The 2014 US mid-term election results are in and the Republican Party has taken enough seats to wrestle control of the United States Senate from Barack Obama’s Democratic Party. It adds to its existing control of the House Of Representatives, which it also retained, giving the party unanimous power in both of the houses of US Congress and leaving the Democrats with a monumental job to do over the next two years in the run up to the next presidential election.
In a nutshell, what this means is that Barack Obama is going to find it difficult to pass legislature during the next two years as he’ll need to gain approval from both houses for any of the bills he’s planning in the run up to the election. He’ll also need any federal appointments – e.g. members of the Cabinet, heads of most federal executive agencies, ambassadors, Justices of the Supreme Court, other federal judges – to be approved by the Senate, so all in all his plans for the next two years have been well and truly grid locked.
In terms of the results, the Republicans needed just six additional seats to take control of the Senate and as the results came in throughout Tuesday night, after all the votes were cast during the day (4th November 2014), it became increasingly clear that it was a target they were going to hit. In the end they took seven additional seats – Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota and West Virginia – finishing the mid-terms with 52 seats out of the 100 available in the US Senate.
For anyone outside of the US, and probably for a lot of citizens inside too, the mid-term elections are probably a little on the confusing side, and in all fairness they sort of are. They’re a slightly random mix of congressional elections for 36 of the 100 seats available in the US Senate, all 435 seats in the House Of Representatives and a number of State Governor positions.
Come out on top, as the Republicans have done in this situation, and you’ve got a solid run in to the next Presidential election with the power to hamstring the opposition’s policy making powers, while also highlighting national problems as being the fault of the President. It puts the Republicans in a good position to potentially take the next presidential election too, as Barack Obama will struggle to get his policies for change delivered quickly enough to save what is rapidly looking like an unpopular second term.
As they have also retained control of the House Of Representatives, taking 243 of the 435 seats, they’re in the best position they’ve been in for years. Add to that the fact that they now hold 31 of the 52 State Governor positions and you can probably get a flavour of how bad Obama’s popularity is at the moment and how much of an up-hill struggle the Democrats have on their hands over the next two years.
The reality is that it won’t be Obama that has to face such negative voting audiences as he’s in his final term as president, but whoever he passes the Democrat Party banner on to will have to pick up the slack. Right now it’s looking likely that person will be Hilary Clinton, but she’ll have a big challenge ahead and a few key decisions to make in terms of either continuing to support Obama or adding to his misery by disassociating herself from the negative public opinion he’s managed to pick up.
However, it’s important to note that turnout for mid-term elections is notoriously lower than that of presidential elections, and this gap is much more significant in typically Democratic Party portions of the voting public, including young adults, African Americans and women. This typically favours Republicans, so if you take this into account then things are possibly much closer than it would appear for the 2016 presidential election. Although, the Democrats clearly have a lot to do to boost mid-term turnout in their core catchment areas if they’re going to ensure that they don’t see similar results in the future.
