These elections are called “midterms” (as in, they happen right in the middle of a presidential term). You’ll hear about them increasingly the closer we get to November 2022. Here’s what you need to know to understand the news about them.
The midterms are when much of Congress is up for election
Every two years, every seat in the House of Representatives is up for election. And about a third of the seats in the 100-member Senate are up (since senators serve six-year terms).
2022 Senate map
Democratic-held
Not up for election
Republican-held
NH
WA
VT
ND
OR
ID
SD
NY
WI
CT
PA
IA
OH
NV
MD
IL
IN
UT
CO
CA
KS
MO
KY
NC
OK
AZ
SC
AR
GA
AL
LA
AK
FL
HI
50
36 Dems. not up
14
20
30 Reps. not up
Any losses or gains in seats may alter the narrow Democratic majority in the Senate.
2022 Senate map
Democratic-held
Not up for election
Republican-held
N.H.
Wash.
Vt.
N.D.
Ore.
Wis.
Idaho
S.D.
N.Y.
Conn.
Pa.
Iowa
Nev.
Ohio
Md.
Ill.
Utah
Ind.
Colo.
Calif.
Kan.
Mo.
Ky.
N.C.
Okla.
Ariz.
S.C.
Ark.
Ga.
Ala.
La.
Fla.
Alaska
Hawaii
50
36 Dems. not up
14
20
30 Reps. not up
Any losses or gains in seats may alter the narrow Democratic majority in the Senate.
2022 Senate map
Democratic-held
Republican-held
Not up for election
Vt.
Wash.
N.H.
Maine
Mont.
N.D.
Minn.
Ore.
Idaho
N.Y.
Wis.
S.D.
Mich.
Wyo.
Pa.
Iowa
Neb.
Nev.
Mass.
Ohio
Md.
Ind.
Ill.
Utah
Conn.
Colo.
W.Va.
Calif.
Va.
R.I.
Kan.
Mo.
Ky.
N.J.
N.C.
Del.
Tenn.
Okla.
Ariz.
Ark.
S.C.
N.M.
Ala.
Ga.
Miss.
Tex.
La.
Fla.
Alaska
Hawaii
50
36 Dems. not up for election
14
20
30 Reps. not up for election
Any losses or gains in seats may alter the narrow Democratic majority in the Senate.
That has big implications for individual members of Congress, whose jobs are on the line. But more important, control of each chamber of Congress can shift, depending on who wins more of these individual races. The party that controls the House or the Senate (Democrats run both now) gets to decide what Congress will even consider and how much the party’s lawmakers want to work with the White House to pass laws.
Many states have aligned their elections on this schedule, so most governors and thousands of state legislators, plus even more local positions, are on the ballot. Add to that various ballot initiatives to change state policies — you’ll hear about things like marijuana and campaign finance — that will come before voters on Election Day.
There’s also momentum to be captured for the next presidential election: If Republicans have a good midterm, as it appears they might, it sets up former president Donald Trump — or whoever runs for president on the GOP side — to try to unseat President Biden, who has said he plans to run again, in 2024.
When are the midterms?
The next ones will be on Nov. 8, 2022. If you’re registered to vote, you can at least vote for a member of the House of Representatives wherever you live (except if you live in the District of Columbia or in U.S. territories), and probably many more things.
There are primaries in the intervening months that typically narrow the field to one candidate from each party for each House seat or for the Senate seats that are up for election. The dates for those primaries vary state by state, and they vary race by race according to whether they are competitive. In some states, you have to register as affiliated to a political party to vote in these primaries; other states have open primaries. Check your voter registration status here.
Why are the midterms important?
Both chambers of Congress need to approve a bill for it to clear Congress, so if even just one chamber switches hands from Democrat- to Republican-controlled, Republicans can stick together and stop anything Biden wants to do for the rest of his first term.
That’s not to say bipartisanship is dead. Congress does many things that require Republicans and Democrats to work together. But on the really big stuff — like immigration, gun rights, health care, even funding the government — the parties increasingly do not see eye to eye. Having a Democrat in the White House and a Republican-controlled Congress is almost certainly a recipe for gridlock.
The coronavirus pandemic has underscored how much influence state officials such as governors and state and local lawmakers have over Americans’ lives. These officials decided when to lock down communities, whether people wore masks, and whether and when businesses and schools could stay open. With Congress increasingly gridlocked, states are where most laws are passed that affect Americans’ everyday lives, such as on education, public safety and taxes.
For decades, “it has usually been that the party in power expects a wake-up call” at the midterm elections, said Laura Smith, a presidential historian at Oxford University. “Americans have tended to vote in divided government in the midterms as a bit of a slap in the face to the sitting president.”
Americans are often comparing still-fresh campaign promises from the presidential election with what has actually been done. “There’s often this huge gap between expectations of the president and the realities they haven’t achieved anything,” she said.
During President Barack Obama’s eight years in office, six were with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and Republicans stopped Obama’s efforts to reform immigration and gun laws.
Republicans eager to get back into power have been signaling their intentions to be actively antagonistic to Biden’s agenda and the Democratic Party if they win a majority. They have threatened to retaliate against Democrats for censoring Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.), or to draw the Biden White House into investigations, or to retaliate against telecommunication companies that hand over lawmakers’ phone records to the Jan. 6 committee investigating the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. They may even shut down the bipartisan Jan. 6 committee.
If Republicans get power in the Senate, they can reject any Supreme Court nominees Biden sends for confirmation.
Republicans are already expecting a good midterm performance
Republicans are feeling confident they can take back control of the House and maybe even the Senate and defend their majorities in many state legislatures and governors’ mansions. In other words, they think there’s a red wave building.
