US midterms, the vote that cannot remove a president but can limit what he does, explained

Held midway through a US president’s term, Tuesday’s election cannot bring down a government. What it can change for Congress and for citizens

Americans vote on Tuesday in midterm elections that will decide which party controls the US Congress for the last two years of President Donald Trump’s second term, and with it how much of his agenda he can still push through.

US President Donald Trump adjusts his cap as he speaks during a midterm campaign rally at Salina Regional Airport in Salina, Kansas, on Sunday. (Reuters)

The vote, analysts say, is also a test of Trump’s popularity during the US war with Iran, which has driven up fuel prices and sparked a global crisis.

HT explains why the midterms are held, what they change for ordinary Americans and how they differ from India’s parliamentary elections.

What are midterm elections?

The midterms are held every four years, halfway through a president’s term, in every state and territory on the same day. The presidency is not on the ballot, but both chambers of Congress are, along with state offices such as governors, state legislators and, in some states, judges.

Congress, the legislative branch of the US government, is a bicameral, or two-chamber, legislature. The lower house, the House of Representatives, has 435 members; the upper house, the Senate, has 100.

Under the US Constitution, members of the House, known as representatives, are elected every two years, and senators every six. Senators are divided into three groups, and about a third of the Senate comes up for election every two years.

Since the 17th Amendment of 1913, voters have elected senators directly. If a Senate seat falls vacant, the amendment provides that “the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct”.

Republicans control both chambers currently. They hold 53 Senate seats to the Democrats’ 47, including two independents who generally vote with the Democrats. In the House, Republicans hold 218 seats and Democrats 214, with one independent and two seats vacant.

Why are midterm elections important?

Congress acts as a check on the executive branch, which the president leads. A change in its make-up can change how an administration works.

A president whose party loses one or both chambers can find it harder to pass laws and budgets, get nominees confirmed by the Senate or fend off congressional investigations. For this reason, the midterms are widely seen as a referendum on the sitting president.

Unlike the Lok Sabha, which can be dissolved before its five-year term ends, the US Congress cannot be dissolved early, and federal law fixes the date of the election as “the Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November, in every even numbered year”.

The seats up for grabs

In the regular cycle, 33 of the 100 Senate seats are up for election this year. Voters will fill 35, as Florida and Ohio are also holding special elections.

Marco Rubio, a Republican, was re-elected to the Senate from Florida in 2022 and gave up the seat in January 2025 to become US secretary of state. Florida governor Ron DeSantis appointed Ashley Moody, a Republican who was then the state’s attorney general, to hold the seat until the special election.

Ohio’s special election follows JD Vance’s move from the Senate to the vice-presidency in January 2025. Vance, a Republican, won the seat in 2022. Ohio governor Mike DeWine appointed Jon Husted, then the state’s lieutenant governor and also a Republican, in his place.

Voters will now decide whether Moody and Husted keep the seats. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are also up for election.

How is voting carried out?

Americans can vote in three ways, depending on what their state offers, according to the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the federal agency that issues guidance to election officials.

a) In person on election day: The most traditional method, available in every state. Voters go to their polling place, where they are handed a ballot to fill in.

b) Early in-person voting: Many states let voters cast their ballot in person before election day, at the local elections office in some states and at polling stations in others.

c) By mail: Also called absentee voting, and available depending on the state or territory. Voters receive a ballot and must return it by their state's deadline. Many states let voters request a mail ballot without giving a reason, according to the EAC, while others require one, such as illness, disability, military service or being away on election day.

When are the results declared?

Officials count as many ballots as they can on election night, but those results are unofficial, according to the EAC, even when they show 100% of precincts reporting.

Each state has its own rules on when mail ballots, provisional ballots (which the EAC describes as “ballots cast by voters whose eligibility cannot be determined at the time of voting”) and ballots from military and overseas voters can be counted. Some states require mail ballots to arrive by election day. Others count them if they are postmarked by election day and arrive by a certain date.

The full result is known once all the ballots are in. Officials then reconcile the totals, checking for any gap between the number of voters and the number of ballots cast. Most states also audit the count to make sure it is accurate before officials certify the results.

Do presidents usually lose?

Nate Silver, an election forecaster who founded the FiveThirtyEight website and now writes the Silver Bulletin newsletter, said American election history shows voters have punished the president’s party at the midterms for decades, and that the pattern can be a little stronger in a president's second term.

“If you look at the history of American elections, then the most regular trend in American elections — one of the few things that survives for decades — is that there is a backlash against the president’s party at the midterm. Maybe a little bit bigger if a president is in his second, kind of lame-duck term,” Silver said on The Ezra Klein Show, a New York Times podcast, on October 27.

Between 1934 and 2018, the president’s party gained House seats at a midterm only three times, according to the American Presidency Project, an archive of presidential records at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Two exceptions were in 1998 and 2002.

The 1998 midterms came in the year the scandal over then president Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern, broke, in the middle of his second term. Clinton’s Democrats still gained House seats, and the balance in the Senate was unchanged.

In 2002, the first midterms after the September 11, 2001 attacks, voters rallied behind then president George W Bush, and Republicans gained eight House seats and two Senate seats.

What changes for ordinary people

A setback for the president's party usually brings sharper political conflict over the next two years.

If the president's party loses control of one or both chambers, the president stays in office until the term ends but has less room to act. Passing laws and budgets can become a struggle, and the White House may have to look for common ground with the other party. That may be hard to find: after the 2010 midterms, in which the Democrats lost 63 House seats and with them their majority, then president Barack Obama found it difficult to move his legislative agenda through the Republican-led chamber.

A Congress controlled by the other party can also open investigations into the administration. The House can impeach a president and the Senate then holds a trial, where removal from office needs a two-thirds vote.

This deadlock can affect ordinary citizens directly. Disagreements over spending can lead to government shutdowns, in which many federal services are disrupted or halted and large numbers of federal employees are sent home on unpaid leave until funding resumes, and to delayed services. Laws on healthcare, taxes and immigration may stall, leaving promises made to voters unmet. With legislation stuck, presidents often turn to executive orders, directives the president issues without a vote in Congress, which the next administration can quickly reverse, and which give citizens less long-term certainty.

How India’s general elections differ

A Lok Sabha election decides who governs at the Centre. A US midterm cannot remove the president, and can only limit what the president is able to do for the rest of the term. An American president does not need a majority in Congress to stay in the White House for the full four years, even if a poor midterm result for the party narrows how much the administration can do.

In India, a government that loses its majority in the Lok Sabha can fall before its five-year term ends. On April 17, 1999, the government of then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee lost a confidence vote by a single vote, and the country went back to the polls later that year.

The Lok Sabha can also be dissolved early at the government’s request. On February 6, 2004, then president APJ Abdul Kalam dissolved the House about eight months before its term was due to end, after the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government chose to seek a fresh mandate following the BJP’s strong showing in the late-2003 assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.