Starting to get a bit of discussion in the general US thread and we're only a week away from the half-way point of the Trump 2 term, in which the US has elections for nearly every other position in their government.

So if you're like me and have an intense interest in the provincial elections of a state on the other side of the planet to most of us (because like me, you're an election nerd), let's open up a topic to cover what could potentially lead to a crippling of the Trump administration's power, as well as get a good sense of where the US is heading after their, let's be honest, absolutely disastrous 2024.

These elections consist of more than you'd think, you have all the state legislatures, several mayorships and important positions in each state. Possibly important for passing that State Popular Vote compact if the Democratic Party gets enough of them.

But of course we're all expecting to read about a few things so...

House of Representatives

The US lower house, currently in near deadlock with a slight Republican majority (219-214), this is widely expected to go to the Democrats who will probably flip 20 or so seats on an average election night. Even that would give them a good command of the lower chamber and block the Trump agenda. Anywhere the Dems can expand the map would be good, though most of it will be in expected territory, watch out for more up-and-coming democratic socialists who seem to have emerged as a full on bloc of candidates - my example pick of one of the promising newbies this year is Melat Kiros who primaried an incumbent Democrat in Colorado's 1st.

Governors

Nationally not as important, but undertalked about as most states have a governorship race, in many cases running alongside an important Senate race, and governors always end up being important national political figures (if they weren't already). Hinojosa winning for the Democrats in Texas would be seismic (if what's happening in the Senate race wouldn't already be seismic), California's race looks as soulless as ever, Florida's Byron Donalds has been distancing himself from Trump in the nation's most red-trending (notable) state, meanwhile Ohio's Vivek Ramaswamy has imploded his campaign in the past week by putting out an ad using his opponent's estranged mother as an attack.

Senate Races

The big one. 2 years ago, most political commentators and election nerds didn't think there was much hope for the Democrats to take the Senate. Since then, the Democrats have done pretty much everything right, or is it more that the Republicans have done everything wrong. Anyway, there are a number of states that are in play that we didn't expect to be.

Georgia and North Carolina would have been good consolation pickups on a bad year, but it looks like Jon Ossoff and Roy Cooper are sailing to victory in both. Minnesota should be fine with the likeable Peggy Flanagan (lt. governor of Walz), even if Minnesota Dems haven't had the best year, and same for New Hampshire. On the likely Republican side, the death of Lindsey Graham has left his underwhelming sister in post, though South Carolina is likely too Republican to be picked up, it could be on the best night. Promising independents in the Trump-friendly states of Idaho, Montana, South Dakota and most importantly, Nebraska, with Dan Osborn returning for another go after 2024, could be more slip-ups for the Republicans, though I'm not holding my breath for any of them. Also in a year where the Democrats are expected to do well, keep an eye out for even more races in the absolute best case, Florida or Mississippi maybe?

Most important races:

Maine: Susan Collins (R*) vs Troy Jackson (D)

Democrats and left-wingers lost a controversial candidate, Graham Platner to scandal, although they managed to replace him pretty neatly with the still left-wing Troy Jackson. Susan Collins is a bit of a political survivor though, so this could go down to the wire.

Iowa: Ashley Hinson (R) vs Josh Turek (D)

Possibly the most likely bit of hope for the Republican side, Hinson is rather unique among Republican candidates in that she's not immediately terrible or scandal-ridden (still bad but in the electable-to-rural-America-and-you-can-posit-that-they-haven't-completely-lost-their-minds way), but we weren't really calling Iowa in play 2 years ago, let's hope it stays that way.

Alaska: Mary Peltola (D) vs Dan Sullivan (R*) vs Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. (R)

Fish queen 🐟 Mary Peltola and best Democrat in Alaska (she's a bit moderate but we accept that in a state like Alaska) returns after narrowly losing her House seat in 2024, as the only Democrat who could put Alaska in play for the Democrats. She's been helped by going up against an unpopular Republican senator who has amusingly had the bad misfortune to have another Dan Sullivan also put his name on the ballot. Even so, this is still a close race, but Peltola has form. I trust she'll make it through.

Ohio: Sherrod Brown (D) vs Jon Husted (R*)

Amazingly, the Democrats managed to convince veteran Brown, who lost his long-held seat in 2024, to run again in this race, which is only happening to fill out the final 2 years of JD Vance's 6 year term, now filled since 2024 by Jon Husted - a Republican who doesn't seem as dislikeable as Bernie Moreno, but still on Trump's side, the race is trending in Brown's favour and this could be a crucial one.

