USA - 2022 Congressional Election
The 2022 mid-term elections will be held on Tuesday, November 8, 2022. All 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives and 34 of the 100 seats in the United States Senate will be contested. Democrats held a slim 219-211 lead in the House, and the Senate is evenly divided.
The first midterm election of a newly elected president is almost always bad news for their party in Congress. Republicans lost 40 seats in the House in 2018, while Democrats dropped 62 seats in 2010. In fact, the president's party has lost, on average, nearly 28 House seats and more than three Senate seats in the 19 midterm elections between 1946 and 2018. Democrats are defending 222 House seats (out of 435) and 14 Senate seats (out of 34 up in 2022). But in 1998, when Bill Clinton was president, Democrats actually picked up five seats in the House and broke even in the Senate. Furthermore, the census results moving seats from blue to red states and Republican dominated state legislatures gerrymandering to an absurd degree while passing voter suppression laws that make it more difficult for people of color to vote.
Trump loyalists tend to be "pro-Trump, America First" whack jobs who win their primaries thanks to Trump’s endorsement but most likely lose to their Democratic opponents in the general election. Trump remained a Republican political force despite violent scenes in Washington in January 2021. Trump's tumultuous final weeks in office saw his supporters launch a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 to try to block Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden's victory in the presidential election, a win that Trump falsely claimed was tainted by widespread fraud.
As the former and possibly future president of the country, Trump holds more power and sway than anyone else in the party; who he backs in state races makes a big difference in fundraising and, ultimately, votes. Increasingly, though, Trump seems to be choosing candidates based on whether they support his claims, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him—even if they're not the Republicans with the strongest chance of winning.
Caren White observed : "What Trump is trying to do is to mold the Republican Party into his own image. Create a captive party that will ensure support for him when he runs in 2024 and support for his policies and legislation while he is president. Republicans, on the other hand, are just looking to hang on to the seats that they have and pick up enough seats more to put them in the majority for the rest of Biden’s term. That’s not going to happen with the candidates that Trump is endorsing."
An analysis by Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics characterized 19 Democratic-held House seats as toss-ups for 2022, compared to just two held by Republicans. If these seats were to split right down the middle between the parties, the GOP would jump to a 222-213 majority – an edge equivalent to the Democrats' current margin.
Democrats have a reasonable chance of keeping control of both chambers in the midterm elections. Because Democrats have such a narrow lead in that chamber, that would mean the GOP is favored to take it. After the 2020 census, 2022 will be the first federal election after the House district maps are redrawn. And because Democrats fell short of their 2020 expectations in state legislative races, Republicans have the opportunity to gerrymander congressional maps that are much more clearly in their favor. A district-by-district count by the Cook Political Report's David Wasserman concluded that, on balance, the GOP is in a position to flip three or four Democratic seats based on its ability to draw lines alone.
The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) included provisions that indexed some contribution limits for inflation. The limit on individuals’ contributions to candidates, for example, was set at $2,000 per election in BCRA; it is adjusted at the start of each new election cycle. During the current two-year election cycle (November 4, 2020 - November 8, 2022) the limit for contributions by individuals to federal candidates for President, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives increased to $2,900 per election.
Republicans could become defined as a party too narrowly focused on its base and too out of the mainstream for moderate voters, all the while inciting the Democratic base. Enduring Republican support for former President Donald Trump, even after the Capitol insurrection and his second impeachment trial, has left some conservatives wondering if the party still has a place for them. Media attention brought on by multiple criminal investigations, civil state inquiries and defamation lawsuits may also determine how much Trump will continue to influence Republican Party politics.
On 12 May 2021 US House Republicans approved Representative Elise Stefanik for a top leadership spot, sending a powerful message about the direction of the party by elevating the New York congresswoman noted for her support of former president Donald Trump. The 36-year-old Stefanik takes over the position of House Republican Party conference chair from Representative Liz Cheney, who was removed Wednesday after calling Trump's allegations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election "a big lie."
Former president Trump endorsed Stefanik on his blog, writing, "The House GOP has a massive opportunity to upgrade this week from warmonger Liz Cheney to gifted communicator Elise Stefanik." "We need someone in leadership who has experience flipping districts from Blue to Red as we approach the important 2022 midterms, and that's Elise! She knows how to win, which is what we need," wrote Trump on his blog.
Cheney's statements on the presidential vote revived the debate within the Republican party over Trump's unsubstantiated claims he won the November election over President Joe Biden. Those claims culminated in his supporters rioting at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 to prevent the counting of Electoral College votes for Biden. The worst security breach on the Capitol in more than two centuries left five people dead.
"The election is over. That is the rule of law. That is our constitutional process. Those who refuse to accept the rulings of our courts are at war with the Constitution," Cheney said on the House floor Tuesday. "Our duty is clear. Every one of us, who has sworn the oath must act to prevent the unraveling of our democracy. This is not about policy. This is not about partisanship. This is about our duty as Americans." In February 2021, Cheney was the top-ranking Republican to vote to impeach Trump for inciting that riot. Top House Republican Kevin McCarthy did not vote to impeach but said on the House floor, "The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters."
