Election Day is here. Voters nationwide will decide control of the U.S. House and Senate. Democrats must flip four seats in the Senate and three seats in the House to wrest control of the chambers from Republicans. Control of Congress would give Democrats a way to push back against President Donald Trump’s agenda during the final two years of his term. The battle for control is playing out mostly in states and districts Trump previously won by wide margins.
All eyes are on Senate contests in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio and Texas, while House battlegrounds are scattered across the country.
Democrats have homed in on Trump’s poor approval rating, public dissatisfaction with the war in Iran and affordability concerns. Republicans have focused on social issues, while Trump has made himself the central character of the midterms.
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Voters in Westchester County continue to cast ballots at polling locations despite a countywide issue with machines that aren’t accepting paper ballots.
The Westchester County Board of Elections said ballots are being placed in designated orange emergency ballot bags as they resolve the issue. The board said the ballots would remain secure and monitored and would be counted.
Some voters in the county are deciding a competitive U.S. House race between Rep. Mike Lawler and his Democratic opponent, Cait Conley. Both candidates posted statements on X, urging voters to stay in line.
State Attorney General Letitia James said her office is in contact with state and local election officials.
The county includes the cities of Yonkers and White Plains. It is located north of Manhattan along the Hudson River and has more than 1 million residents.
Liz Tabor, 62, and her husband, Mark Bauer, 59, cast their early vote for Republicans at Buda City Hall in Texas, though Tabor’s GOP ticket had a few exceptions.
“I did not vote for Paxton,” she said of the Republican Senate candidate, who was impeached by his own party but acquitted and has faced allegations of extramarital affairs. “I just can’t. There’s so much with his past.”
“It’s an accumulation of his shady behavior,” she added.
She didn’t vote for his Democratic rival, though, either. She instead opted for the Libertarian candidate.
Bauer voted for Paxton, saying it was more important to have a Republican in office.
The two have lived in Texas for 26 years and said that what Republicans have done at the border is a good thing, and that they hoped to see more of it.
Sen. Roger Marshall is trying to fend off an unusually strong challenge from Democratic megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton in a race that’s generated a Kansas record for spending on advertising.
A Democrat hasn’t won a Senate race in the state in 94 years.
But Marshall is seeking a second term at a moment of deep frustration with Trump’s handling of the economy, and Hamilton made affordability a key issue while positioning himself as a moderate who could work with Republican colleagues in Washington.
Hamilton is the founder and senior pastor of the Kansas City-area Church of the Resurrection. With 25,000 members, it’s the nation’s largest United Methodist congregation.
In a Monday interview with commentator Stephen A. Smith, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Trump originally promised not to start new wars in the Middle East, but is currently in an “open-ended” conflict in Iran, which has driven up fuel prices.
DeSantis said some Republicans have tried to blame former President Joe Biden for the higher prices, but he urged them to be honest.
“Gas is higher and it hurts people, working-class people,” he said. “And it’s higher because of this conflict. That’s just a fact. If you can’t admit that to voters, then you’re gaslighting them and they’re not going to listen to you on other things.”
DeSantis unsuccessfully competed with Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination and could run again in 2028.
Collins is running for her sixth term on a pledge to continue serving Maine as one of the few remaining moderates in the Senate.
The Republican faces a challenge from Democrat Troy Jackson, who entered the race late. Jackson has tried to paint Collins as too close to Trump, while Collins has touted her willingness to break from the rest of the Republican Party on key votes.
Collins is the only Republican senator from New England, and she has triumphed in previous tough elections.
This time, Democrats focused on unseating her from the beginning, but the party’s June primary winner, Graham Platner, withdrew from the race after facing sexual assault allegations that he denied.
Jackson became the new nominee after winning a special nominating convention in late July.
The Justice Department announced early Tuesday that it is sending roughly 1,000 federal election monitors to all 50 states to observe Election Day voting.
Many are expected in populated areas that tend to vote for Democrats. They include past hot spots for election tensions, like Detroit, Philadelphia and Georgia’s Fulton County.
The monitoring program isn’t new, but it has faced criticism from voting rights groups concerned about federal interference and voter intimidation.
The NAACP sued after the department said it would include law enforcement officers in the program, but a judge ruled against the group overnight, arguing the government had made it clear that monitors would be in plainclothes, would not carry firearms and wouldn’t have the power to make arrests at poll sites.
The Justice Department has said its monitors will observe and will not interfere with voting.
Republicans are mostly on defense in the battle for control of the U.S. House.
Most of the top battlegrounds are districts Trump won in 2024, sometimes by a lot.
Republicans and allied groups pulled spending from several House races in October, shifting, for example, away from GOP incumbents in Iowa and New Jersey.
At Trump’s urging, Republicans in states including Texas and Florida tried to give themselves a boost with early redistricting, but that may turn out to be a flop.
