Although, on election day, the result can still reserve us surprises, it is very likely that the Republicans reconquer the majority in the House of Representatives (and perhaps even in the Senate) on November 8. This would be a remarkable continuity. Indeed, two years after the presidential election, at each mid-term election or almost, the president’s party loses ground in the chamber (of which all of the 435 seats are renewed every two years, the shortest mandate of all the democracies of the world). Generally, it also loses ground in the Senate (a third of which is renewed every two years).
This almost automatic back and forth of American policy raises an obvious question: do political subjects not matter? That we are forgiven to think that if. The fact is that in this endless trench war of the two major American parties, commentators are constantly debating the best communication strategies to present this or that subject, and compete in ingenuity to find the right way to speak of A subject and good subjects to highlight. If the winning formula remains not found, it is simply that it does not exist. The small tranche of voters – which changes the results in the little constituencies and states where the result is not run in advance – is difficult to understand. They present themselves in the polling stations at the last minute and make a singular decision, with their guts.
The American elections are above all – as for at least ten years – a fierce struggle for this handful of votes. Almost all the voters of the next ballot have already made their choice years ago: they chose a party. Since then, everything is only loyalty and confirmation bias [the tendency to take into account above all the information which confirms its way of thinking].
The range of possible results is also limited by the small number of states and constituencies where the gap between the two parties is weak enough for the share of indecisive voters to play a decisive role. If there are so few of them, it is because the electorates of the two parties are separated by a geographic and cultural gap: democrats and republicans living in very different places, the elections do not always give rise to real competitions. This ditch is also a key reason why so few voters remain undecided; And the latest redistribution of the electoral card, in 2020, does not improve this situation.
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