They have no direct bearing on who the president of the United States is who resides in the White House. Midterms are about electing officials to Congress—the other, legislative branch of the US government—and to offices in each of the 50 states, the constitutional counterweight to the central federal government in Washington, DC. In the excitement of looking at the many results from a massive nationwide vote involving millions of people, it’s worth remembering that extrapolating from midterms is a very unreliable way to predict who will be the next president, or even who will are the main contenders in the race. Recent history shows how wrong snap judgments can be. Two years into the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump was widely regarded as an unlikely candidate for a joke. At a similar point before 2008, the conventional wisdom leaned toward Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani as the nominees. Quite different people, Barack Obama and John McCain, fought it out after all. In 1994 Newt Gingrich led the “Republican Revolution” with his “contract with America” crushing Bill Clinton’s Democratic ambitions. He was Time magazine’s man of the year and was nominated as a future president. Despite numerous bids for the White House, he never came close. The final results are not yet in, but there are already some indications of the political mood in the US. The “expected” red wave was more of a ripple. There’s almost always a backlash against the first president’s party in the midterms, but Democrats fared much better under President Joe Biden than they did under Mr. Obama or Mr. Clinton. Read more: See the results from the US Trump’s Republican support surge isn’t taking off As Dominic Waghorn reported here , the Republican candidates Donald Trump endorsed fared much worse than those who ousted him. With only a minority of Republican candidates interested in campaigning on the “grand theft” – the false claim that Mr Trump actually won re-election in 2020, Republican analysts say the party is now moving away from its obsession with Donald Trump. Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania called Democrat John Fetterman to concede defeat. Trump is said to be furious with his wife Melania for endorsing the TV doctor. Fox News played Mr Trump on election night and Rupert Murdoch’s main US newspapers, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, have been heavily critical of him. The Post called the former President “Trumpty Dumpty” this week. Use Chrome browser for more accessible video player 2:59 ‘Red Wave’ does not appear Control of the evenly divided US Senate is held by three states that also played a key role in determining the outcome of the 2020 presidential race: Nevada, Arizona and Georgia. Since Republicans didn’t turn out as strongly as they would have liked, Georgia’s special election runoff on December 6 will be decisive. Under state law, the winner must get more than 50% of the vote. In the first round Democratic pastor Raphael Warnock had 49.2% and his Republican opponent, former football star Herschel Walker, had 48.7%. Starting next January, the lower house of Congress, the House of Representatives, will change from Democratic to Republican. Kevin McCarthy will replace Nancy Pelosi as Speaker, the third highest elected office in the US. A Republican House will likely block President Biden from passing any further major legislation. The investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Capitol Hill and Mr. Trump’s role in it will likely be halted. Read more: Donald Trump may soon be yesterday’s news as America’s far-right media turns on Ron DeSandis Could Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis derail Donald Trump’s new run for the White House? The night’s winner was 44-year-old Ron DeSandis, the Republican governor of Florida who won re-election by a landslide in what is now Trump’s home state. Another name to watch is the high-profile and ambitious JD Vance, the best-selling author of Hillbilly Elegy. He fought a poor campaign, but still held the Ohio Senate seat comfortably for the Republicans. Right before the election, the assumption was that the 2024 race would be a repeat of 2020: Biden vs. Trump. Both men have already indicated their intention to run again, although neither has yet made an official statement. If (all men so far) put his name in, a sitting president like Biden wouldn’t normally seriously challenge his party. The Trump machine seemed unbeatable. The Trump vs. DeSantis battle is expected The relatively mild irritation of the Democrats this week seems to cement Mr. Biden in his place. But there is now a question mark for Mr Trump, despite his insistence beforehand that a poor showing by Republicans would have nothing to do with him. A battle for the nomination between Mr Trump and Mr DeSandis is widely expected. Things are unlikely to be so clear cut. Trump faces a busy few days. On Monday he is summoned to appear before the House of Inquiries on January 6 – although whether he will appear is a matter of speculation. On Tuesday he promised to make a “very big announcement” that he said would be “perhaps” the biggest in American history. This is widely expected to be the official launch of his bid for re-election in 2024. Win or lose, the campaign is making money for Trump. Becoming president would be the best escape from the various civil and law suits that are engulfing him. But the Republican hierarchy does not want him to run, and pressure is mounting on him to delay. If he retires, Mr. DeSantis will certainly step forward. But there would inevitably be a contested primary season for the Republican nomination, with Mr. DeSantis not certain to emerge victorious. Mr DeSantis’ prospects are even more uncertain if he becomes locked in a bloody feud with Mr Trump, with others emerging as compromise candidates. Click to subscribe to Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts The answer to the Republican nominee dilemma may determine whether Joe Biden, who will celebrate his 80th birthday on Nov. 20, actually runs for the Democratic nomination and a second term. Breaking down the data, Republican pollster Frank Luntz explains that Mr. Biden is the only Democratic candidate likely to beat Mr. Trump (he’s already done it once), but surprisingly, any other Republican candidate would win Biden. If it’s not going to be against Mr. Trump, Democrats would be wise to go with someone other than Biden. The polls are wrong The US polling error further adds to the uncertainty. Polls and the data mining aggregators that work from them, like Nate Silver’s 538.com, had another bad night this week. John Della Volpe, head of polling at the Kennedy School at Harvard University, did a much better job predicting the simple “red wave.” He points out that most of the trade polls are conducted by right-wing entities and tend to show that Republicans are doing better than they actually are. In particular, their samples failed to reflect the high level of engagement of younger voters and their centrist leanings, likely boosted by the Supreme Court’s anti-abortion decision. All of this means that we do not yet know what the political battlefield will be in 2024, and we cannot be sure who the “leaders” will be. It’s unwise to read too much into the interim or pay too much attention to the same pundits who told us President Trump in 2024 was practically a locked-in certainty. The confused wonders of democracy were truly at the polls this November.
