Nov 3, 2026 · 52 min · 11 segments
Hello!!! The U.S. midterm elections are a week away (a.k.a nerd Christmas) and boy do we have the segment for you. Hannah walks us through the stakes, the key races, and the all important question: do…
Hannah FergusonHostSarah-Jane AdamsHost
Justine Landis-HanleyGuest
The midterms are here, which means it's nerd Christmas and a potential injection of hope into our political ecosystem.
You might be wondering, why do we care about the US midterms? Oh, come on, guys.
It's so juicy, but it's also particularly, I think, groundbreaking is a fair word to use for this time around.
I've never paid such close attention to the midterms because I think there is change brewing.
So I think what we should start with is midterms, you know, what happens between two presidential elections.
They are fixed term elections, which we don't have at a federal level in Australia, which is important to note.
So, you know, Anthony Albanese could call the next federal election within like a very kind of broad timeframe.
But in the US, every two years, there is an election on the first Tuesday in November.
Basically what we're looking at tomorrow, our time, is the midterms which happen between two presidential elections and they... basically involve all 435 members from the lower house in Congress being up again for election because they only serve two year terms.
Senators, on the other hand, this is important to note, they serve six year terms.
So around a third of the 100 senators who sit in the upper house are fighting to retain their seats right now.
So there's thousands of races for state level roles like governors and attorney generals that are also up for the vote.
They're kind of the most prominent point of discussion for our purposes, because what's happening right now is this election is incredibly close for a lot of these seats.
The midterms are here, which means it's nerd Christmas and a potential injection of hope into our political ecosystem.
You might be wondering, why do we care about the US midterms? Oh, come on, guys.
It's so juicy, but it's also particularly, I think, groundbreaking is a fair word to use for this time around.
I've never paid such close attention to the midterms because I think there is change brewing.
So I think what we should start with is midterms, you know, what happens between two presidential elections.
They are fixed term elections, which we don't have at a federal level in Australia, which is important to note.
So, you know, Anthony Albanese could call the next federal election within like a very kind of broad timeframe.
But in the US, every two years, there is an election on the first Tuesday in November.
Basically what we're looking at tomorrow, our time, is the midterms which happen between two presidential elections and they... basically involve all 435 members from the lower house in Congress being up again for election because they only serve two year terms.
Senators, on the other hand, this is important to note, they serve six year terms.
So around a third of the 100 senators who sit in the upper house are fighting to retain their seats right now.
So there's thousands of races for state level roles like governors and attorney generals that are also up for the vote.
They're kind of the most prominent point of discussion for our purposes, because what's happening right now is this election is incredibly close for a lot of these seats.
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