The US Mid-Term Elections 2017

Wiith a little over two weeks to go before the mid-term elections, what do people think will be the result? I have not followed the elections which are not being covered in any detail in the UK, where some 'headline acts' like Beto O'Rourke -v- Ted Cruz gets some mention, and the more general views on whether the Demcocrats will do better or worse than expected.

One issue which seems to me to define the deepest problem in the US electoral system is not just the lack of voter participation -that said the turnout this time will be interested to see- but the blatant manner in which citizens are having their right to vote taken away.

The latest scandal is in Georgia where its 'Secretary of State' Brian Kemp is accused of wiping off 340,000 voters from the roll-

Georgia residents who have not voted in the past three years are sent a notice asking if they still live at their provided address. If they do not respond they are marked inactive and removed from voting records.
In addition-
Kemp has also faced legal action over claims that he has hindered the voting registration of around 50,000 people, a group that is overwhelmingly black, Latino or Asian American, by implementing a new law.
The “exact match” law demands that election officials pause a voter registration if identifying information does not precisely mirror information in existing records, meaning that abbreviated names, random hyphens or extra spaces on forms can delay registration. Such voters must take extra steps to verify their identities.
Kemp’s campaign has said lawsuit claims of voter disenfranchisement are “utterly false and politically motivated”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/20/trump-georgia-republican-brian-kemp-stacey-abrams

One wonders why it is the business of the state if people choose not to vote, whereas an update of the roll is perfectly reasonable and can be done without removing a citizen's right to vote. If ever there was a case for an Independent Election Commission Georgia proves it is necessary to take this process out of the control of the parties that may benefit from it.

Moreover, because the primary aim is to prevent Black people from voting it would make sense for the Confederate states to make it illegal, and then sit back and watch the Supreme Court either decline to rule one way or the other, or endorse the official policy which exists in practice anyway.

So I guess with millions of Americans denied their constitutional right to vote, the question might not be who is going to get the best result from the mid-terms, but are the mid-terms legitimate?

According to https://fivethirtyeight.com/ the chances of a Democrat majority in the House have improved further to 86.5%, while the odds of them taking the Senate have fallen to 21.6%.

I wouldn't read too much into Trump's surprise win in 2016, given the result turned on fairly small margins in just a few states. If there was some systematic reason why the polls were underestimating Republican support then why did it not occur in the previous elections?

Voter suppression is not the only issue. It's been estimated that due to gerrymandering and the geographical distribution of voters Democrats will need a margin of 7 to 11 percentage points just to get a House majority. In any normal political system that sort of margin would mean a landslide majority.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...ats-house-2018

I'm not going to jinx the election like last time....
but I voted today