Joe Biden needs to have a majority in Congress to carry out his legislative agenda.
Republicans were closer to a tight control of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress on Thursday, while the majority in the Senate depended on a few close races after the mid-term elections.
Though partial, the results of the elections have already contradicted expectations of an overwhelming defeat of the Democratic Party of President Joe Biden, due to discomfort with high inflation and with his management in his first two years in office.
Either party could get a majority in the Senate with wins in Nevada and Arizona, where the count was still very even, although there was already a glimpse of the possibility that their control could be decided in a ballot in Georgia next month.
According to US media projections, Neither Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock nor Republican Herschel Walker won enough votes in Georgia to avoid a Dec. 6 runoff for that key Senate seat.
Until this Thursday afternoon, Republicans controlled 49 Senate seats and Democrats, 48, out of a total of 100 after last Tuesday’s elections, in which 36 seats in the upper house were up for grabs.
In the House of Representatives, where their 435 seats, the Republicans were this Thursday with 209, nine away from reaching the majority of 218, while the Democrats added 192according to CNN projections.
Of the 35 races for seats in the lower house that were not yet defined, the Democrats led the count in 24 and the Republicans in 11according to the news network.
Joe Biden was not defeated in a landslide, but he lost the House of Representatives and the Senate is yet to be defined. AFP Photo
Democrats needed 27 seats to reach a majority of 218 and retain control of the House of Representatives. The president’s party entered the elections with 222 votes in the lower house and a technical advantage of one in the Senate.
Control of Congress will determine Biden’s room for maneuver to carry out his legislative agenda in the two years remaining in his four-year term.
Republicans promised to obstruct Biden’s priorities and launch investigations against him and his family if he wins the House of Representatives, while, with control of the Senate, they could prevent the president from appointing judges.
“Regardless of what the final count of this election shows, and there are still some recounts underway, I am prepared to work with my fellow Republicans,” Biden said. yesterday in his first public statements after the elections.
“The American people have made it clear, I think, that they expect Republicans to be prepared to work with me as well,” he added.
The Democrats fared much better than the history of these races, which almost always favor the opposition party, indicates.
Even if Republicans take the House of Representatives, it won’t be by as wide a margin as in other midterm elections.
Trump had predicted a broad Republican victory in the legislative elections, which was more limited. Photo: AFP
Democrats won 41 House seats in 2018, when Republican Donald Trump was president.
Democratic President Barack Obama lost 63 seats to Republicans in 2010, and Republicans won 54 in Democratic President Bill Clinton’s first midterm election in 1994.
In the battle for the Senate, Democratic candidate Mark Kelly led Republican Blake Masters by about 95,000 votes in Arizona, where he was still missing against about 600,000.CNN reported.
In Nevada, Republican Adam Laxalt was leading the race against Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto. Some 160,000 votes had not yet been countedaccording to media estimates.
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump charged the re-elected governor of the southern state of Florida, Ron DeSantis, in what several analysts interpreted as a new step in the bid for the Republican presidential candidacy for 2024.
“Shouldn’t it be said that in 2020 I got 1.1 million more votes in Florida than Ron D got this year, 5.7 million to 4.6 million?” Trump asked on his Truth Social platform, and added: “Just asking.”
The former president replied in this way to DeSantis, a lawyer trained at Harvard and Yale, 44, and who was re-elected on Tuesday with about 20 percentage points of advantage after having won four years ago by less than half a point.
“Not only did we win the elections, we have rewritten the political map; we still have a lot to do and I’ve only just begun to fight,” DeSantis said.
