Americans vote in midterms today: polls point to a big Democratic win as Trump approval sinks
Americans are voting on Tuesday (November 3) in the US midterm elections. Democrats are widely projected to retake control of the House of Representatives, though the Senate remains up in the air. Statistics and opinion polls point in one direction only: the Republican Party is heading for a heavy defeat in this election.
No US president since Harry Truman has gone into midterm elections with such low public support, and President Donald Trump's popularity keeps falling. Polls suggest the Democrats could move ahead by an 11-point margin—the largest swing for any party in nearly 20 years. It is possible that Democrats will take control of the Senate and win a large majority in Congress.
Such a majority could bring real change. Congress could finally exercise oversight over the policies Trump introduced in his second term—such as the immigration crackdown, trade disputes, federal workforce cuts, the war with Iran, and corruption allegations against his own family. The New York Times' David Wallace-Wells wrote: "Nobody wants to jinx it by saying it too early, but: every sign we have suggests that, historic or not, these midterms are going to end a political era."
Trump, however, has already implemented some policies that are almost irreversible—changing them would require vast effort, legal wrangling and, in some cases, bipartisan consensus. USAID, the US international development agency, is already a thing of the past. Government departments cut or crippled through DOGE, the government efficiency department, are likely gone too. There is also the global tariff system and ICE's executive and budgetary power. Hardest of all is getting out of the ongoing war with Iran: despite promises that its end is near, it is in fact turning into an endless conflict.
The MAGA movement is bound up inseparably with Trump himself. He held together a coalition spanning white evangelical Christians to Black and Latino working-class voters and Silicon Valley billionaires. The problem, as with Brexit and similar insurgent movements, is that once the movement itself becomes the centre of power and stays there for a long time, it loses the power to stir up anti-establishment anger.
The Democratic Party itself is also a major cause for concern. Its old leadership is exhausted; it includes figures such as Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, as well as Kamala Harris. Only Barack Obama's words retain some lively appeal, which he used to back Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. El-Sayed is breaking with the past on a new journey; Obama said, "He will finish the work we started."
El-Sayed stands on the verge of making history as the first Muslim senator in a state that is crucial in presidential elections. But because of his position on Israel, other senior party leaders have either given him lukewarm, reluctant support or attacked him openly. El-Sayed believes Israel has committed genocide in Gaza and that aid to it should be stopped. Democratic Congresswoman Haley Stevens—whom El-Sayed narrowly beat to secure the party nomination last August—has launched repeated sharp attacks on him, and in the end Stevens directly endorsed El-Sayed's Republican opponent, Mike Rogers.
David Kramer, who took part in the Democratic primary campaign, captured the mood: "There is a lot of talk about our party being a big tent that has room for everyone; but sometimes we fear this tent is turning into a circus and we will be pushed out of it." Kramer himself is voting for Republican candidate Rogers for the Senate.
The midterms may signal a definite end to the Trump era, but the period that follows could be a chapter of "long-lasting Trumpism": one in which the Republican Party still cannot find a path without him, and the Democratic Party still fails to find where it stands beyond opposing him.
