No clear edge for Democrats as midterm elections take shape in the US

WEST CHESTER, Pennsylvania – The buzz inside the larger-than-typical Starbucks where we met for coffee is loud, voices bouncing off the walls and the high roof. It could have been in a foodcourt in any corner of Singapore.

About 40km from Philadelphia and a three-hour drive from Washington, the leafy West Chester county has a beguiling small-town charm and a strong finance industry.

There is something almost Singaporean about the man running for Congress from a slightly Democratic-leaning district in this battleground state.

A well-groomed and unruffled father of four who served in the military before he became a corporate turnaround specialist, Marty Young is a fourth-generation Pennsylvanian of Asian heritage.

One of his great-grandfathers arrived from southern China in the early 20th century and helped establish Philadelphia’s Chinatown.

Another ancestor was in Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen’s Cabinet.

But it is not just his Chinese diasporic connection or his pragmatism that brings Singapore to my mind. It is his conviction that house ownership is the tool America needs to build family wealth and social stability and mend a gaping hole in the nation’s finances. Young has never visited, but said he admires Singapore’s economic management.

The mix of affluent suburban, working-class and rural voters in this congressional district has cast its lot with the Democratic Party’s Chrissy Houlahan since 2018. But the congenial Republican candidate holds that they are “my type of voters – persuadable”.

Young is one of hundreds of hopefuls – tens of thousands, if all the state and local races are counted – gearing up for the Nov 3 midterm elections. At stake are all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 35 in the Senate and 36 state governorships.

The 2026 election is bringing out an unusually sharp, bitter edge in American politics. Sure, the loud, polarising, even disruptive President Donald Trump, steadily leaching popularity, is not on the ballot. But he is the central axis around which the contest spins. The Democrats cannot wait to grab control of Congress and hold him to account.

It is also open season for leadership challenges in both parties.

The Republican Party office in Chester County, which is part of Pennsylvania’s 6th congressional district. ST PHOTO: BHAGYASHREE GAREKAR

There is little doubt Trump owns the Republican Party; some polls show that over 60 per cent of rank-and-file Republicans now identify as members of his MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. Yet his time on the stage is fast coming to an end.

Daily tugs of war between Republicans amply testify to the deepening fault lines within the party and administration. The inconclusive war on Iran and the President’s spending decisions, like on a new White House ballroom, have caused unease.

Resentment often flares over how Trump expects deference from the party on implementing what amounts to his personal agenda. And the fact that the term-limited President has not anointed a successor – both Vice-President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are waiting in the wings – adds to the turbulence.

The Democrats are also a house divided. I was astonished, while covering the presidential campaign of 2024, at the range of progressive groups – with names like Swing Left – which leapt to endorse then Vice-President Kamala Harris when she became the party candidate. That was just the glimpse of what has now turned into a storm that has buffeted the party in full force.

The party’s top brass – its Senate leader Chuck Schumer and House leader Hakeem Jeffries – is subject to painful headbutts by an odd mix of the ageing progressive Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and the much younger acolytes who call themselves democratic socialists, such as New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

The socialists call for defunding the Pentagon, the police and the prisons, open borders, and a unicameral Congress to choose the president. The economy is to be run by the government through public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries.

Despite the radical agenda, these “kingmakers” have unseated incumbents and establishment favourites in the party nomination contests in Washington, New York City and Denver.

A significant test loomed on Aug 4 in Michigan. The Democratic front runner in the primary election, Abdul El-Sayed, is a left-winger endorsed by Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez. Facing him is four-term Representative Haley Stevens, supported by Schumer and pro-Israel groups, among others.

If El-Sayed wins on the morning of Aug 5, Singapore time, it could be inferred that socialism has found resonance in America’s industrial heartland, and not just the liberal coasts and cities.

Such an outcome would not necessarily be welcomed by the Democrats in the swing state of Pennsylvania.  The state’s Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro has talked about the “profound differences” he has with democratic socialist candidates and called the left wing of his party skilled at “performative politics” that does not deliver results.

‘Focused on life after Donald Trump’

At the other end, the Republicans have begun distancing themselves from Trump.

Young in West Chester, looking for a seat in the US House of Representatives with a win in Pennsylvania’s 6th congressional district, brushed off the idea that Trump was a drag on his candidacy.

“I’m very focused on life after Donald Trump. He won’t be president in 2½ years. You can only say ‘Make America Great Again’ for so long,” he said.

Instead, he wants to make Congress great again.

