What is the difference between presidential and midterm elections

Congressional elections use the popular vote to choose winners. They don't use the Electoral College, which is used in presidential elections. Members of the U. House of Representatives serve two-year terms. All members get elected every midterm and presidential election year.

A representative must be at least 25, a U. The number of representatives a state has depends on its population. Each representative serves a specific congressional district. Find your representative. Senators serve six-year terms. One-third of senators get elected during each midterm and each presidential election year.

Not only could they stop his plans, but if President Trump is hit by another scandal, a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives could vote to have him impeached. They can affect campaigns for the next presidential election. Alongside the fight for seats in Congress, 36 out of 50 state governors were also up for election - Democrats have gained several governorships. Next year, campaigning will begin for the next presidential election and governors can be very important in supporting their party's candidates, by arranging donors and setting up volunteers.

The new governors could have an effect on presidential campaigning over the next couple of years. One of the big stories of the mid-terms was the first openly gay governor Jared Polis from Colorado. They can affect people outside of the US. Mid-terms are also important for people outside of the US, like us here in the UK.

That's because decisions made by the US government can affect people all around the world - for example, decisions about whether or not to go to war, or how to protect the environment. Once all the politicians have taken up their seats in January everyone will start thinking about the next US presidential election, which will take place on 3 November As Donald Trump has only been in office once, he is allowed to stand for President again. The person who will run for the Democrat party against the Republican candidate will be chosen by a series of primary elections, which start in January Who were the US presidential candidates in ?

How Donald Trump won the US election. US election How do you become US president? And if men and women are voting in mirror opposite ways, like we saw in , it probably means a very close election. One other thing: Women make up a slightly larger share of the population, and they also make up a larger share of the electorate.

It has not always been the case that older voters are more Republican and younger voters are more Democratic. As recently as the election, exit polls did not find much difference among age groups in the close Al Gore vs. George W. Bush contest. Many voters age 60 or older in grew up in the time of the Great Depression and more often than not developed an affinity for Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats, a party ID that endured in many cases.

In the mids, the Pew Research Center found that younger voters were likelier to lean Republican, and older voters were likelier to lean Democratic. However, in more recent elections, that dynamic has flipped, and generally speaking, the older a person is, the likelier they are to vote Republican and the younger they are, the likelier they are to vote Democratic. One big difference between midterm and presidential electorates is that the midterm electorate skews older.

Also note that there is a lot of variation in voting by age group even within the last dozen years. In , voters 30 or older all voted somewhat similarly while the youngest voters were more clearly Democratic. While midterm electorates are not as diverse as presidential ones, nonwhites vote substantially more Democratic than white voters in both kinds of elections.

Chart 6 shows the difference. Notice the midterm difference between , when Democrats lost by just four among whites, to and , when Democrats lost by more than 20 points in each. While the midterm electorate should be the most diverse ever because of broader demographic changes, roughly three-quarters of the voters next year likely will be white. If Democrats are going to make big gains, they almost certainly will have to lose white voters by less than 20 points — in other words, a narrower gap than they achieved with whites in any of the last four national elections, according to exit polls.

Note: For , overall nonwhite vote estimated based on size and vote of Black, Latino, Asian, and Other race exit poll categories. Midterm electorates are older, whiter, and more educated than presidential electorates. The first two characteristics make midterm electorates, on paper, better for Republicans. The voting patterns of midterm voters are similar to presidential voters, though: Democrats do better with women as well as younger and more diverse voters, while Republicans do better with men, older voters, and whites overall.

Who shows up is vital.