US President Barack Obama will find himself between a rock and a hard place as he waits for the poll verdict. Says the Economist. “The only real constant in 2014 has been frustration, largely directed at the man at the top. (His) party is suffering because two-thirds of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Mid-terms are always tough for the president’s party. Bill Clinton is the only president since 1945 to avoid losing Senate seats during his second term. Clinton once said that the economy trumps everything. In this election, it simmers in the background. Modest growth has returned, unemployment has fallen and consumer confidence has reached a seven-year high. But none of this helps the Democrats, because the typical household still feels pinched and insecure.”

The Guardian, on the other hand, is cautiously pragmatic in its appraisal of the outcome for Obama. “It is easy to blame the guy at the top, and [in today’s] US mid-term congressional elections, Barack Obama appears fated to be cast as principal scapegoat by American voters dissatisfied with the ostensibly parlous state of their nation’s affairs. Against such a ... backdrop, it seems reasonable to assume Obama’s Democrats will pay a big price [today], as they did in the 2010 midterms when they lost control of the House of Representatives.”

According to the New York Times, if Republicans gain control of the Senate in today’s election, “It’s not just that they are committed to time-wasting, obstructionist promises like repeal of health care reform, which everyone knows President Obama would veto. The bigger problem is that the party’s leaders have continually proved unable to resist pressure from the radical right, which may very well grow in the next session of Congress”. A Republican majority, says the NYT, wouldn’t really be able to reverse Obama’s most significant accomplishments, but in the act of trying, it could do a great deal of damage.

A similar sentiment was mirrored by the Washington Post, which said in its editorial: “Americans are in a dark mood. What, exactly, is the problem? In one sense, the public’s gloom is puzzling: Although the US financial sector is far from healed and wages have been stagnant, the economy has been growing ... the unemployment rate is 5.9 per cent, down from a peak of 10 per cent four years ago. Gas prices are at a four-year low. From [Daesh] to Ebola, the US faces dangerous and difficult-to-manage threats to public safety, but this is nothing new, at least not since September 11, 2001.”

The only thing that will make a difference, it says, is the way lawmakers use the next two years to work.

The last word should go to USA Today, which wonders why the mid-term polls are seen as a battle for the Senate. “Say Republicans gained a Senate majority,” it says in its editorial. “They would then be able to thwart a lame duck president whom they’ve thwarted quite well since taking the House in 2010. Perhaps more important, they would be able to press legislation that is now blocked by Senate Democrats, but it would still face an Obama veto.”

If voters want less dysfunction in Washington, USA Today advises that they should vote for their senators and congressmen the way they vote for their governors.