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Donald Trump will not be on the ballot when the Americans go to the polls on November 6, but the elections will shape the rest of his presidency.
Voters will choose 35 senators, 36 state governors and 435 members of the House of Representatives, as well as dozens of local lawmakers.
Elections matter because if Democrats take control of the House or Senate of Republicans, they could severely limit what President Trump can do in the last two years of his term.
In the House, analysts predict that dozens of seats could change hands and that the majority of them are currently held by Republicans.
Republicans are well placed in the battle for the Senate, as only nine of their seats are to be elected, while Democrats defend 24 of their seats and two independents who vote with them are also in place.
It's essentially a referendum on Trump
The mid-term elections tend to serve as a referendum on the president and that's usually bad news for the party that controls the White House.
Of the 21 mid-term meetings held since 1934, the presidential party has only made progress in the House three times and in the Senate five times.
The president's approval rating is a good indicator of his party's performance and President Trump is historically low, hovering around 40%.
In comparison, President Obama was 45% ahead of the mid-point of 2010, during which Democrats recorded some of the biggest electoral losses in US history.
Generic polls, on which party voters say they will return, do not offer much comfort to Republicans either. It currently shows Democrats at around 10 percentage points, the party's biggest advance since the beginning of the year.
Can we say now if the Democrats will win?
A record number of Republicans have retired
The average age of Congress is 60, so retiring members should not be a big surprise. But the number of Republicans who give up rather than challenge the intermediate conditions has raised eyebrows.
More than 30 Republicans have announced their retirement – many others have resigned, some because of sexual harassment charges, while others leave to look for others elective positions.
Many of those who quit cited the very partisan climate and Donald Trump as a reason, and one of them told CNN: "I think I only answer questions about Donald Trump rather than health or tax policy.
This is good news for Democrats because studies have shown that incumbents are more likely to win an election than their competitors, in part because of a greater capacity for name recognition and fundraising .
A record number of women are standing
The Democrats have seen a sharp increase in recruitment thanks to Donald Trump and this year will be the first time that they will run out more candidates in the House than Republicans since 2008.
About 1,500 people held the House of Democrats primary in the House – 500 more than in the last half-term – and there was a record 350 women in the House.
The sharp increase in the number of female candidates has led some experts to predict that 2018 could become another "Year of the Woman" – a reference to the intermediate terms of 1992 in which the number of women in Congress has doubled.
At present, women represent only 20% of Congress and this under-representation has long been considered a reluctance of women to run for office. But Hillary Clinton's surprise surprise at Donald Trump, a man accused of sexual harassment and who has long made sexist remarks, seems to have been a moment of galvanizing for American women.
Women queue to overthrow Trump
Democrats must change the typical participation
The mid-term elections do not have the excitement that brings a presidential competition, which means that the turnout is lower. While about 60% of Americans vote for the president, only 40% of them participate in mid-term elections.
In 2014, it was only 35.9%, the lowest participation rate since the Second World War, according to the United States Elections Project.
The low turnout has tended to favor the Republican party mid-term, as those who vote are older and whiter than in the presidential elections.
Democrats are hopeful that Mr. Trump's unpopular attitude toward the youngest, most voters, and minorities will encourage them to become more aware of the situation in the medium term this time around.
In March, 1 million people voted in the Democratic primary in Texas – nearly double what it was four years ago – but that figure is still lower than the 1.5 million Republicans who voted. Although this means that Texas could be out of reach of Democrats, similar involvement in other states could help make them blue.
The losses will cause problems for Trump – and the indictment?
The greatest legislative victory of President Trump so far has been his in-depth review of the US tax system, but he could only sign it because Republicans are in the majority in both houses of Congress.
If the Democrats take control of either of these two houses in November, they will be able to limit President Trump's efforts in the last two years of his term.
Democrats could take control of important Congressional committees, which would allow them to launch surveillance investigations on several issues, including the president's cases and allegations of sexual assault against him.
Although calls for Mr. Trump's removal from office are getting stronger if Democrats take control of the House, it could ultimately be fruitless unless Republican senators reject the president by a two-thirds majority.
Only two presidents were indicted – Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton – and both were acquitted at the end of a trial in the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned before he could be charged after the Watergate scandal.
The Democrats may have a better chance of eliminating President Trump by beating him in the next presidential election in 2020.
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