Republicans’ Chances of Winning House and Senate, According to Bookmakers

Bookies are offering odds on the outcome of November’s crunch midterm elections, just two weeks before voters go to the polls.

Control of both the Senate and House of Representatives is up for grabs, with the Republicans hoping they can torpedo Joe Biden‘s legislative agenda by winning both.

According to Betfair, a U.K.-based gambling firm, the Republicans are strong favorites to take control of both chambers of Congress.

The Senate is divided 50-50 between Democratic-aligned and Republican senators, with the Democrats able to scrape a majority using the vice president’s tie-breaking vote.

In the House, the Democrats have 220 representatives—eight more than the GOP with 212.

Betfair forecasts this to change, though, after the November 8 election, with the company offering odds of 1/20 on the Republican Party securing both the Senate and House. By contrast, the odds offered by the company for the Democrats winning both chambers are 66/1.

Betfair spokesperson Katie Baylis told Newsweek: “Whilst the Democrats are both in control of the House and Senate now, we foresee a change occurring as midterm polls tighten and a red wave is noticeably taking over. The Republicans lead in polls on those issues that are currently most important to voters such as economy, health and inflation and are big odds-on favs at 1/20 to win the Senate and House.”

Nathaniel Rakich and Geoffrey Skelley, election analysts at FiveThirtyEight noted: “One of the most ironclad rules in American politics is that the president’s party loses ground in midterm elections.”

The analysts added: “Almost no president is immune. President George W. Bush‘s Republicans took a ‘thumping’ in 2006. President Barack Obama‘s Democrats received a ‘shellacking’ in 2010. President Donald Trump‘s Republicans were buried under a blue wave in 2018.”

According to the latest poll of polls, produced by RealClearPolitics, the Republicans currently have a three-point lead when voters are asked who should control Congress, with the GOP at 47.8 percent versus 44.8 percent for the Democrats.

The Democrats did gain ground after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June but have since fallen back as higher fuel prices and the cost-of-living crisis continue to bite.

Last week, The New York Times released a poll that found 49 percent of voters plan to vote for a GOP candidate to represent them in Congress, versus 45 percent for the Democrats. This represents a significant shift from the paper’s last poll, published in September, which gave the Republicans a lead of just 1 percent.

A Monmouth University poll conducted between October 13 and 17 found that 63 percent of voters think President Biden should pay more attention to nine key issues, including inflation, crime and immigration.

Senator Marco Rubio said on Monday there could be an investigation into the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020 if the GOP seize Congress.

Appearing on Fox News, the Florida Republican said: “There’s been no accountability about the summer of 2020. Who was behind it? How much did the political rhetoric lend itself to it? For example, these efforts to bail people out of jail in 2020, how many people did that encourage to come back out and do that all over again?”