Nov. 3 (UPI) — The midterm elections on Tuesday will determine whether Republicans maintain a majority in both chambers or if President Donald Trump will face stronger opposition for the rest of his term.
All 435 seats in the U.S. House and 35 Senate seats are up for election when voters go to the polls on Tuesday. Republicans have held a majority in both chambers through the first 22 months of Trump’s second term, allowing him to progress some of his policies on Capitol Hill.
Republicans hold 219 seats in the House and 218 is a majority. In the Senate, the party holds 53 seats and needs to keep at least 50 to keep a majority.
In most midterm elections, the party of the president loses some seats in the House and Senate. This has happened in 20 of the last 22 midterm elections, the Brookings Institution says.
Dr. Meena Bose, dean of Hofstra University’s public policy program and director of presidential studies, told UPI that the loss of seats, particularly in a lame duck term, means a loss of “political capital.”
“In presidential studies it’s a pretty common view that the first 12 to 18 months of a presidency are when the president really has political capital,” she said. “If they feel pressure or have the desire they start focusing after the midterms on legacy and how their presidency will stand out in history. It’s challenging to pass legislation after the midterm elections, particularly in a second term.”
There are several reasons that it becomes difficult for a president to advance their agenda through legislation after the midterms, if they lose a majority. Losing votes in either chamber is at the top of the list, but losing control over daily operations on Capitol Hill also plays a large role.
In the House and Senate, committee assignments are voted on, including appointing the chairs to lead those committees. Effectively the party in the majority has the edge in filling out committees and their chairs.
Committees serve a crucial role in examining legislation, opening or closing investigations and reviewing appointments made by the president.
The majority party, led by the speaker of the House and Senate majority leader respectively, controls the legislative agenda, down to the schedule and votes on the floor. This allows the majority party to determine priorities for the legislation it wants to debate and send to committee.
A congressional majority can also slow down the agenda of the president, or minimize negative political developments for the president, as House Speaker Mike Johnson has done in the fall, cancelling votes at the end of last month and going into recess through the midterms.
The power of the purse is one of Congress’ strongest levers of power. The majority party leads the annual budgeting and appropriations process.
Last year’s fiscal year budget reconciliation law, referred to by Trump as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” moved his second term agenda forward with broad budget cuts to public programs, including $1 trillion to Medicaid, while cutting taxes further for people making between $200,000 and $500,000 per year.
The bill passed narrowly in both chambers. A change in either majority will make it difficult for the president to pass a budget as uniformly opposed by Democrats as last year’s budget bill.
While the president most often loses seats during the midterms, it is not a given that they will lose a majority in either chamber. How many seats are lost or gained by either party is also significant, not only to strengthen the majority to maintain control if members resign, but to more easily pass bills or potentially veto the actions of the president.
In the Senate, the 60-vote mark is highly sought after because it grants the ability to end a filibuster. This is referred to as cloture. The filibuster has been used for decades to extend debate with hours-long discussion, delaying and even preventing bills from passing.
“Getting to 60 votes, which is an increasingly tall order, is ideal and it doesn’t happen often,” Bose said.
Under President Barack Obama’s first term, Democrats briefly had a 60 member majority in the Senate. It ended when Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy died in 2009, months into Obama’s first term. Republican Scott Brown won the special election to succeed Kennedy representing Massachusetts.
If a party reaches a 67 senator majority, a two-thirds majority, it gains the ability to ratify treaties or convict a government official who has been impeached, including the president.
There has not been a two-thirds majority in the Senate since the 1960s.
When the party opposed to the president takes majorities in either or both chambers, they are still reliant on the president to pass laws, unless they have a veto-proof majority, 290 votes in the House and 67 in the Senate.
“Presidents after the midterms tend to focus on areas that have common interests,” Bose said. “Or foreign policy where they can have more unilateral action.”
President Ronald Reagan focused on foreign policy in his lame-duck years post-1986 midterm. In 1987, he and Mikhail Gorbachev, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, banning intermediate range missiles and requiring the United States and USSR to destroy hundreds of their own missiles to comply.
The treaty marked a significant achievement for Reagan in nuclear disarmament during the Cold War.
War is again the dominant issue as Trump moves into his final two years as president. The war between Ukraine and Russia is nearing its five-year anniversary in February. The Iran war is eight months in and counting.
Bose said both wars will continue to be in the spotlight, no matter Tuesday’s results.
“The president always on some degree has to address the situations they have or events that happen internationally,” Bose said. “Usually they try to achieve lasting opportunities in foreign policy. The situation in the Middle East is very significant. Particularly the war with Iran is a major question. There may be efforts in other places to establish lasting agreements in the Middle East.”