The US goes to the polls on tomorrow after an election campaign characterised by racism, anger, fear and a hope for change. Foreign Editor David Pratt takes stock of what we can expect from this bitter battle for the soul of America

It’s already a midterm election like few others. Even the most cursory of glances at the campaign news and polls these past days make that clear.

Fear, anger, bitterness, hope are the hallmarks of what has essentially become a contest between two definitions of American nationhood. It is too in essence a dress rehearsal for what in two years time will be one of America’s most consequential White House races ever.

“We’re in a fight for the soul of America,” was how Democrat and former US Vice President Joe Biden summed it up earlier this week, and how right he is.

The United States is no stranger to dramatic midterm elections. Cast your mind back to that Republican landslide in 1994 that changed the course of Bill Clinton’s presidency or George W Bush’s “thumpin” in 2006 and Barack Obama’s midterm “shellacking” when the Tea Party came of age in 2010 and that much is obvious.

But all of that pales next to the political punch-up scheduled for this Tuesday when America goes to the polls. There is a palpable sense of intensity about these midterms, something very much reflected in the mood of the voters themselves.

In a poll conducted over the past two months by Reuters/Ipsos, anger was shown to be a significant determining factor in how ordinary Americans are likely to cast their vote on Tuesday. Among the 21,000 people canvassed, Republicans supporters were found to be angry about the potential for Congress to try to remove President Donald Trump through impeachment, undocumented immigrants coming into the country and the mainstream news media.

For Democrats meanwhile it was anger over the Trump administration’s now abandoned practice of separating undocumented immigrant families at the US-Mexican border, the potential for Russian interference in future American elections and the Republican president himself.

“It’s the most negative, blackest place to find yourself,” said Pattie Blair, a seventy- four-year-old Democratic voter in Phoenix, interviewed in the poll. Anger she says washes over her every time she sees Trump on television.

“It’s like being in a bucket you can’t get yourself out of - a hand keeps pushing you back in every time you try to surface,” Ms Blair told pollsters.

The poll’s conclusion points to the fact that angry Americans will be more likely to vote, and Democrats are generally more angry about their hot-button issues than Republicans.

The anger that keeps surfacing as the midterms bear down was very evident on Friday when the Republicans once again took aim at the issue of migrants, sparking fury with one of their campaign television adverts.

In the advert Mexican man Luis Bracamontes, an illegal immigrant twice previously deported, who in 2014 shot and killed two California police officers, and injured a third, is seen laughing in court and vowing to kill more officers.

Words across the screen read: “Democrats let him into our country. Democrats let him stay.” It then shows migrants pulling on what appears to be a border fence.

Mr Trump of course has never been subtle about the racial aspects of his appeal to fear.

“I don’t want them in our country. And women don’t want them in our country. Women want security. You look at what the women are looking for,” he said speaking about the threat from migrants.

Less than a week before the midterms this was familiar Trump, returning to the image he invoked on the day, three years ago, when he announced that he was running for President: rapists on their way from Mexico.

Needless to say the president wasted no time in sharing the latest Republican campaign video on Twitter to the anger of many Democrats and even some Republicans.

Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, called it the “dog-whistle of all dog-whistles”.

“This has been Donald Trump’s playbook for so long, and when they go low, we go vote,” he told CNN.

The advert many say recalls the notorious Willie Horton campaign ad financed by supporters of the George HW Bush campaign in the 1988 presidential election.

That advert has since come to be seen as one of the most racially problematic in modern US political history since it played into white fear and African-American stereotypes. It was regarded at the time as devastating to the presidential campaign of Democrat Michael Dukakis.

There are other ways too though that the past might be about to repeat itself. Looking back over US political history, presidents have gained seats during the midterms only three times in the last 100 years.

Moreover, a closer look at the number of seats the president’s party has lost over the last 25 elections reveals that 16 midterm elections - nearly two-thirds of them - were “wave” elections, where wave is defined as an election in which 20 or more seats change hands. In other words this is a recurring phenomenon in US politics.

Perhaps even the usually bombastic Mr Trump senses that history might not be on his side this Tuesday. In an uncharacteristic lack of confidence the president at a “Make America Great Again” political rally in Iowa on Friday admitted that the Republicans could lose control of the US House.

“It could happen. Could happen. And you know what you do? My whole life, you know what I say? 'Don’t worry about it, I'll just figure it out.' Does that make sense? I'll figure it out.” Mr Trump reassured his supporters.

He most certainly would have to ‘figure it out,’ for if the Democrats take a majority in even one of the chambers on Tuesday, then not only does it open up the chance for them to more effectively oppose the Trump agenda but also get serious about launching potential investigations into his administration.

Right now for the Democrats the signs of that happening bode well. According to the latest opinion polls with just two days until the ballot, indications are that the Democrats after two years of wielding no practical political power in Washington, are poised to take control of the House of Representatives, and the Republican Party will retain its narrow majority in the Senate and possibly even expand it.

Currently Republicans hold a 23-seat majority in the 435-seat House, far wider than their two-seat majority in the 100-seat Senate, but are more vulnerable in the lower chamber where they are defending 41 seats without an incumbent on the ballot, the most since 1930.

In the Senate, which gives more voice to the rural voters who make up an important part of the Republican base, Democrats are defending 10 seats in states that Trump won in 2016, some by huge margins. That favours Republicans.

