Americans are called to vote on Tuesday in decisive mid-term elections for Donald Trump’s last two years in the White House, facing Democrats who hope to regain the levers of power in Washington.
The first polling stations will open at 6:00 a.m. local time (12:00 p.m. in Switzerland) in many states on the east coast. A sign of the stakes of these elections, nearly 58 million voters have already voted in advance, a record for midterms.
Among the Democrats, the hope of a “blue wave” (their color), and even a “tsunami”, persists in view of the polls which predict their victory in the House of Representatives, completely renewed on Tuesday.
From Maine to Alaska, via Texas, Ohio and even Kansas, Democratic candidates are also favorites to swing the Senate, according to the latest Siena College polls for the New York Times, a result still unimaginable a year ago.
Since then, Donald Trump has launched a war against Iran, failed to lower the cost of living, and has been attacked by the opposition who denounce his personal enrichment since his return to the White House in January 2025.
Referendum
“I kept more promises than I made,” however, declared the Republican president in Washington on Monday in his final speech before the vote.
In this disjointed speech, the 80-year-old billionaire spent more time discussing his monumental projects in the American capital than the next day’s elections.
A speech described as “pathetic” by the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, who sees it as a symbol of Donald Trump’s disconnection with the reality of Americans.
Historically, the party that occupies the White House loses ground in Congress during the midterms, often seen as a referendum on the president.
Control of the House would give Democrats more weight over the federal budget, but also the possibility of launching parliamentary investigations, particularly into accusations of corruption against Donald Trump and those close to him.
A Democratic-majority Senate could block nominations by the president, particularly in the event of a Supreme Court vacancy.
But if they approach these elections in the position of favorites, the time remains for cautious optimism among the Democrats, scalded by polls which have tended to underestimate the mobilization of the Trumpist base in the past.
“If we lose Texas…”
Until the last hours of the campaign, the watchword was mobilization, as for Jane Callum, met by AFP in the suburbs of Atlanta in the middle of a door-to-door campaign for Democratic senator Jon Ossoff, candidate for re-election in Georgia (southeast).
“I truly feel an obligation to do everything I can to change the direction our country is taking at the moment, and to put it more on the path to democracy,” explained this 77-year-old retired teacher.
On the Republican side, the tone was more sullen in the days preceding the election. “I’m not exaggerating when I say that if we lose Texas, we lose America,” Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton said on Sunday during a rally in San Antonio.
Whatever the results on Tuesday, these elections will mark the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s career as a statesman, but also the start of the frantic race, among Republicans and Democrats alike, to find a successor in 2028.
