The party of Trump’s presidential rival, Kamala Harris, has a narrow one-seat majority in the Senate, but is defending about two-thirds of the seats up for election.

Among them are three in states Trump won twice and five are in closely contested swing states, where voters aren’t afraid to switch allegiances come election season.

Senate Democrats enter election night with a default deficit of one, as they have no chance of holding on to moderate Joe Manchin’s seat in West Virginia, one of the most fervently Trumpian states in the union.

Republicans need to flip just one other battleground to have an outright majority and are targeting Montana and Ohio, two other right-leaning states with long-standing Democratic incumbents.

Democrats hope to make up for any losses by unseating Florida’s Rick Scott, whose lead has narrowed to five points, or Ted Cruz, who is just four points ahead and in danger of relinquishing his party’s nearly three-decade hold on Texas.

TRIFECTA?

Democrats are counting on an abortion referendum to mobilize support in Florida, although anger over Republican-led restrictions on reproductive health care failed to dent the party’s support in the Sunshine State in the 2022 midterms. .

Freeman, the youth leader, said that while she expected Republicans to overturn the battle in the Senate and House, a Democratic “trifecta” of full control of Congress and the White House was still possible.

House elections are considered a more reliable test of American political sentiment than the Senate, since each member can be re-elected every two years, while senators only appear before the public every six years.

House Democrats have crushed Republicans in fundraising and put enough seats in play to have a good chance of overcoming a razor-thin deficit of 212 seats to Republicans’ 220, with three seats vacant.

They have also been able to tout the achievements of previous sessions while also pointing out that this Republican-led mandate – beset by infighting – has been one of the most dysfunctional and unproductive in the body’s 235-year history.

Keith Gaddie, a politics professor at Texas Christian University, said control of the House was within Democrats’ reach, but he’s not betting everything on the party reaching its potential.

“The reality is that literally anything can happen in terms of control,” he told AFP.

“We won’t really know until the voting and litigation are over. Because litigation is the final act of any election these days.”