Polling across the United States points to a difficult midterm election for the Republican Party, with Donald Trump's approval rating at its lowest going into a midterm since Harry Truman and still falling. Democrats are projected to win by a margin of 11 percentage points, the largest swing by any party in almost 20 years. A Democratic victory could flip the Senate and deliver a large majority in Congress, a result that commentators say could finally bring oversight of the policies Trump has pursued during his second term.
Those policies span immigration enforcement, trade disputes, the gutting of the federal workforce and the Iran war, as well as concerns about his own family's corruption. Congressional majorities would give Democrats the means to scrutinise each of these areas in a way they have not been able to do while Republicans control Washington. The question now dominating political debate is whether the Trump era is really coming to an end.
David Wallace-Wells of the New York Times wrote that nobody wants to jinx the outcome, but that all the signs suggest these midterms are likely to mark the end of a political era, whether or not they prove historic. Writing in the Guardian, columnist Nesrine Malik argued that the midterms may effectively close the Trump period, yet neither side is ready for what follows. Her analysis suggests the country would be freed from Trump himself while remaining divided and shaped by the forces he has unleashed.
The shape of that aftermath is far from settled. Malik's column describes a country in which the Democrats, who stand to gain the most from a strong showing, are themselves in disarray, a weakness that complicates any effort to reverse the policies of the past several years. Winning the vote and building a durable alternative are different tasks, and her central point is that neither side has yet made peace with what the next political chapter will demand.
Trump will have been president for eight years by the time he leaves office, and a polarising figure in US politics for more than a decade. Malik notes that for a leader who breaks political norms and places himself at the centre of national life, his influence can feel as though it has lasted for decades. Undoing that legacy, she argues, will be difficult, not least because the Democrats are in disarray.