Democrats brace for heavy losses in midterm elections

US President Joe Biden's approval rating fell marginally this week to 39%, underscoring predictions that the Democratic Party will suffer heavy losses in today's midterm elections, an Ipsos poll conducted for Reuters news agency and broadcast by it last Monday suggested.

A key finding of the two-day survey is that the percentage of the electorate that approves of Biden's work in office has fallen by one point, close to the nadir of his tenure so far (36%).

The White House occupant's party is on the verge of losing control of the House of Representatives today, if not the Senate, and his low approval rating is among the factors that explain this.

According to the projections of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, the Republicans will easily secure a majority in the House of Representatives today, winning 24 seats, while also securing a very narrow majority in the Senate.

The loss of control of even one of the two chambers would signal the paralysis of Mr Biden's efforts to advance his agenda for the remainder of his term. If, as discounted, Republicans win a majority in the House, they could launch several politically bloody investigations.

The US president took office in the midst of the new coronavirus pandemic and his term has been marked by the impact of the global health crisis on the US economy and, most recently, high inflation.

Mr Biden's approval rating has remained below 50% since August 2021 and this year has approached, though not reached, the approval rating levels of his predecessor, Republican Donald Trump, which had plummeted to 33% in December 2017.

In this week's poll, a third of voters identified the economy as the country's biggest problem, far higher than the one in ten who pointed to crime and the one in 15 who said it was the ending of abortion rights by a Supreme Court decision in June.

The rolling national poll was conducted online, in English, among a representative sample of 1,004 adults, of whom 424 said they were Democratic supporters and 390 said they were Republican supporters. The margin of statistical error is ∓ 4%.