Kansas: Adam Hamilton (D) vs Roger Marshall (R*)

No one was calling Kansas, but the Democrats lucked out in yet another great recruitment of a candidate for a red state like this, a well-known local pastor who has registered with both parties before, but has switched to the Democrats and managed to get the race in play. The incumbent Republican, not used to running defence, hasn't responded very well and on a good night this could be an incredible pick-up for the Democrats. I don't quite believe just yet but it would be fun to see Kansas blue.

Michigan: Abdul El-Sayed (D) vs Mike Rogers (R)

El-Sayed is by some distance my favourite of all the Senate candidates this year. A gifted orator and physician, not afraid to get a bit dirty with mud-slinging his opponents, and a campaign relentlessly centred on affordability and making things better for the average American despite the media's desperate attempts to make everything about his identity, I need him to win. Mike Rogers has form from his close campaign in 2024, but keeps tying himself to Trump, I hope and think that El-Sayed has this. Some commentators think that El-Sayed's leftist credentials will make him have a closer race, but I don't entirely buy that, because it means his skill at driving a message, which is light-years ahead of most Democrats, would count for nothing. If he wins, you could see more from him later on.

Texas: Ken Paxton (R) vs James Talarico (D)

The big one. Texas falling to a Democratic candidate would be existential for the Republicans, and we've been gifted the best circumstances possible - the Republicans ran a bruising primary in which they turfed out the incumbent Cornyn for scandal-ridden useless human (and former AG) Ken Paxton, because he was allied with Trump. The Democrats nominated soft-spoken but energetic Presbyterian (notice a theme?) James Talarico whose ideology is pretty solid and on rhetoric has been doing fantastic. Both sides have spent countless millions on this race, and it'll most likely serve as the centrepiece for these elections - can the Democratic Party take away what was the Republican stronghold and effectively repudiate Trumpism in the process?

Send in your predictions. Who will win? Or how many seats will the Democrats get? What will this mean for America for the second half of the Trump term?

Thanks for the great overview. It doesn't feel right to know all this to such a level of detail but I guess that's why we have the below meme.

I could make some more laudable explanation for what makes it compelling by talking about what it means for the world, but I think what makes US elections particularly compelling to follow from an election nerd POV is that there are lots of American nerds that are easy to find on Twitter, obviously no language barrier, and just a mess of different races and positions (Texas has a 'railroad commissioner' for some reason? You elect judges in many US states???) that are fun to get into the weeds with, with different ways of voting and counting, but all of them have the convenient commonality of eventually coming down to an easy-to-follow two horse race that's really as close as you can get in politics to everyone gets a puppy vs. diarrhoea forever which just isn't as straightforward to draw conclusions from in most other democracies.

Anyway the early vote (in the states where it actually means something*) is looking quite encouraging. There are lots of formerly reliable Republican voters - especially younger white voters and in rural areas - who just aren't turning up yet and are running out of time to do so. We won't really have much of an idea about who's been persuaded to switch their vote until next week, but in some places you can look at what demographics are disproportionately voting so far and which aren't.

*There are some states, like Ohio, where only a minority vote before election day and/or there is no formal Republican/Democrat registration so making a guess at what the final electorate will look like is more of a stab in the dark than it is in Nevada where you have formal registration, or in Georgia where voting is extremely racially polarised so simply getting the ethnic breakdown already gives you some idea.

Edited 14 hours ago14 hr by Harve

edit: nvm my image posted successfully now

Edited 14 hours ago14 hr by Harve

Very helpful summary, thank you! I've mainly been looking at various poll predictors here and here, it seems like there's reason for hope. I think the House should be a done deal for the Dems but I'm more concerned about the Senate. The percentage isn't high enough to be confident. I could put up with Trump as a lame duck for two more years but I'm scared what he'll try if he still has power given it's the last time he'll be able to do so.

I'm cautious of reading too much from the polls as 2022 in particular got it vastly wrong on the Republican end where they only narrowly won the House and lost the Senate despite polls saying otherwise (granted this was the first election after Jan 6 and Roe v Wade, I like to think Americans might use this to fully reject the Iran war if it's not hitting them hard enough already), and perhaps gave a bit of false hope that the Dems could hang on for a second term...

I just think they'll cheat with Elon's machines, just enough to keep the seats as they are now.

Trump seems to have been doing everything he can to ensure that the Republicans do badly on Tuesday. That means he can then spend the next two years claiming the elections were rigged (by the people who weren't running them).

Hoping for a Democrat landslide or at least a big enough win to reduce any power the republicans have of trying to pass laws etc.