Blthough the outcome on election day may still hold some surprises, it is very likely that the Republicans will regain a majority in the House of Representatives (and perhaps even the Senate) on November 8. This would be part of a remarkable continuity. Indeed, two years after the presidential election, at almost every mid-term election, the president’s party is losing ground in the Chamber (all 435 seats of which are renewed every two years, i.e. the shortest mandate in all democracies in the world). Generally, it also loses ground in the Senate (of which a third of the 100 seats is renewed every two years).
This almost automatic back-and-forth of American politics raises an obvious question: don’t political subjects matter? Forgive us for thinking so. The fact is that in this endless trench warfare between the two major American parties, commentators are constantly debating the best communication strategies to present this or that subject well, and compete in ingenuity to find the right way to talk about a subject and good subjects to put forward. If the winning formula cannot be found, it is quite simply that it does not exist. The small slice of voters – which sways the results in the few districts and states where the result is not a foregone conclusion – is difficult to understand. They show up at the polls at the last minute and make a singular decision, with their guts.
The American elections are above all – as they have been for at least ten years – a tug of war for that handful of votes. Almost all the voters of the next election have already made their choice years ago: they have chosen a party. Since then, it’s all been loyalty and confirmation bias. [la tendance à prendre en compte avant tout les informations qui confirment sa manière de penser].
Geographical and cultural divide
The range of possible outcomes is further limited by the small number of states and constituencies where the gap between the two parties is small enough for the share of undecided voters to play a decisive role. If they are so few, it is because the electorates of the two parties are separated by a geographical and cultural divide: Democrats and Republicans living in very different places, the elections do not always give rise to real competition. This divide is also a key reason why so few voters remain undecided; and the last redrawing of the electoral map, in 2020, does not improve this situation.
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