Special Episode: Decoding US midterms jargon

Celia Hatton (0:00)

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Celia Hatton, and today we're teaming up with our colleagues at Americast for a special joint episode. The US midterms aren't far away, and that means a lot of political jargon is getting tossed around. Words like purple state, super PAC and gerrymandering. We've asked you, our audience, to submit questions about some of the terms that have you confused.

Gina (0:26)

Filibuster.

SPEAKER_3 (0:27)

Stump speech.

Brandi (0:29)

Super PAC, A PAC.

SPEAKER_5 (0:31)

Inside a belt's way.

Celia Hatton (0:33)

Now, to help me decode the jargon, I'm joined by Anthony Zurcher and Sumi Somaskanda from the BBC's US News and Politics Podcast, Americast. They're going to answer all your questions, and at the end, we're even going to do a quick fire round, so wait for that. Also on hand is our word expert, the etymologist Martha Barnett.

Martha Barnett (0:51)

Hi, I'm Martha Barnett, and I co-host Away with Words, which is a radio show and podcast. It's all about the evolution of language through culture and history, and I'm also the author of Friends with Words, Adventures in Language Land.

Anthony Zurcher (1:08)

Hello, it's Anthony in the BBC Bureau in Washington, DC.

Sumi Somaskanda (1:12)

It's Sumi sitting along with Anthony in Washington, and I'm Celia Hatton.

Celia Hatton (1:15)

I'm joining you from London.

Anthony Zurcher (1:17)

Are you in the Americast Studios, Celia, the worldwide, so-called worldwide headquarters?

Celia Hatton (1:22)

I'm really enjoying this chair. I must say, it's very comfortable here. Nice coffee table, nice, nice fake books behind me. So I'm enjoying it here. Yeah.

Anthony Zurcher (1:33)

So you have listeners around the world, I hear, and they have presented questions to us about the midterm elections and what it all means.

Celia Hatton (1:40)

Yeah, we got questions from Japan, from Sweden, from India and beyond. So we were really impressed at how our audience responded to our call for questions. So maybe we should get going. I've got a lot of questions for you and Sumi, Anthony. But actually, before we get to those questions, I want to tackle the most important election word of all that's coming up now, and that's midterm. So can you take us through what are midterms and why are they so important? Why should our global audience be paying attention to them? Maybe Anthony, should we go to you first?

Anthony Zurcher (2:15)

Yeah, I know. I mean, midterms are what we talk about all the time. It seems like every other word here right now is midterms. But what it means technically is the elections in the middle of a presidential term. While presidential elections here in the United States happen every four years, congressional elections happen every two years. So sometimes they coincide with the presidential election, but sometimes they're right in the middle of that presidential term. And that's what we're dealing with here, midterm elections. And the people who are running are every single seat in the House of Representatives, 435 seats up every two years. Every candidate in the House is out there running for re-election, or if it's an open seat, they're trying to fill someone who is no longer there. Now, in the Senate, it's 100 seats there, a third of the Senate is up. So we've got about 34 senators running for election. And then you have a series of governor's mansions and a lot of legislative races in states all over the country. And some of those governor's races are key because they're in places like Wisconsin and Michigan and Georgia and Arizona. These are governor's races in battleground states for the presidential election in two years. They're going to be the people in charge of those states who are going to be overseeing the elections when we're talking about who's going to be president next.

Sumi Somaskanda (3:28)

I think we just introduced another term, battleground states.

Anthony Zurcher (3:31)

Okay, we'll get to that.

Sumi Somaskanda (3:32)

We'll get to that. But yeah, exactly.

It's the middle of the term. And I am guilty as anyone of banding about the word midterms. In this Washington office, as Anthony said, you're hearing it every other word. But it is a referendum on the president. And I think that's important for all of our listeners around the world to know is this is a way for voters to make clear how they feel about the president and the party in the White House.

Anthony Zurcher (3:54)

These midterms are particularly important because it really will determine which party controls Congress for the last two years of Donald Trump's presidency. Right now, the Republicans have both chambers, the Senate and the House. In some midterm elections, you think one party is going to hold on to it. It's not really up in the air, but this time around, it is balanced on a knife's edge. Democrats are certainly hoping to take back the House of Representatives. They seem to have an improving chance of taking back the Senate. And if they win even one of those two chambers, let alone both, they are going to be able to grind Donald Trump's legislative agenda to a halt and also step up their oversight issues of penis, hold hearings, or maybe even try to impeach Trump or some of his senior advisors.