Americans, and likely the rest of the world, appeared to be breathing a sigh of relief after Tuesday’s midterm elections in the United States, believing that their worst fears about losing democracy has been avoided.

The more extreme of Republican candidates who still hold that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from their leader, Mr Donald Trump, did not do well in the polls where their anti-democracy message seemed to have been rejected.

The midterm elections, unusually, defied both the popular opinion polls and history by not sweeping out the party of the president for the first time since President John F Kennedy. Indeed, at Jamaica Observer press time it was still uncertain which party would take the House and the Senate.

Republicans were given the edge to win the House, but by a slim margin and not the “red wave” that the polls were showing would be the case. The Senate was still anyone’s to win as three key battleground seats were undecided with the tally at 48-48.

Democrats were leading in Arizona’s Senate seat and trailing in Nevada, but there were enough votes still to be counted that could change that trajectory. In the third, Georgia, Democrat Mr Raphael Warnock came out ahead of Republican Mr Herschel Walker but not with enough votes to avoid a December 6, 2022 run-off to decide who sits in the 100-member Senate.

US media reports suggested that women, motivated by the abortion issue, and young voters helped prevent the beating that had been so widely predicted for the Democrats.

A 25-year-old man became the youngest-ever member of the House.

In all states where abortion was on the ballot there were large margins in favour of retaining the right of women to decide whether to abort or keep a foetus. The vote was being interpreted as a backlash against the decision of the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe V Wade — the law that gave women that right.

Young voters between 18 and 30 years old seemed to have come out in support of President’s Joseph Biden’s policy of forgiving crippling student debt, as well as his robust pro-climate change policy.

For Jamaica, which is figuring more and more in US electoral politics, Mr Wes Moore, whose mother, Mrs Joy Moore is from Westmoreland, made history by becoming the first black governor of Maryland, the third black elected governor in the US, and the only black who will be among the 50 current governors.

With most of the votes tallied at Jamaica Observer press time, Mr Moore, a Democrat — who had never held elected office — polled a total of 906,765 to his Republican opponent Mr Dan Cox’s 562,331.

Mr Moore, who was described as “a rock star” by a former US senator on cable television, was doing the rounds of the major news channels yesterday after his victory.

For the seventh consecutive time, long-time representative Jamaican-American Ms Yvette D Clarke took New York’s 9th Congressional District, whipping her opponent Mr Menachem Raiport 111,162 votes to 24,143.

Ms Clarke, whose mother, Ms Una Clarke was born in Jamaica, is a leading voice in the US Congress for Jamaica and the Caribbean.

They deserve our congratulations, as do the American people as a whole, who demonstrated that they value democracy and are telling the world “never count us out”.