US midterms could hand Congress to Democrats, but removing Trump remains a long shot

Americans go to the polls on 3 November in midterm elections that will decide control of both chambers of the US Congress, and with it how much room President Donald Trump has to govern in the final two years of his term.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are being contested, along with 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate. Republicans currently hold narrow majorities in both chambers, including 53 seats in the Senate.

Democrats have said openly that winning Congress would let them move against the president. Republicans have made Trump the centrepiece of their own campaign, telling voters that his presidency is what is on the ballot.

The US constitution gives Congress the power to remove a president, but it sets out two separate steps that are often confused with each other. Impeachment is the first. It amounts to bringing formal charges and needs only a simple majority in the House. A president who is impeached stays in office.

Removal is the second step, and a far higher bar. It requires a two-thirds majority of senators voting at a Senate trial, which comes to 67 votes if all 100 senators take part.

The arithmetic makes that outcome remote. Democrats hold 47 Senate seats, 13 of which are being defended this year. Even if they won every one of the 35 races on the ballot, they would finish with 69 seats, meaning they would have to take 33 of the 35 contests to reach the threshold on their own. Anything short of that would require Republican senators to vote against a president from their own party.

The historical record points the same way. Three presidents have been impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Trump in 2019 and again in 2021. The Senate acquitted each of them, and no US president has ever been removed from office by this route. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 before the House could vote on articles of impeachment against him.

Trump is the only president to have been impeached twice, and a third would set a further record.

The president appears conscious of the political calendar. On 8 October he said the United States would not resume military strikes on Iran before the midterms, adding that talks with Tehran had been productive. US officials have said a third aircraft carrier and thousands of additional troops could reach the region by the end of this month.