Polls began closing on Tuesday evening in US midterm elections that could cost President Donald Trump’s Republicans control of Congress, with Democrats favoured in opinion polls to win the House of Representatives and a handful of Senate races set to decide whether they take both chambers.
Voting ended at 6pm ET (2300 GMT) in parts of Indiana and Kentucky and was due to end in six more states an hour later, though polls in most states were to stay open for several more hours.
All 435 House seats and 35 of the 100 Senate seats are being contested, though most races are not considered competitive. Democrats need to gain at least three House seats and four Senate seats to win a majority in each chamber.
A Reuters analysis of leading forecasters found 47 House races widely seen as competitive. If all other contests go as predicted, Democrats would need to win only 13 of them to take the House.
The Senate is harder. Control will be decided in nearly ten closely fought races, most of them in Republican strongholds. Democrats must hold every seat they have and win at least two states Trump carried by double digits in 2024: Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina or Texas. Opinion polls show Democrats narrowly ahead or within reach in all seven.
The president’s party has lost ground in Congress in all but two midterm elections since the Second World War. Trump’s approval rating is close to the lowest of his career, as voters voice frustration over the war with Iran, higher fuel prices and the cost of living more widely.
Polls show affordability is voters’ top concern and that most disapprove of Trump’s handling of it. His import tariffs, many of which were struck down by the courts, and his decision to attack Iran in February pushed up consumer prices.
Trump has told supporters to “pretend I’m on the ballot”, a message Democratic leaders have been glad to repeat. He has held more than two dozen rallies since the start of October, most in states he won comfortably in 2024.
Election monitors
The Justice Department said it had sent 1,000 election monitors and observers to all 50 states, in what it called the largest Election Day monitoring operation in history. Democrats criticised the move as potential voter intimidation. In about two-thirds of the jurisdictions the department listed, voters backed Democrat Kamala Harris over Trump in 2024, a Reuters analysis found.
Legal observers and Democrats have warned that Trump, who has long falsely claimed that US elections are rigged, may try to challenge the results if Republicans lose.
Problems with paper ballot scanners slowed voting and counting in several areas, including counties in Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi and New York. Isolated machine faults are common in US elections, and election experts say backup systems and other safeguards mean they rarely affect results.
Michigan
In televised remarks on Tuesday, Trump said he intended to stop 3.8 billion dollars in promised annual funding to Israel after the end of this year. The remarks appeared aimed at voters unhappy with US support for Israel, but it was unclear how he would do it, given a 2020 law that sets the funding levels.
The US-Israel alliance has been a central issue in Michigan’s Senate race, where progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has faced millions of dollars in opposition spending from Israel-linked groups over his criticism of the US ally. If elected, he would be the first Muslim US senator. Trump and other Republicans have portrayed El-Sayed and fellow Democrats as radical, un-American and even communist, labels Democrats dismiss as typical Trump exaggeration.
At a voting centre in a mainly Black neighbourhood of Detroit, Natalia Towns, 34, said she did not believe Republican candidate Mike Rogers was sincere in courting Black voters, and felt El-Sayed would do more to bring down costs. “I do feel like health matters, gas prices are high, food is too high,” she said.
In Warren, a mainly white suburb north of Detroit, Paul Stockyj said he had voted for Rogers and considered El-Sayed too progressive. “Who’s going to pay for all the stuff that he wants to do?” he said.
Alaska and Texas
In Alaska, the Senate race was thrown into turmoil after the New York Times reported that the campaign of Democratic candidate Mary Peltola helped recruit an independent candidate who shares the first and last name of her Republican opponent, Dan Sullivan.
Peltola has denied involvement. The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the allegations and filed a lawsuit to block certification of the result, which a judge dismissed. More than 20 people are being told they are subjects of the investigation, according to a person familiar with it who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Trump has repeatedly complained since the Times report that many Americans do not know what “incumbent” means. Supporters of Sullivan, the incumbent, told Reuters they knew the word and were not confused by the two Dan Sullivans on the ballot. “They make it pretty obvious: it says ‘incumbent’ after his name,” said Jake Wesley, 27, who grew up in Anchorage and is now stationed there with the US Air Force.
In Texas, Democrat James Talarico has revived his party’s hopes of winning the Republican-leaning state after decades of defeats. His opponent, Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton, has benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars donated on his behalf by Elon Musk.
(With information from Reuters)
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