Us Mid-Term Elections: What Scenarios Might the Results Lead To?

On 3 November, American voters will go to the polls for the ‘mid-term’ elections. At stake are all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate, as well as numerous local offices. The Republicans’ very narrow majority in the House and their slightly more comfortable majority in the Senate are both under threat. Judging by the available indicators, the Democrats appear well placed to perform well.

It is not unusual for the incumbent president’s party to suffer a setback in these elections, but the polls are particularly unfavourable to the Republicans ahead of the 2026 elections. The president himself is enjoying historically low levels of popularity — recent polls put his approval rating at around 38 per cent — and the prospects of most Republican candidates for Congress are closely linked to Trump’s political fortunes. The administration’s unpopular military campaign in Iran, along with issues relating to the cost of living, have left American voters particularly disgruntled in recent months. In ‘generic’ polls, the Democrats lead the Republicans by 8 points or more, well beyond the margin of error. Even more tellingly, the Republicans are devoting increasing resources to defending seats in states that Trump won by a wide margin in 2024. In states such as Texas, Iowa, Ohio and Alaska, where the Republicans have dominated in recent years, the President’s party is now on the back foot. The Democrats, too, face their own challenges, and the party’s image is far from stellar among many voters, but they are nevertheless expected to perform well.

The Democrats stand a very good chance of regaining control of the House of Representatives. They need to win just three net seats to secure a majority, and they appear well placed to do so. The Senate is more complicated. Initially, this year’s electoral map was not particularly favourable to the Democratic minority, but in recent months the momentum seems to have turned against several vulnerable Republican candidates. Some forecasts now give the Democrats a slight edge; they might just manage to win the four seats needed to flip the Senate. It will be an extremely close race.

If the Democrats manage to win control of both houses, the change is likely to be more gradual than radical. The Democratic minority leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, would be well placed to become Speaker of the House. Jeffries is politically positioned on the centre-left and has close ties to the Democratic establishment. In the Senate, the Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, who has previously served as Majority Leader, clearly has his sights set on this role. He is likely to face some opposition, but he is the presumptive favourite. Schumer, too, is a pragmatist and an institutionalist. Both of these leaders are quite distant from some of the party’s most prominent progressives, such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

For Donald Trump, on the other hand, the return of one or both houses of Congress to Democratic control will almost certainly constitute a casus belli. With a Democratic majority in Congress, the final two years of Trump’s presidency are likely to be exceptionally turbulent and contentious.

Here are three predictions for the period following the mid-term elections:

Should the Democrats win, Donald Trump will further undermine confidence in the American democratic system. The President is certainly aware of the Republicans’ bleak prospects and appears to have struggled to find a message that might improve their chances whilst distancing himself from a potential electoral defeat. In the wake of a poor election result for the Republicans, however, it is highly likely that Trump and his administration will cast doubt on the reliability of the electoral system itself. Trump has repeatedly attacked postal voting, claimed that non-citizens – supposedly supportive of the Democrats – were voting in large numbers, and accused a whole host of local election officials in Democratic-leaning constituencies of fraud. There has even been talk of deploying federal agents, notably from the FBI and ICE, to polling stations across the country. If his party loses, we can expect scathing accusations of the election being ‘stolen’ from Trump, with the corrosive effects one can imagine on American democratic culture when a US president makes such accusations. Any unfounded legal challenges that the Republicans might bring against the election results would have little more chance of success than those in 2020, when Trump had already sought to ‘stop the steal’ after losing the presidential election. But by then, the damage would already have been done.

Government paralysis will be inevitable. In the event of a Democratic victory, the chances of reaching a cross-party agreement on the fundamental aspects of governance during Trump’s remaining two years in the White House would be virtually nil. In particular, we can expect persistent and disruptive clashes over the budgetary process. Shutdowns lasting several weeks, or even several months, are highly likely. Unlike his predecessors, Trump appears to have a high tolerance for shutting down large parts of the government rather than reaching a negotiated compromise with Congress, and he has already used the threat of a shutdown as a weapon in his clashes with Congress. It is to be hoped that he will not go so far as to trigger a US debt default, but the President has shown that he is comfortable resorting to a standoff over raising the debt ceiling, with potentially considerable risks for the global economy should a dispute with Congress on this issue remain unresolved. In the event of a shutdown, Trump could also resort to legally questionable means to continue certain government operations that he considers a priority — the war in Iran or ICE operations against immigrants, for example.

Congress will fight back. There is a high likelihood that Donald Trump will once again face impeachment proceedings. Congress could cite several grounds, but one line of attack that would offer certain political advantages to the Democrats could relate to the controversial military operations carried out by Trump in Iran. Under the War Powers Act, the President is legally required to inform Congress within 48 hours of launching military operations and to seek congressional authorisation within 60 days. Trump did neither. The House would almost certainly have the votes needed for impeachment — the US equivalent of an indictment against the president — and, if the Democrats also control the upper house, a trial would be held in the Senate. Given the two-thirds majority required to convict the president, an actual removal from office seems highly unlikely. In both the White House and Congress, however, much of the day-to-day work is likely to grind to a halt whilst the two branches of government wage a veritable institutional war against one another. At the same time, Congress will hold hostile hearings and may even initiate impeachment proceedings against other senior administration officials.

Should the Democrats win the mid-term elections, the final months of Trump’s presidency are therefore likely to be particularly difficult.

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Read regular opinion pieces by Jeff Hawkins, a former US diplomat and research fellow at IRIS, in his ‘Diary of a State Department Veteran’.

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This article has been translated from French into English using artificial intelligence.