MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US: Republicans far from landslide victory they had hoped for

It remains to be seen whether Trump will still announce his candidacy.

The Republican recovery many had heralded ahead of this year's mid-term elections in the United States is still to materialize, as vote counting kept going on Wednesday.

At any rate, it will not be as strong as it had been forecasted by former President Donald Trump (2017-2021), who dreamed of a landslide victory by his candidate friends. Tuesday's results were expected to catapult his running for the White House again in 2024. The Republicans still have a good chance of retaking the majority in the House of Representatives, while control of the Senate remains highly uncertain.

While Trumpist candidates underperformed, other Republicans not aligned with the former head of state scored easy wins, such as Ron DeSantis in Florida and Brian Kemp in Georgia.

Trump criticized Kemp's role in the 2020 election certification in favor of Joseph Biden and tried to unseat him by endorsing another candidate in the primary. Trump's era seems to be fading away after surgeon Mehmet Oz, did not win the key senatorial seat at stake in Pennsylvania, where ultra-conservative, anti-abortion candidate Doug Mastriano, who was during the Capitol takeover, was defeated in his gubernatorial bid.

J.D. Vance was elected senator in Ohio, making him one of the few Trumpists to score a victory. The former president was reported to be “furious” over these results and “yelling at everyone.” He was also silent on social media.

It remains to be seen whether Trump will still announce his candidacy.

Overall, President Biden's Democratic Party seems to be resisting the conservative onslaught. “We intend to run again,” Biden said. “That has been our intention, regardless of the outcome of this election, but we will assess that early next year,” he added while celebrating John Fetterman's senate win in Pennsylvania to claim a seat currently in the hands of the Republicans.

The final Senate line-up will be decided with the seats from Nevada, Arizona, and also in Georgia, where there will be a runoff election in December after neither candidate for the governorship reached 50% of the votes.

Wisconsin was one of the states that delayed its definition, but it has already been decided that the Republican Ron Johnson defeated the Democrat Mandela Barnes, who sought to become the first local black senator.

The Republicans seemed to be on track to win the necessary victories to gain the majority in the House of Representatives, but with a smaller distance than they had hoped for. The conservative opposition party had 204 seats in the lower house, against 187 for the Democrats, but was still far from a majority of 218, according to U.S. media projections.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 in the Senate were up for grabs in Tuesday's elections.