There are 73 highly competitive House seats in contention, according to the Cook Political Report by The New York Times. Of those, 29 are considered toss-ups, with seats in Ohio, California, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, among others, up for grabs.

As the campaigning draws to a close Mr Trump’s closing arguments have almost entirely focused on the notion of American identity. In the past week he has proposed scrapping the core of the post-civil war 14th amendment that gives citizenship to people born in America.

He has also sent 5,000 US soldiers to protect America’s border with Mexico from a caravan of Central American migrants.

Add these troops to the 16,700 existing border protection agents, and the US will in effect have deployed more armed men and women to stave off what Mr Trump calls a border “invasion” than it has in the field in Afghanistan.

“They want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back,” the president warned on Thursday. “We’ll consider - and I told them - consider it a rifle”.

By Friday though Mr Trump’s fiery rhetoric implying that troops would open fire had eased.

“They do that with us, they're going to be arrested,” he now said. “There are going to be problems. I didn't say shoot. I didn't say shoot.”

On Friday it was left to Mr Trump’s ultimate nemesis, former President Barack Obama, to warn voters against the kind of rhetoric he said was meant to sow fear.

“We have seen repeated attempts to divide us with rhetoric designed to make us angry and make us fearful,” Obama said in Miami, where he was campaigning in support of Democratic candidates.

“But in four days, Florida, you can be a check on that kind of behaviour,” Mr Obama said, despite being repeatedly interrupted by hecklers, prompting him to quip: “Why is it that the folks who won the last election are so mad all the time?”

The mood at the campaign rally was typical of most over the past weeks where both Democrats and Republicans are increasingly conscious that Tuesday’s midterm is considered a referendum on President Trump.

The measure of what they sense is at stake has also been highlighted by the scale of election fundraising by both sides

This year’s congressional campaigns are on track to break fundraising records for midterm elections, with Democrats having collectively out-fundraised Republicans.

Senate Democrats raised at least $551 million, while Republicans raised at least $368 million. House Democratic candidates raised at least $680 million, while Republicans raised at least $540 million.

The total fundraising in each chamber topped what had been raised at the same point in the 2010 campaign cycle.

Despite polling data suggesting that Democratic candidates could get a turnout boost that exceeds expectations, possibly tipping the scale for them in tight races, observers are still urging caution over predicting the election result.

“On the one hand, the pollsters could be underestimating the Democratic vote, particularly among young people and minorities, who tend to have low turnout rates in midterm elections,” observed New Yorker political journalist John Cassidy last week.

“If a powerful anti-Trump surge materialises in these groups, the much discussed “blue wave” could still drown the G.O.P. Conversely, the pollsters could be underestimating Donald Trump’s ability to turn out voters attracted to his divisive message, as they did in 2016,” added Mr Cassidy.

While the results will be consequential, the election process some observers say will not be democratic.

As long time America watcher and journalist Gary Younge pointed out in The Guardian recently: “Millions of people will be excluded, potentially hundreds of thousands of votes suppressed and many voting districts brazenly configured to favour one party or the other; not all citizens are eligible, not all those who are eligible are permitted to vote, and not all votes will carry the same weight.”

The makeup of Congress itself still does not reflect the US demographic.

Currently white politicians, both male and female, occupy 80 per cent of the seats in the House and the Senate. According to census data, this group makes up just over 60 per cent of the total US population. Women, although half the US population, make up around 20 per cent of those elected.

Meanwhile the largest minority ethnic groups - Hispanic, Asian and African Americans - are also significantly under-represented in Congress.

But despite these peculiarities and problems of the US voting system Tuesday will prove to be a momentous day and one in which many people frustrated and angered with the Trump presidency will want to make their vote count and voice heard.

Should there be a Democratic victory then doubtless Mr Trump’s most combative instincts will once again be laid bare. Certainly the chances of bipartisan amity will be precisely zero. With so many of the election contests likely going down to the wire, Americans and those of us looking on with eager interest from outside are in for a nerve jangling few days. The mother of all midterms and the battle for the soul of America is upon us.

Midterm contests to watch

Texas:

Texas is hosting the most closely watched - and most expensive - Senate race this year. Beto O'Rourke, a punk rocker-turned-congressman who espouses health care for all, criminal justice reform and stronger gun-safety laws is taking on popular conservative Senator Ted Cruz.

Flipping deep red Texas has been a Democratic dream for years. They will need suburban anti-Trump anger to help them pull off such a political earthquake.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made headlines earlier this year when she toppled Democratic Party grandee Joe Crowley in a primary vote. Should she win in the midterms in NY 14th district, the 29-year-old self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” would be the youngest woman ever elected to the House.

Christine Hallquist:

The election is also shaping up to be a big year for LGBTQI+ candidates. Christine Hallquist, the Democratic nominee for governor of Vermont, could become the first ever transgender governor of a US state.

Muslim Candidates:

In several races there are candidates vying to become the first Muslim woman in Congress, 12 years after Minnesota's Keith Ellison became the first Muslim in the House of Representatives.

Florida, Georgia and Maryland:

Three states, Florida, Georgia and Maryland, could also see their first black governor. The US currently has no black governors and has only ever elected two in its entire history.