Battle for control of Congress comes to a head

WASHINGTON — Tuesday’s high-stakes election will determine if Republicans ride a red wave to the majority in both chambers of Congress or if Democrats can stir up a small blue tide to hold onto control of the Senate, according to polls and analysts.

The outcome of the midterm elections will shape the final two years of President Joe Biden’s term and his ability to advance the Democrats’ agenda, and it will set the stage for the presidential election in 2024. 

In House races, Republicans appear to have an edge. Polls find that voters voice more concern about inflation, crime, Biden’s performance and the direction of the country than about Democrats’ issues of abortion, threats to democracy and legislative accomplishments.

In Senate races, polls show a handful of toss ups. These races feature the same issues at play in the House, but the outcome of the elections could be determined by voter reaction to the backgrounds, foibles and health of the candidates.

“What we’re talking about is a little wave or a big wave,” said Lawrence Jacobs, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for the Study of Politics and Governance.

“You've got very close races. You've got a nationalization of the campaigns. And you've got the prospect that the undecideds are going to break against the party controlling the White House,” Jacobs told Newsday. “That looks like very favorable conditions for Republicans.”

Democrats and Republicans have gone all out to win the five to nine most competitive seats in the Senate and about five dozen seats in the House.

Candidates, party committees and outside groups will spend a record $9.3 billion in the 2022 midterm, which is $2.6 billion more than the previous high in 2018, according to a projection by Open Secrets, the nonpartisan tracker of political money. 

Voter interest appears to be strong, particularly in states with highly competitive statewide races. The United States Election Project at the University of Florida said as of Saturday nearly 39 million people had cast early ballots.

And both parties have brought out the big names to boost their turnout. Former President Donald Trump scheduled rallies in Iowa, Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio, while former President Barack Obama visited Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. 

House of Representatives

The bump of support for Democrats after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June has deflated, replaced by the historic dynamic of the party of the president losing seats in the midterm elections, according to political analyst Charlie Cook. 

More than half the public disapproves of Biden’s performance and two thirds think the country is on the wrong track, the Real Clear Politics polling average shows. That creates a strong headwind for Democrats as they try to hold on to their narrow eight-seat majority.

“Given all of that, a loss of House control is almost as inevitable as death, taxes and the A seat on an airplane being a window,” Cook wrote on his website, the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter.

Republicans likely will win more than the net five seats they need to take the House majority, but political handicappers differ on how many more they will pick up. 

Cook predicts the net Republican gain could be as high as the low thirties, while Kyle Kondik at Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics predicts a net gain in the twenties.   

Republicans have sought to expand the playing field into some of the bluest states, including Nevada, Oregon and even New York, where political handicappers rank seven districts as toss ups or very competitive — including three of the four districts on Long Island. 

National issues — abortion, Biden’s policies and inflation — shape the campaigns in many districts. But local issues and personalities also matter.   

In a suburban Virginia district, for example, the right to an abortion dominates the debate between Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger, an abortion-rights supporter, and Republican Yesli Vega, who opposes abortion and once said women cannot get pregnant from a rape.

In a Nevada district on the edge of Las Vegas, Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford faces GOP challenger Samuel Peters, a war veteran aligned with former President Donald Trump who campaigns primarily on the issue of border security and backs completing construction of Trump’s wall. 

In Oregon, progressive Democrat Jamie McLeod-Skinner defeated the conservative Democratic incumbent, Rep. Kurt Schrader, and now faces Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer in a race pitting an openly gay woman against one of the new wave of conservative Latina candidates. 

Still, in a House where a party needs 218 seats to have the majority, Sabato’s Crystal Ball rates 219 races as safe, likely or lean Republican.

Senate

The midterm curse that influences the president’s party in midterm House races appears to be weaker in the Senate, where individual races and candidate quality matter much, according to Cook.

But avoiding losing a seat will be no easy task for Democrats, whose claim to the majority in a 50-50 Senate stems from Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote.

Republicans need to net just one Democratic seat to take control — but to win they need to overcome some of their candidates’ controversies. 

In Georgia, the campaign of Republican Herschel Walker, a former football star backed by Trump, has had to deal with revelations of two children the anti-abortion Walker sired out of wedlock and accusations that he urged and paid for an abortion of a former girlfriend.

Walker is challenging Democratic Sen. Ralph Warnock, a pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. served as a co-pastor. Warnock won his seat in a special election in 2020 after Trump complained of rampant voter fraud in Georgia.

In the race in Pennsylvania to replace retiring Republican Pat Toomey, Democrat John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor, had a serious stroke in May and a shaky performance in an October debate against Republican Mehmet Oz, a former surgeon, professor and TV host.

Oz, however, has had to deal with charges he really lives in New Jersey and that during his 13 years of “The Dr. Oz Show” he hosted several medical gurus and alternative health practitioners, including some accused of selling bunk products and defrauding investors.

Meanwhile, Nevada’s Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who is seeking a second term, faces a tough challenge by Republican Adam Laxalt, a former state attorney general and the son of a former Nevada senator. Some Democrats worry Cortez Masto has underperformed.

In the race in Ohio to fill retiring Republican Rob Portman’s seat, Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan is vying with Republican J.D. Vance, a venture capitalist and lawyer best known for his book “Hillbilly Elegy” about social, regional and class decline.

Arizona, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and North Carolina also have tight races.

But Jessica Taylor of the Cook Political Report on Friday predicted Republicans are in position to win enough seats to take the majority.

“Republicans enter the final days of the midterms with the political winds at their backs and the slight momentum in the battle for Senate control,” she wrote. 

Caveats

Do not expect final election results Tuesday night, said Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that advocates for voter rights.

“We're certainly not going to have final, final results,” Lang told Newsday. “And we’re not going to know who wins in a lot of the close races.”

Political experts also warned that preelection polls are merely imperfect snapshots of a race. And because pollsters have a harder time reaching people to survey, and most Trump supporters refuse to participate, polls missed the mark in 2016 and 2020.

Finally, Lang said she worries about voter intimidation and candidates denying they lost, undermining the vote counting process and seeking to overturn elections, as Trump and his supporters did in 2020.

"We've had some really outrageous attacks on the democratic system in recent years, so I think that this election is in some ways a stress test," Lang said. "But I think Americans are gonna pass that test by showing up in big numbers and insisting on being heard."