On Tuesday, Americans will be casting their votes in the 2022 general election. In states like Colorado, which uses both early voting and mail-in ballots, this Tuesday evening is the time of a final count and the release (on into the night) of the election results.

This is a significant election where the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives are concerned. The Democrats narrowly control both houses at the present time. The Democrats have a nine-vote lead over the Republicans in the House. The Senate is equally split between the two major parties, but the Democratic vice president can vote to break a tie vote in the Senate in favor of the Democrats.

With the two major political parties so evenly balanced in the two houses of Congress, there are three possible outcomes when all the votes are counted next Tuesday:

• The Republicans win both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
• The Republicans take the House but the Democrats retain the Senate.
• The Democrats retain both the House and Senate.

Historic voting patterns indicate that the first option – the Republicans win both the House and the Senate – is the most likely to occur. One of the best established voting patterns in United States voting behavior is that the president’s party typically loses seats in the House and the Senate in a midterm election. With Democrat Joe Biden occupying the White House, it is the Republicans who should benefit and come out of the election with comfortable majorities in both the House and the Senate.

A second argument for the Republicans to win both the House and the Senate in the general election of 2022 is that there are three challenging issues harming President Biden and the Democratic Party at this time. Those issues are inflation, supply-chain shortages and rising urban crime rates.

If the Republicans do win control of both houses of Congress, we expect there will be noise from the far-right wing of the party boosting the ideals and political future of former Republican President Donald Trump. As for legislation supporting far-right wing programs, we expect those bills to be cut off by the Democratic filibuster in the Senate and, if necessary, Democratic President Joe Biden’s veto.

The major result of the Republicans winning majority control of both the Senate and the House will be a further diminishing of President Biden’s influence over Congress. Proposed legislation from the president, particularly bills that spend big money to benefit particular groups in the society, will be killed or simply ignored by the Republicans newly in control.

A second possible outcome for the 2022 general election is the Republicans winning control of the U.S. House of Representatives but the Democrats retaining control of the U.S. Senate. There is general agreement among pollsters that the Republicans are likely to win a majority in the House of Representatives, yet there is less agreement that the GOP will win the Senate at the same time.

Republican chances for winning the Senate were reduced over the summer by the Supreme Court in June overturning the Roe v. Wade decision and returning the issue of legalizing abortion to the states.

Republican chances for winning the Senate were further reduced when a number of far-right wing Republicans, some of whom deny that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, defeated their more moderate opponents in Republican primaries over the summer. That increased the chances for moderate Democrats to win those seats in the general election this coming Tuesday.

If the Republicans do win the House of Representatives but lose the Senate to the Democrats, the end result will be a stalemate where legislation is concerned. It is a result that might be expected when the Republicans have strong issues such as inflation and rising crime working for them and the Democrats have the revival of the abortion issue helping on their side.

This second possible result – Republican House and Democratic Senate – will appeal to thoughtful moderates and those made uncomfortable by the rise of far-right wing voices in the Republican Party and the loud left-wing noises coming from parts of the Democratic Party. Both of those extreme points of view will get nowhere in a bicameral legislature with the lower house going in one direction and the upper house going in the other.

This situation is what the Founders of the United States had in mind when they created a national government based on checks and balances. The Founders feared the tyranny of the majority, and they created the check and balance of a two-house legislature to muffle extremist views and ensure broad majority support for newly enacted national laws.

The third possible outcome to the 2022 general election – the Democrats win majorities in both the House and the Senate – would be a surprise result. No one is predicting this outcome, mainly because the Republicans seem on the verge of winning control of the House. Surprises do occur in elections, however. This could happen if concerns over the abortion issue and distrust of 2020 election-denying Republican candidates turn out to motivate an unusually powerful Democratic national vote.

This would be a welcome outcome for President Biden and the Democratic Party. They would have avoided something considered a sure thing in American politics – big losses in both houses of Congress in the first midterm election two years after the president is elected. It also would put President Biden in a position to move forward in Congress with major legislation, particularly legislation of a financial nature that could avoid a Republican filibuster.

We see the first and second results as most likely to occur on Election Day 2022. We see only an outside chance for Democrats to retain both the House and the Senate.

Tom Cronin and Bob Loevy are news columnists who regularly write about Colorado and national politics.