The data backs them up so far. Biden isn’t very popular, his standing hurt by views of the economy, his Afghanistan withdrawal and the pandemic. Historically, a president’s unpopularity has translated into dozens of seats lost in the House in midterm elections. Republicans need only a net gain of five seats to retake the House majority.
The Senate is a bit more complicated. Republicans need to knock off only one member of the Democratic caucus and keep all their senators to take back the majority, and they’re eyeing at least three purple states where Democrats are running for reelection. But Democrats are also trying to unseat Republicans, and the GOP has a few candidates with significant baggage.
For now, polls like this one from The Washington Post and ABC News show that Americans prefer a Republican over a Democrat in Congress, which is more bad news for Democrats.
And this November, Democrats struggled in elections in two states that hold their elections in an off year, Virginia and New Jersey. Republican wins in these states surprised even some Republicans, and they feel that what worked for them (talking about education, the economy and crime and safety) is transferrable to races across the nation.
Polls tell us that at this point, most Americans don’t see their lives significantly improved with Democratic control. Democrats hope that will change after the passage of a major, bipartisan investment in infrastructure and with progress on a partisan social spending plan that injects $2 trillion to dramatically expand the government safety net and fight climate change.
In the states, Republicans have had remarkable success in recent election cycles capturing governors’ mansions and state legislatures. So they will mostly be on defense trying to keep their power while trying to knock off Democratic governors in Kansas, Michigan and Wisconsin.
One big question: What will legislative districts look like?
This election cycle has the additional twist of redistricting. Every 10 years, states are constitutionally mandated to redraw their congressional and state legislative districts on the basis of new census data. Because of relative changes in population, some states lost congressional districts and others gained some.
Change in U.S. House seats, 2010-2020
-1
0
+1
+2
MT
OR
NY
MI
PA
OH
IL
WV
CO
CA
NC
TX
FL
Source: Census Bureau
Change in U.S. House seats, 2010-2020
-1
0
+1
+2
Mont.
Ore.
N.Y.
Mich.
Pa.
Ohio
Ill.
Colo.
W.Va.
Calif.
N.C.
Tex.
Fla.
Source: Census Bureau
Change in U.S. House seats, 2010-2020
-1
0
+1
+2
Mont.
Ore.
N.Y.
Mich.
Pa.
Ohio
Ill.
Colo.
W.Va.
Calif.
N.C.
Tex.
Fla.
Source: Census Bureau
Most states give their state legislatures the power to redraw congressional districts, and in many key states, Republicans control those chambers. That means Republicans get to draw many of the maps that lawmakers will run on in 2022.
That process is happening now, so we don’t yet know what congressional districts will look like. Republicans are aggressively drawing themselves friendly seats in states they control, and Democrats are doing the same in states including Illinois and Oregon.
Democrats in Congress have a bill to seriously dampen lawmakers’ ability to gerrymander district maps, but to pass it over Republican objections, Democrats probably need to eliminate or alter the filibuster rule in the Senate — and while they debate that, the clock is ticking for this legislation to make a difference.
What issues will voters care about in these elections?
Things can and will change, but for now, here’s what’s shaping the political discussion in America.
The economy: Inflation is a big issue. The cost of nearly everything in the United States is rising, driven by a variety of global factors. When Americans perceive the economy as struggling, they tend to blame the party in power for it. And while unemployment is going down and wages are going up, Republicans are all too willing to help drive the narrative that the economy is bad.
“For many of my constituents, this is a choice in some cases between putting food on the table and staying warm,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said recently of rising energy prices.
The coronavirus: If the pandemic finally subsides as a daily threat to Americans, Democrats will have more confidence about their prospects. But a new, potentially serious variant of the virus is rapidly spreading across the world, damaging Biden’s campaign promise to return U.S. life to normalcy.
Expanded government services: Democrats want to talk about their historic expansion of the social safety net. If they can get it passed soon, they will be able to campaign on creating universal prekindergarten, expanded Medicare services, the first-ever major investment in combating climate change and extended child tax breaks in an effort to lift millions of children out of poverty.
“This legislation presents the most historic and transformative agenda in a century,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wrote to her colleagues in a letter recently.
Whichever party is talking more about the economy usually has the upper hand, Smith said. Unlike in a presidential election, where voters tend to focus on sweeping, broad themes about the country and who will lead them, the midterms are more personal and localized. “You will find people vote more on kitchen-table concerns, like how they are feeling about the economy or their health care,” she said.
Who are some of the candidates running?
It’s still early in the process; parties will nominate their candidates next year in individual primaries. But one early trend that’s ominous for Democrats is that a number of House Democrats are leaving their jobs rather than run tough reelection races. Almost two dozen Democrats have retired or decided to run for higher office so far, compared with a dozen Republicans. Republicans are putting a big effort into recruiting more women and minority candidates up and down the ballot to compete with Democrats, who generally have a bigger slate of minority candidates. The battle for the House will be won and lost in suburban and exurban districts such as the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas or the greater Cleveland area in Ohio.
In the battle for the Senate, the story so far is problematic Republican candidates. A number of them — like Herschel Walker in Georgia — have messy personal lives. Already, a Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania endorsed by Trump had to drop out after he was accused of strangling his wife and hitting one of his children. Heated Republican primaries in states including Ohio are steering candidates such as JD Vance and Josh Mandel into far-right territory as they seek Trump’s endorsement.
On both sides, there is an emphasis on parties recruiting wealthy candidates who can spend their own money to make races competitive. That’s just the reality of politics these days, where super PACs can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigns, which are becoming more and more expensive.
There are also some really interesting governors’ races. Big names in Democratic politics — including Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Beto O’Rourke in Texas — are making second runs for statewide office, while on the right, Trump is backing some challengers to sitting governors, challengers including former senator David Perdue (R), who is mounting a primary challenge to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), who upheld Trump’s 2020 election loss in his state.