U.S. polls opened Tuesday on the East Coast for a midterm election in which the Democratic Party will try to maintain its majority in both houses of Congress for the last two years of President Joe Biden’s term.
The in-person voting, which begins after nearly 42 million people have voted by mail -according to data from the US Elections Project of the University of Florida-, will determine the composition of the Senate and the House of Representatives, where polls point to a possible victory for the Republican Party.
At the center of the process are six states that could be key in a possible electoral turnaround, among them the five in which Biden managed to wrest control in 2020 from the Republicans – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -, in addition to Nevada, as reported by the US television network CNN.
During the elections, the 435 seats in the House of Representatives will be in dispute, as well as 35 in the Senate. In addition, there are votes affecting state legislative bodies, governorships and local councils.
Biden himself defended on Sunday the measures implemented during his term at the head of the Administration during a rally to support the candidacy of the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, as part of the campaign for the midterm. Thus, he stressed that his predecessor, Donald Trump, «left in ruins» the economy, and stressed that he was the first president at the head of the Administration that has caused a higher unemployment rate since the time of Herbert Hoover.
In an attempt to mobilize the electorate, the White House tenant asked Americans to go to the polls, as democracy «is at risk». «The latest polls say 76 percent of Americans care about maintaining our democracy. And we know this is the time to defend it, to preserve it, to elect it,» he said.
