Another view of the recently completed U.S. elections

HAVANA – Considered a kind of referendum on President Donald Trump, the recently completed midterm elections in the United States attracted the attention of the entire world.

Many of the races were too close to call initially. There were also irregularities and voting machine malfunctions in some places. And there is still one Senate seat yet to be decided in Mississippi. However, we can affirm that the Democrats managed to gain control of the House of Representatives, as well as to obtain significant victories in the fight for a number of governorships, while the Republicans maintained their majority in the Senate. 

With his particular vision of reality, Donald Trump called it a Republican victory. The results, though, show that the Democrats advanced their positions considerably. The fact is that the president will find it more difficult to govern in the next two years and as a result steer his reelection campaign in 2020.

The main lesson of this election is the tremendous polarization that exists in the United States. A polarization that is not only expressed in its political structure, with dysfunctional effects in the articulation of a bipartisan consensus for the functioning of institutions, but throughout the country’s social architecture, with manifestations in its economic, geographical, age, gender and cultural components that no election can ever resolve.

So let us distance ourselves from speculation for the future of this administration or even the balance of power, and instead delve into and interpret what happened on November 6, and by  doing so clarify some trends that may mark the future of American political life.

What immediately comes to the fore is the increase in voter participation during what was supposed to be a time of less voting, which are the midterms. Reasons given include Trump’s personality, so true when you consider the president’s divisive rhetoric and behavior.

If we were to stop there and base the results solely on the president, it is worth mentioning that although not a catastrophe, Trump lost the popular vote by 7% and 62% of those who voted for the first time did so for the Democrats.

But the rejection or veneration of Donald Trump are not alien to the agenda they represent. Topics such as public health, social security, immigration, care for the environment, arms control, racism and xenophobia were at the center of the debates and helped sway the vote of the people.

The elections were less superficial than they appeared and the awareness of the country’s problems benefitted the Democrats, since the Republican base is mobilized by a very primitive message, which seems to be reaching its limits.

The elections did not solve the problem of the credibility and breadth of the electoral system. What is considered a successful turnout is about 50 percent of the voters. In other words, half the population does not feel represented by either party, and are apathetic to politics, or there are procedural and cultural limitations that limit their participation.

However, one aspect that stands out is the rise of women to elected political positions. Many became protagonists in some of the most contested and interesting races in the country. It is a movement that has been growing exponentially since the 1990s and that not only reflects an aspiration of gender, but also an ideological inclination. For the first time more than one hundred women are members of the House of Representatives, but while 105 Democrats were elected to these positions, only 19 Republicans were successful, which is a decrease of four seats in relation to the last elections.

Expressed in the election of these women is a greater ethnic diversity and some manifest some of the most progressive positions in the American political debate.

According to preliminary calculations, 59% of women favored the Democratic candidates while only 40% favored Republicans. It is also not a fact that can be analyzed in absolute terms — among white women there was almost a tie, but there exists a substantial difference between college grads of this race, where 59% voted in favor of Democrats. 

The case of young voters must be highlighted. According to exit polls, 67% of those under 30 chose the Democrats and 58% of those between 31 and 45 did the same. The Republicans only obtained a slight advantage among older voters (50% to 49%), where those over 65 were decisive.

Everything points to the fact that an increase in electoral participation favors the Democrats. The question remains, though, whether Democrats, wrapped in their own contradictions, can mobilize their potential voters.

What has happened is that the conservative vote has been concentrated around the Republican Party and, in particular, support of Donald Trump and his policies. And although this guarantees them a hard-core base of voters, which can be decisive in certain regions and especially if participation is low, it also limits access to other sectors that are traditionally located at the center of the political spectrum.

At the same time, the most progressive tendencies within the Democratic Party have spread. It is not a new phenomenon, but the emergence of a left that has strengthened within the party, as diffuse as it may still be, poses a different dynamic to its functioning.

Looking back to 2016, the big surprise was the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders, which revolutionized the structural bases of the Democratic Party and, to a large extent, has also manifested itself in 2018 through the triumph of many of its candidates in the primary and even general elections, which poses another trend in view of the 2020 elections.

The estimate is that about 50% of the Democratic representatives elected in the recently completed elections hold beliefs espoused by Sanders and are promoting very radical positions on issues such as the environment, health care, immigration and social assistance, which foretells bitter battles in the Congress.

Although it is a movement that has demonstrated a greater capacity to mobilize the young vote and an important part of the female vote, it also poses a certain distancing from the Democrats within the more conservative sectors of the party. Perhaps the biggest problem posed when confronting the Republican extreme right will be to stand united. It is a question whose answer will only come with the evolution of politics in the U.S. 

A final reading of these elections indicates that, beyond positions won or lost, Democrats were victorious. Not so much for the representativeness of the party, subject to manipulation by the special interests, but for the forward thrust of a popular agenda on whose outcome depends the political future of the United States.