Your US Midterm Election Guide (A Global News Podcast collab)

Anthony Zurcher (0:00)

We have a request from Richard. Please, he says, can you do an episode explaining some of the basics of the midterms? I want to be prepared before election day. So, that's what we're doing today. And we're gonna take a step back, and we've gotten together with the BBC Global News Podcast. Welcome to a special edition of Americast.

Celia Hatton (0:23)

Americast from BBC News.

SPEAKER_3 (0:25)

Whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife's name the hell out of your mouth because she's way out of your league.

SPEAKER_4 (0:31)

The tide is coming. And this time, we intend to win it all.

SPEAKER_5 (0:37)

See, he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.

SPEAKER_6 (0:49)

When I'm not around, you're gonna be broke.

SPEAKER_7 (0:51)

There's not gonna be anybody to report on.

SPEAKER_3 (0:54)

Nobody gives a damn about anybody else.

Anthony Zurcher (1:01)

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

Sumi Somaskanda (1:04)

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

Celia Hatton (1:08)

I'm joining you from London.

Anthony Zurcher (1:10)

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

Celia Hatton (1:15)

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

Anthony Zurcher (1:26)

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 (1:33)

Amazing, 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.

But actually, before we get to those questions, what are midterms and why are they so important? Anthony, should we go to you first?

Anthony Zurcher (1:52)

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 every two years, 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. So 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 every two years. So we've got about 33, 34, I think this time, because there's a special election. 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 Pennsylvania and Georgia and Arizona. These are governor's races in battleground states for the presidential election in two years.

They're gonna be the people in charge of those states who are gonna be overseeing the elections and we're talking about who's gonna be president next.

Sumi Somaskanda (3:16)

I think we just introduced another term, battleground states.

Anthony Zurcher (3:19)

Okay, we'll get to that.

Sumi Somaskanda (3:19)

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. 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 (3:38)

Yeah. And Sumi, 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. There'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, and maybe even try to impeach Trump or some of his senior advisors. So this is a particularly high stakes midterm elections that could curtail Donald Trump's powers from starting in January on when the new Congress is sworn in.