OPINION: U.S. midterms: polls, voters, emergencies

Last Updated on Tuesday, 3 November 2026, 5:23 by Written By Denis Chabrol

By GHK Lall

Election polls are like a hot stove.  Touch at own risk.  Risk getting burned.  It is Tuesday, Nov 3, 2026, and the long-awaited U.S. midterms have broken out of the starter’s gate.  Some polls predict the Republican Party hanging on with its Congressional advantages.  Others conduct their surveys and predict a clean sweep by the Democrats, and a sound thrashing for the Republicans.  It’s the case of warring polls, and wary voters.  Will they get to cast their ballot?  Will their vote count?  Will it matter, given some ah, contingencies that may be out of sight currently, but could emerge on call?

President Donald Trump doesn’t want to be responsible for his party going down in flames.  He should have thought of that before, made adjustments.  Conduct himself more like an American statesman, and less like Uganda’s Idi Amin.  But that is only half of the midterms’ story.  The Democrats are, at best, a sorry bunch.  They seem to lack a cohesive vision of the kind of America that should be.  Personally, socialism and the U.S. are as compatible as India and Pakistan.  Or Israel and Iran.  As an aside, those last-minute pre-midterm strikes on Iran are not in the best interests of Trump’s party.  The weakness is that it is too late for the Democrats to get an edge from that presidential misadventure.  They have been too busy trying to decide what is the Democratic Party, what is its vision, and does it have a soul?

The answer lies in how many nonwhite American voters come out and exercise the franchise.  Will it be a swarm or a splash here and there?  Another answer is tied up in how many moderate Republicans, educated white voters, are in favor of Trump’s kamikaze style, and many of his actions that have disfigured America’s standing in the world.  A key is how many white Americans prefer Trump’s kind of America.

The economy is a concern.  And prices, that most bread-and-butter of issues, are a stinger that doesn’t go away.  If deep down, white America is about ICE and its excesses, then the Republicans could make it over the finish line, and ahead of the Democrats.  I am not so sure about a Blue Wave and a Red Stall.  Looking back at history from almost 80 years ago to 1948, there was that big egg on the face foul-up, when Republican presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey was way ahead in the polls, and the predictions were of a landslide.  Newspaper headlines even carried that mistake.  Harry S. Truman prevailed.  Thus, I look on polls with the care for a snake in the grass.  Get too caught up in them, and a bite could be the reward.  I wouldn’t dismiss them outright, though, for they have their uses.

Recall the 2016 presidential elections, and Hillary Clinton and Don Trump.  The former won the popular vote, the latter took up residence in the White House.  The point must be made that presidential elections and midterms are not quite on the same footing.  Presidential contests are head-to-head affairs.  Midterm results are a reflection on how well the man in the White House did.  How he and his party delivered on the American Dream.  Not as defined by the ultraright, red meat, rock-ribbed, migrant hating, MAGA war party.  But as envisioned and lived with by more mainstream Americans.  I do not think that middle-of-the-road Americans are too keen on living with the Ku Klux Klan at their elbows, in their faces, on their TV screens, and dominating their treasured political processes.  The concern is how much extremism can be stomached.

On the character issue, President Trump’s weighs heavily on these midterms.  Relative to character, let me frank and assert that Don Trump is made in the mold of Guyana’s PPP presidents, only not as far gone.  Last, the burning issue, the incendiary question, is how will Mr. Trump and the Republican Party react to falling short, and by a big bucket.  Time for my own midterm poll results: status quo.  Yes, I know: doesn’t say much.  Okay, try this for suitability.  Even if the Democrats win, they lose.  Have a nice day.