Martin Young, the Republican Party nominee for Pennsylvania’s 6th congressional district, meeting supporters at the Republican Party office on July 30. ST PHOTO: BHAGYASHREE GAREKAR

The legislature, he said, needs to reclaim its exclusive constitutional powers to authorise wars and raise revenue through taxes and tariffs.

“The Congress has abdicated so much power,” Young said. “It’s the reason we’re in these endless wars. People are upset about tariffs. Again, it’s because Congress abdicated. Because of this incredible abdication, the average congressman has become inconsequential. They pretend that this is not their problem and it puts the incumbents in this comfortable situation where they can just blame whoever is in the president’s office. My platform is very much about taking those powers back.”

His other key plank is to address housing affordability in a country where the median age of a first-time home buyer is around 40 and mortgage loans can carry interest of over 6 per cent.

His opponent, the four-term congresswoman Houlahan, brought the party’s star campaigner Ocasio-Cortez on an “affordability tour” of the county. Her office did not reply to questions from The Straits Times about her campaign.

The office of the Democratic Party, which supports the campaign of Representative Chrissy Houlahan, who is seeking re-election from Pennsylvania’s 6th Congressional District. ST PHOTO: BHAGYASHREE GAREKAR

Young dismissed Houlahan’s act as a gimmick. His solution is to boost home ownership by creating a zero-interest, 15-year mortgage for starter homes priced at or below the local median price.

“After two years, the average home buyer is going to have 25 per cent to 30 per cent of equity in their home – they are not going to be walking away from that,” he said, rebutting the idea that zero interest rates could create bad loans.

The difference between a Republican and Democrat is that the former is more likely to own his or her home while a Democrat is more likely to rent, he noted. “We need to just close that gap. When people own their homes, their interests synchronise. Even though they might have different views, nobody wants to mess up the community,” he said.

“Maybe it’s my Chinese roots; I play the long game,” he said, identifying the country’s growing debt pile and falling birth rates as issues that will begin to sap economic growth as soon as five years from now.

“You can’t fix everything, but if you fix like three things, you would fix a lot of things,” said Young.

‘Don’t say you’re a socialist’

After the electoral disaster in 2024 for the Democrats, when they lost the White House as well as both Houses of Congress, the coming midterm contest could mark a turning point.

The party that does not hold the White House has made gains in the House in all but three midterms since 1900.

But the election is not quite in the bag for the Democrats. The 35 Senate seats up in 2026 are mostly in Southern, Midwestern and Rocky Mountain states where the party is weak. It is unlikely they can win the four seats they need to take control of the Senate.

To win a majority in the 435-seat House, the Democrats will need to win more than a dozen toss-up seats, which is not beyond reach.

What trips them up, however, is the dismal public opinion of the Democratic Party. According to the latest RealClearPolling average, it has a lower favourable rating (38.1 per cent) than the Republican Party (39.3 per cent) or even Trump (40.6 per cent).

Still, it could be a good year for congressional Democrats, said Joseph Morris, the chair of the political science department at Mercyhurst University in Pennsylvania.

“The Republican President is very unpopular, Democratic enthusiasm appears to be very high, voters are concerned about affordability, and the nation is engaged in an unpopular war that Trump initiated without so much as consulting Congress,” he said. “When combined with the fact that the president’s party almost always loses seats in midterm elections, even Republicans acknowledge things are looking good for Democrats.”

“The challenge for Democrats is that their party remains unpopular across the nation. This is particularly true among rural voters with less than average levels of education. People who put on their boots, grab their tools, and head to work every morning hear Democrats talking about issues that don’t resonate,” Morris said.

“The party’s messengers don’t look or talk like the hard-working, blue-collar voters they want to represent. Add to this the fact the Democratic Party is increasingly embracing the term ‘democratic socialism’ – a term that is inherently unpopular with wide swathes of Americans – and the party is facing significant headwinds that may make 2026 more challenging than it should be.”

Pennsylvania, he said, was a good example. Historically a blue state, it became a swing state due to the popularity of Trump’s brand of populism.

What might do the trick for the Democrats would be to take a leaf from post-World War II president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (FDR) New Deal – not being radical, but comfortable with using government power to raise wages, expand benefits and regulate big business.

“An FDR-style Democrat that understands Americans who work for a living and serves their interests is a way of being a democratic socialist without saying, ‘I’m a democratic socialist’, and the perfect type of candidate for Democrats to win back the voters that have found Trump’s populism so appealing,” Morris added.