Debra Thompson is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.
Amid the spectacle of the showdown between presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, it’s easy to forget that American politics is more than just the presidency. Next week 34 seats in the Senate and the entirety of the House of Representatives will also be on the ballot. Whichever party ends up controlling the legislative branch of government will be able to shape, stymie or smooth the path of a Trump or Harris presidency.
And just as the presidential contest will be decided by eight or fewer competitive states, the balance of power in the House and Senate comes down to a mere handful of races.
The Senate is currently controlled by a razor-thin Democrat majority, with four independent senators caucusing or otherwise being counted with the Democratic Party. Of the 34 seats up for grabs next week, Democrats hold 19, Republicans hold 11, and the remaining are the four independents.
It’s going to be a close one. Fourteen of the 34 Senate seats are solidly Democrat, while nine are clear wins for the Republicans. This leaves control of the Senate up to just nine competitive races.
In Nevada, polling suggests the Democratic incumbent, Jacky Rosen, has a slight lead over the Republican challenger, army veteran Sam Brown. However, the state has a lot of registered non-partisan voters and the presidential race is an even split. In Arizona, independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema decided to not run for re-election after a single term, and now Democrat Ruben Gallego and the Republican challenger, Kari Lake, are in a dead heat. Mr. Trump currently leads the polls there, though President Joe Biden won the state by the slimmest of slim margins – 0.3 per cent – in 2020.
Nebraska and Texas seem to be leaning toward re-electing their Republican incumbents, Deb Fischer and Ted Cruz. But in Nebraska, an independent candidate, Navy veteran and former union boss Dan Osborn, is making it a surprisingly close race, and Democratic Representative Colin Allred is within the margin of error to upend Texas’s status as a Republican stronghold.
A Trump victory won’t just be a win - it will be a takeover
That leaves four states where anything could happen: Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Three of the four have a Democratic incumbent fighting to retain their seat, while Michigan’s race is a newcomers’ battle to replace retiring Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are too close to call in the presidential election, while Ohio is decidedly pro-Trump.
Altogether, the Democrats have a harder road ahead to hang onto their majority, and things don’t look great for them at the moment. Democrats are trying to keep three Senate seats in states that Mr. Trump won in 2020, while Republicans are not defending any seats in states that Mr. Biden won in 2020.
The situation in the House of Representatives, where all 435 members are elected every two years, is a little more complicated. According to the latest Cook Political Report, there are 25 toss-up races, in which either party has a good chance of winning, and these will decide whether Republicans hold onto their three-seat majority. Of those 25 competitive races, 14 currently have a Republican incumbent, eight have a Democratic incumbent and three seats are vacant (but were won by Democrats in 2022). According to modeling by FiveThirtyEight, Republicans win control of the House 52 times out of 100, while Democrats win 48 times out of 100.
In other words, nobody can predict what will happen next Tuesday.
There are a few different scenarios of how this could all play out, of course. We can imagine a Trump presidency with a Republican-controlled Congress, which would allow him unchecked power to do all the things he says he will do once elected – including prosecuting his enemies, ordering mass deportations, using soldiers against citizens and abandoning America’s allies.
Unfortunately, a divided Congress or a Democrat-controlled Congress won’t necessarily stop Mr. Trump from using executive orders to carry out his agenda. Executive orders were a weapon of choice in Mr. Trump’s arsenal during his last presidency; he issued 220 in total, compared with Mr. Biden’s total of 143 so far and Barack Obama’s total of 147 during his first term and 129 during his second.
In comparison, it seems highly unlikely that a hypothetical Harris presidency would use a Democrat-controlled Congress to push through a hyper-partisan agenda or to obliviate the norms of democratic rule.
But really, it’s just highly unlikely that Democrats will win the Senate, the House and the presidency.
If Ms. Harris can pull off a win in this election (and that’s looking like a big, anxiety-producing “if” these days), she will more likely have a divided or Republican-controlled Congress. In this scenario, we can expect to see Republicans reincarnate their position as “the party of no” once more.
In just a few days’ time (assuming things are settled by the morning of Nov. 6, which is far from guaranteed), either Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris will be the president-elect, with a House of Representatives and Senate that will either help or hinder their policy agendas. And nearly half the country will have voted against them.
An election this close would normally suggest that even under a united presidency and Congress, the branches of government move forward by acting with appropriate restraint. This election, however, has already proven to be anything but normal.