On Nov 7, Democrats captured the House of Representatives for the first time in eight years to exert a significant check on US President Donald Trump and broke the Republican monopoly on power in Washington. The senate is still in the hands of the GOP. This midterm election, which is the fiercest in the past two decades, was widely seen as a national referendum for Trump and his contentious policies. And it can also demonstrate the genuine policy choice of the public in the United States.

Since World War II, the turnout for midterm elections averaged just 40 percent, much lower than that for presidential elections. But this time is unique. Trump himself has pushed the turnout of voters to a new high, surging to 50 percent or so. It is worth noting that the Democrats represented by women, independent and minorities have formed an eye-catching momentum in the US politics. More than that, the donations collected by the Democrats reached a record $5.2 billion. 

Both parties have gone out to mobilize its voters. Actually this midterm election was held when the US politics has become more and more polarized since 1990s. Even though Trump was not on the ballot, he, different from his predecessors, regards this midterm as his own referendum and was fully devoted to the campaign. He campaigned heavily in the major senate battlefields, such as Montana, North Dakota, Missouri, Indiana and West Virginia. The above states are the red states, which Trump won by double-digits in the 2016 presidential election. Former president Barack Obama and former vice-president Joe Biden campaigned heavily for the Democrats urging youth and the minorities to come out to vote so as to fundamentally change the current chaotic political situation.

In order to rouse the Republican voters, Trump is intended to create a campaign of fear and hatred. Despite the advice from the Republican that his focus should be on sound economy, Trump insisted on focusing on illegal immigration in his stump speeches. Despite what really happened on the spot, Trump alleged that the caravan from Central America to Mexico was organized by the Democrats and posed an imminent threat to the US since some of them were even from the Middle East. Moreover, he threatened that the congressional victory of the Democrats will bring about disaster for the country. One of his well-known speech lines is that Democrats produce mobs, but Republicans produce jobs. 

More than that, Trump took tangible action to win the support of his base. To implement America First policy and correct so-called unfair trade practices, Trump has waged trade wars against several countries since the beginning of this year. But with the evolution of the trade war, the ramifications surfaced gradually. Farmers from the Midwest complained about their big losses and then in October the stock market plunged deeply. Trump was under tremendous pressure. After the US signed the US-Mexico-Canada trade deal in September, the US Treasury notified the Congress that the US planned to start formal trade negotiations with Japan, the European Union and Britain. The outside guess that one of its major considerations was for the Republican base. In the meantime, prior to the midterm election, the Trump administration announced that it considered withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and re-imposed sanctions against Iran. So an important factor to take into account is to demonstrate to the whole world how tough Trump is when safeguarding its national interests.

Trump’s approval rate is as high as over 80 percent among the Republican voters. What he did during the midterm election did mobilize its lukewarm base. At the final stage of the midterm election, the campaign became even fiercer and the gap between both parties narrowed. But there is an Iron Law about the midterm election since World War II. That is, the first midterm election is not favorable to the president. The president’s party loses 29 congressional seats on average. If the president’s approval rate is less than 50 percent, the party will lose as many as 41 seats. Currently, the approval rate of Trump is just about 41 percent. Most of the US polls projected that the Democrats would capture the House while the Republican would continue to be the majority party of the Senate. However, since polls failed to project the election of Trump in 2016, no one could say with confidence that the Democrats would capture the House before the election result came out.

Some of the US media claimed that the incivility of Trump in the election led to violence in the US during the election. Trump congratulated Nancy Pelosi and acknowledged her call for bipartisanship. But the media predicted that partisan fight will be even worse than before.

In my view, the result of this midterm election has symbolic significance. Since Trump won the 2016 presidential election, it seems that the US policies have gone wildly without effective restrictions. This midterm election outcome is in some sense equal to a normal return of the US domestic politics. As for the Sino-US relations, I wish that the US elites would deal with China in an objective and rational way after the fights in the midterm election.    

Yuan Youwei is a researcher and deputy director of the Department of External Affairs, China Center for International Economic Exchange. The author contributed this article to China Watch exclusively.

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