US President Joe Biden on Sunday after Democrats win the Senate in the midterm elections (mid term) Not just a reason to celebrate. His party is expected to lose control of the House of Representatives.
Not a single Senate seat has yet been allocated: the one in Georgia. Americans have to go to the polls again on December 6. Both Republican and Democratic candidates received insufficient votes for the seat.
Currently, the Democrats have won 50 seats and the Republicans 49. In the tie, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris received a casting vote. As a result, Biden is already comforted by the majority.
The extra seat could help prevent opposition party members from scrapping plans, as happened last year when Biden wanted to reform the social order. But that failed because Democrat Joe Manchin voted against it.
In the House of Representatives, 20 of the 435 seats have yet to be filled. Republicans hold 211 seats and need 7 more to gain a majority. Biden’s Democrats number 204 and need 14 more.
The President does not see this happening again. “He seems very ambitious,” he admits in a conversation with reporters. If Biden loses control of the House, it will be very difficult to pass bills in the remaining two years of his presidency.
However, Biden could have seen the loss coming. It is almost a rule of law in American politics for the party of the incumbent to suffer (often heavy) losses in the mid term.