Lfear not all votes have been counted. However, a few things are becoming apparent in the Washington morning hours: The Republicans are on their way to gain control of the House of Representatives. However, their majority is unlikely to be as plentiful as hoped. It could be days – or even weeks – before we know the majority in the Senate.
Little can be seen of a red wave, but…
The Democrats had already prepared their declarations for election night: Joe Biden was doing the same as Barack Obama and Bill Clinton before him. After the first two years of their presidency, the incumbent’s Democratic predecessors also suffered bitter defeats. “Divided government”, i.e. the constellation in which the president has to deal with majorities of the other party in one or two chambers of Congress, is normal in America, that should mean. That’s right – during the election campaign, Biden himself made sure to undermine the message: the president said at the rallies in the country that it was the most important election in his life. It is about nothing less than the continued existence of democracy. And now?
No matter how the Senate election turns out, Biden is likely to face a Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Of the 435 constituencies, 82 were contested. In order to reach the majority of 218 MPs, the Democrats would have had to win two-thirds of them. Early Wednesday morning there was little to suggest they would succeed.
Accordingly, Kevin McCarthy, the previous minority leader of the Republicans, should have a majority in the first chamber in the future. He wants to be elected Speaker of the House of Representatives on January 3rd. The hoped-for triumph of the Republicans, a true red wave, did not appear shortly after most polling stations closed: the north-east of the country, a stronghold of the Democrats for a long time, seemed to remain blue on the political map.
The White House had already made it clear what the Biden government would be about in the next two years: Knowing full well that the Republicans wanted to hunt down the Democrats with investigative committees, shutdowns of the federal administration and possibly also impeachment proceedings, Biden would be his defend the legislative agenda of the past two years, i.e. the investment programs in infrastructure, climate protection and social programs – if necessary, the Democrats should also lose control of the Senate with its veto right. That’s what Biden announced.
The voters are watching closely
Republican Herschel Walker of Georgia speaks at an election party Tuesday night.
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Image: AP
Depending on the state, one or the other party hoped for the convenience of the voters. In the fiercely contested “battleground state” Georgia indicated early on that the re-election of the incumbent Republican governor Brian Kemp would be safe. He had managed the feat of prevailing in the primaries against an internal party rival supported by Donald Trump and then, in the main race, still leading a cohesive party. In 2020, Kemp stood in the way of Trump’s attempts to overturn Georgia’s election result. That’s why the former president broke with Kemp — and yet Trumpists in the state were hoping the popular governor would push the now-faltering Senate nominee, Trump-man Herschel Walker, across the finish line. Few voters would split their votes, meaning for a Republican in the gubernatorial election, but vote for Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent, in the Senate election, the calculation was. In fact, however, the voters knew how to differentiate: Kemp got significantly more votes than Walker. He may therefore have to face a runoff election on December 6th.