On 29 May 2021 Senate Republicans blocked the creation of the Democratic-backed 6 January Commission to look into the Capitol breach which occurred earlier this year. The vote was 54 to 35, with only six GOP lawmakers siding with the Dems; the bill needed at least 10 Republican votes to advance it. It was expected that the new commission would be comprised of five Democratic and five Republican members, who would have subpoena powers. The House of Representatives passed the 6 January panel bill 252-175 with 35 Republicans teaming up with all Democrats to endorse the plan. The GOP apparently felt that the commission would hurt Republican chances of capturing House and Senate majorities in the upcoming 2022 midterm elections.
The January insurrection has become an increasingly fraught topic for Republicans, with a growing number in the party downplaying the severity of the worst attack on the Capitol in more than 200 years. While most Republicans voted against forming the commission, only a few spoke on the floor against it. And a handful of Republicans who backed the commission spoke forcefully.
Democrats grew angry as some Republicans suggested the commission was only intended to smear Trump. Several shared their own memories of the insurrection, when rioters brutally beat police, broke in through windows and doors and sent lawmakers running. Four of the rioters died, including a woman who was shot and killed by police as she tried to break into the House chamber. A Capitol Police officer collapsed and died after engaging with the protesters, and two officers took their own lives in the days after.
When the census reported the number of House seats that each state would have in the coming decade, Republicans were elated to see that those gaining seats — Texas (2), Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, Montana and Oregon — were almost all GOP-friendly. Those losing seats included Democratic strongholds such as California, New York and Illinois, along with swing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. (West Virginia, a reliably Republican state, also lost a seat.)
Simply by gerrymandering a handful of states, the GOP could all but guarantee a Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 2022. Electoral maps are drawn at the state level. The process broadly favors Republicans at the moment because the party completely controls redistricting in 20 states with a total of 187 congressional districts. Democrats, by contrast, completely control just eight states, with 75 districts. (Ten states use independent commissions to draw district lines; in six others, Democrats and Republicans each control one house of the state legislature, which means neither side has an obvious upper hand in drawing up new districts.)
The release of detailed local data from the U.S. census in August 2021 demonstrated that the country is diversifying and urbanizing more quickly than many had believed, and those results have real consequences for what Congress will look like throughout the coming decade. In general, the news was good for the Democratic Party. It suggests that some of the anticipated losses in the 2022 elections may be mitigated slightly by population growth in large metropolitan areas, which tend to vote for Democrats, and a decline in rural populations, which tend to favor the Republican Party. In his analysis for The Cook Political Report, David Wasserman wrote that "although Republicans hold more sway in redistricting, Democrats have to be pretty happy with today's results."
Many GOP strategists had been concerned that Trump loyalists will be unmotivated to vote due to their errant belief that U.S. electoral systems are fraudulent and rigged (at least in the way they think it is). “This could cost the Republicans the majority in the House in 2022,” opined GOP pollster Frank Luntz on a podcast in May. “What Donald Trump is saying is actually telling people it’s not worth it to vote. Donald Trump single-handedly may cause people not to vote.”
Republicans performed well in races across the country n 2021 — most notably in the governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey, states that Mr. Biden won by double digits in 2020. Vote counts are still being finalized, but it appears they shifted almost identically toward the Republicans compared with 2017, the last time those governorships were on the ballot — margins of about 11 points. The combination of even deeper losses in rural areas paired with fallout in more populous areas — would be catastrophic for Democrats in 2022.
Republicans were in the best position to retake seats in Congress during midterm elections in four decades, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll published 14 November 2021, which Sunday found if midterm elections were held now, 51 percent of all registered voters say they would vote for a Republican in their congressional district, as opposed to 41 percent who said they would go with a Democrat. That figure represented the largest lead for the GOP in the 110 polls conducted by the two news organizations since 1981, ABC noted. It also represented only the second time since 1981 Republicans have held a statistical advantage in that category.
Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel will leave Facebook parent Meta's board, the firm said 08 February 2022, after a lengthy tenure that saw the network's rise and his vocal support of Donald Trump. Meta and Thiel's announcement offered nothing on his future plans, but the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported that he would focus on aiding Republican candidates backing ex-president Donald Trump's agenda in the midterm elections. Considered one of the tech industry's most prominent conservatives, he became a supporter of Trump, including a $1.25 million donation in 2016 to the former reality TV star's campaign.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's meeting with US President Joe Biden made one thing clear — Berlin and Washington are still not on the same page when it comes to Russia. Scholz met with US President Joe Biden at the White House on 08 February 2022, in a bid for the chancellor to show that Germany is a "reliable ally" when dealing with Moscow. Scholz said during the meeting that they will "act together" and "far-reaching" measures against Russia had been agreed upon by allies. Yet, the Austrian expert said there is discord between the two sides, particularly in regards to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and potential sanctions towards Russia.
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