could count on it for protection against the excesses of the Republican-controlled House.

Beyond Washington, this pattern of surprising Democratic strength repeated itself in gubernatorial and other state-level races almost everywhere. The president’s party looked likely to win governor elections in five of the six states that switched from Trump to Biden between 2016 and 2020. Given that state governors take the lead in running elections, those results would make it hard for Trump—or another anti-democratic Republican—to try to overturn the result in 2024.

Overall, the results are as good as Biden could possibly have hoped for. How did they happen? It was not because voters felt less gloomy about the economy or more favourable towards the president than was previously thought. Exit polls suggested Americans have rarely been more miserable. Around 80 per cent of voters said inflation had caused them moderate or severe hardship. A clear majority, 55 per cent, were critical of Biden. Yet, these fundamentals (as psephologists refer to such measures) proved to be less damaging to the Democrats than would normally have been the case. For example, half the voters who said they “somewhat disapproved” of Biden, went ahead and voted Democratic anyway.

Something stopped them from crossing over to the Republican side—or simply staying at home. Exit polls suggest that was a combination of disdain for Trump, who remains preeminent on the right, and for the many crackpot Republican candidates he had endorsed. Nearly 60 per cent of those polled said they had a negative view of the former president—and most of them had just voted Democratic. Trump’s decision to insert himself into the election with a late flurry of campaigning appears to have backfired badly.

The president’s party looked likely to win governor elections in five of the six states that switched from Trump to Biden between 2016 and 2020. Given that state governors take the lead in running elections, those results would make it hard for Trump—or another anti-democratic Republican—to try to overturn the result in 2024

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His anointed candidates, many of whom were selected chiefly for their willingness to parrot Trump’s lie that the 2020 general election was stolen, were also damaging. The Democrats’ crucial Senate win in Pennsylvania owed to the fact that the Trump-blessed Republican Senate candidate there was a rich former celebrity doctor called Mehmet Oz, who had been parachuted in from next-door New Jersey, and was remote, ill-prepared and uncharismatic. The Republican gubernatorial candidate in the same state, Doug Mastriano, was another Trump favourite—and found to have attended the deadly insurrection on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021 that hardcore followers of the former president launched. Though Pennsylvanians have drifted to the right in recent years, it seems they don’t like alleged insurrectionists. Mastriano lost to his Democratic rival, Joe Schapiro, by 14 percentage points in a state that Trump won in 2016.

There were also signs that voters recoiled against at least one of the Republicans’ actual policy positions. For years, the party raged against abortion, which most Americans support, safe in the knowledge that it had no serious prospect of overturning Americans’ right to the procedure. Yet, earlier this year, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court bench went ahead and, dispensing with decades of legal precedent, scrapped that right. Roughly, 15 Republican-controlled states have since more or less banned abortions. And it has been electorally damaging. In the exit polls, 60 per cent said that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances—and most of them voted Democratic.

The results are a well-earned fillip for Biden. The president, who has been mocked for his modest talents throughout his long political career, is routinely slandered on the right as a senile half-wit. Almost half of Americans say he is not “mentally fit” to be president. He has, backed by the slenderest of congressional majorities, racked up an impressive list of legislative achievements, including America’s first significant climate change legislation. He has supported Ukraine against Russia skilfully and, apparently, successfully. And he has now presided over what may well be an act of midterm escapology. It is a record to stand against that of any recent Democratic president (including Barack Obama, whom he served as vice president). Whether it should encourage Biden to run for re-election in 2024 is a different matter. He may well be too old and unpopular for that to be wise. Perhaps, the biggest risk of the midterm results to the Democrats, therefore, is that they might embolden him to run.

The elections’ biggest loser appears to be (yet again) Trump. In expectation of a huge Republican midterm triumph, he had been tempted to announce his intention to run again for the presidency before the vote, and then claim responsibility for the triumph. He instead hinted heavily that he means to run—and promised to make “a very big announcement” at his Florida mansion, Mar-a-Lago, on November 15. Yet, as the results came in, and one Trump-blessed candidate after another disappointed, costing the party its expected majorities, Republican insiders pinned the blame squarely on the former president.

Even worse for Trump, his single main rival on the right was meanwhile enjoying an excellent midterms election.

That man is Ron DeSantis, the 44-year-old governor of Florida. A former acolyte and imitator of Trump, he rose to national fame during the pandemic by fulminating against public health strictures, such as mask-wearing. What effect that might have had on Floridians’ Covid death rate is unclear. Florida suffered several deadly surges of the disease but ended up not obviously better or worse off than comparable states. Yet, DeSantis’ sneering defiance against faceless public-health bureaucrats went down a storm with the Republican base.

And the Harvard-educated populist has maintained their support by proceeding to attack other pet conservative hates. These include illegal immigrants, critical race theory, ESG investing, and so forth. In the process, he has established himself as the most popular alternative to Trump on the right. Recent polls suggest around half of Republican voters want Trump to run again; while around a third would back DeSantis.

Trump has been champing at the bit to attack DeSantis. Yet, he restrained himself, apparently hoping his former protegee could be intimidated into saying he would not run against him. But on the eve of the midterms, Trump waded in. He branded the governor “Ron DeSanctimonious”, in reference to a governor’s self-aggrandising campaign ad. Trump then went on Fox News to warn that “if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly… I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering.”

DeSantis won re-election in the midterms by a 19-point margin—in a state that Trump won by only three points in 2020. In the process, the governor captured several former Democratic bastions, such as Miami-Dade County, Florida’s most populous

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Nice try, Trump. DeSantis won re-election in the midterms by a 19-point margin—in a state that Trump won by only three points in 2020. In the process, the governor captured several former Democratic bastions, such as Miami-Dade County, Florida’s most populous. He also appeared to give a boost to many fellow Republicans running further down the ballot. Florida and, to a lesser degree, New York were the only places where the party did not underperform. Republicans won 20 of Florida’s 28 House seats, four more than they had in 2020. That was in part due to a partisan redistricting effort that DeSantis helped lead. “We have not only won the election, we have rewritten the political map,” he claimed in his victory speech. “Two more years,” his supporters chanted back—meaning that the governor should only see out half his new term before moving to the White House. DeSantis smiled at that.

Trump is probably still the favourite to be the next Republican nominee (though betting markets suggest DeSantis may now have an even chance of getting the ticket). It seems probable that Trump will, as planned, go ahead and declare his nomination soon. Not least, that may be because he views a return to the political fray as his likeliest means to evading the several legal investigations and possible charges he faces, related to his business and election-stealing affairs. Yet, it seems equally clear that, even as Trump’s star may be waning on the right, he faces a formidable rival in DeSantis. Republican party leaders and big donors would ditch Trump tomorrow if they could. They want, above all, a Republican winner. And, as the midterms results have just underlined, Trump is a loser.

About The Author

James Astill

James Astill is a senior editor at The Economist. He has previously headed the magazine’s bureaus in Washington and New Delhi. He is a contributor to Open

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