Biden and Trump have all to play for in US midterm elections

The United States midterm elections matter to national politics as well as at state and local level. They are much more than an elaborate opinion poll, and if they help propel Donald Trump back into the White House then Tuesday’s polls might come to be seen as historic.

It is certainly bad news for president Joe Biden if he loses virtually any ground in the Senate races, because he barely controls the upper house.

Midterms come in two flavours. If they fall two years from the end of a president’s second consecutive term in office, and he loses control of Congress, it deadlocks the domestic agenda. That usually means the incumbent must concentrate on foreign affairs, which often means some attempt to secure peace in the Middle East.

If they fall in the first term, the consequences are more serious. In Biden’s case it would mean a Republican Senate majority plus a significant House cohort delightedly fouling up his chances of fixing the economy and winning the Democrats a second term.

Such a scenario would make a Trump comeback more likely. He is already heavily campaigning and dropping even heavier hints about running again in 2024, so will claim the credit for any good results on 8 November.

He and his supporters will use the outcomes to tighten his grip on the sometimes reluctant Republican establishment, with dire consequences for rational political discourse and the credibility of democracy. Every contest lost will be “stolen” or “rigged”. Indeed, the ground for such spurious claims is already being laid. If Trump’s allies win, then the curious question arises as to how the Democrats and their nefarious accomplices managed to “manipulate” wins in 2020, but cannot do the same now, even with Biden in the White House. But such logic is incompatible with a carefully constructed conspiracy theory.

The 8 November elections will tell us much about the national mood and will probably give the Republicans and the Trumpites (not quite the same thing) varying degrees of momentum. To a large extent they’ll probably confirm what we already know about the respective weaknesses of Biden and Trump. Given how polarised, politicised and hyper-partisan American society has grown, the final arguments over the next few days won’t sway many voters from their national allegiances, though there will be regional variations.

America remains an almost evenly divided nation, with only small swings of sentiment in relatively few neighbourhoods sufficient to deliver near-imperial power come November 2024. Issues such as inflation, abortion, migration, crime and the leadership qualities of Biden and Trump will feature, just as they will in 2024, but these results don’t necessarily predetermine success in any case. Relatively good midterms for Ronald Reagan (1982) and George W Bush (2002) correctly pointed to re-election; but not so for Jimmy Carter. Elected narrowly in 1976, his high point in the 1978 midterms was followed by recession at home and humiliations abroad, and he lost badly in 1980. Similarly, George HW Bush suffered from another recession in 1990, and in retrospect that seems to be the beginning of the end for his presidency at the hands of Bill Clinton in 1992.

Biden might take comfort in the poor showing of Democrats in 1994 and 2010: neither, despite some excitement, stopped Bill Clinton and Barack Obama recovering strongly to secure second terms in 1996 and 2012. The lesson, if needed, seems to be that Biden had better avoid a recession.

This year’s contests will probably be relatively discouraging for Biden, and relatively happier for Trump, but no one should rule out a Biden comeback – no more or less than a Trump one.