Democrats are defending a handful of seats in Trump country as well, and there are pockets of potential GOP upside around the country.
The AP has a detailed rundown of the House districts in play and the fight for the majority.
Control of the Senate hangs in the balance in a way few could have foreseen.
Originally, Democrats believed they only had a narrow path to the majority, and their plan required flipping seats in Alaska, Ohio, Maine and North Carolina.
However, the map has shifted, and Democrats believe they have a shot at Texas, Kansas and Iowa as well.
Many of these are states Trump won by double-digit margins two years ago.
Democrats need to play defense as well. Although they’re expected to hold Georgia, they also need to lock down Michigan and Minnesota.
In Falmouth, Maine, 60-year-old Susan Myers said she’s optimistic that Senate candidate Troy Jackson can take advantage of anti-Trump sentiment and defeat longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins. She’s also aware of how recent elections have gone for diehard Democrats like herself.
“I’m hopeful. I feel like there’s been so much disappointment these last few election cycles that I don’t want to get my hopes up,” she said.
Myers voted early at Falmouth Town Hall and was picking up an absentee ballot for her daughter.
She said so much national attention on Maine this election has been overwhelming. The Senate race is one of this year’s most competitive and could decide which party controls the chamber.
“It feels a little bit like we have the weight of the world on our shoulders,” Myers said.
Latinos helped return Trump to the White House in 2024. Now they’re poised to play an outsized role in the midterms.
The path to a U.S. House majority runs through heavily Latino districts in states such as Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida and Texas. The front-line Senate race in Texas likewise could hinge on Latinos.
About 6 in 10 Hispanic adults disapprove of Trump’s handling of the presidency, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from October. About 7 in 10 disapprove of his performance on the economy.
One key factor will be how effective Democrats have been at making the case for themselves. Will disaffected Trump supporters vote for Democrats, or just sit out the midterms?
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed is seeking to become the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate. Republican Mike Rogers wants to be the first member of his party to win a Michigan Senate race in more than three decades.
The contest to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters is among a handful that could determine which party controls the Senate.
Although Michigan Democrats have been successful in recent midterm elections, Trump carried the battleground state in two of his three campaigns. That divided political landscape helped set the stage for one of the most bitter and contentious Senate races of the cycle.
El-Sayed has accused Rogers of being a “puppet” for Trump. Rogers has accused El-Sayed of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, while Trump has falsely called the Democrat a “jihadist.”
Progressives are hoping an El-Sayed victory will signal their agenda can resonate in a battleground state ahead of the next presidential election.
Mid-decade redistricting shook up the House map ahead of the midterms, changing the boundaries of around one-third of congressional districts.
The AP analyzed each district’s 2024 presidential vote margin before and after redistricting and found that while many individual districts saw dramatic shifts in partisanship and demographic makeup, the national U.S. House map did not shift significantly toward either party.
Learn more about how redistricting shaped the 2026 midterm elections and see how your district boundaries changed in this map.
Trump is staring down twin threats from Capitol Hill for his last two years as president if his party loses at least one chamber in Tuesday’s midterms: investigations and impeachment.
Democratic lawmakers are eager to exercise oversight, with senior officials long telegraphing how they would go after an administration they believe has escaped accountability for policies, personal profits and abuses of power.
The majority party controls gavels on powerful House committees, which come with larger staff budgets and more expansive resources, including subpoena powers.
Less certain are prospects for impeaching Trump, although House Democratic leaders will almost certainly come under pressure from their left flank to do so. Rather than Trump, who was impeached twice during his first term but acquitted by the Senate both times, Democrats may instead try to impeach Cabinet officials.
If Republicans lose the Senate, Trump’s ability to push his judicial and executive branch nominees through to confirmation will also be severely weakened.
Iowa’s top of the ticket is up for grabs after Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds and Sen. Joni Ernst opted out of reelection bids.
Republicans control state government and comprise the entirety of Iowa’s federal delegation. But the openings have given Democrats opportunities to win over voters who may want a new direction amid high grocery and gas prices, manufacturing job losses, a crippled agricultural economy and growing cancer rates.
In the governor’s race, Rob Sand, the state auditor and only Democrat in statewide elected office, faces Republican Zach Lahn, a political newcomer who stunned even members of his own party when he won the primary over a Trump-endorsed congressman.
Democrat Josh Turek and Republican Ashley Hinson are competing for a U.S. Senate seat. Hinson, a congresswoman endorsed by Trump, has tried to assure voters she will push back when his policies are wrong for Iowa. Turek, a state lawmaker, was endorsed by Barack Obama, the last Democrat seeking federal office to win Iowa before Trump won the last three presidential elections.
A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration must stop sending voter lists of alleged noncitizens to election officials, as it has done in California and Washington state, while urging the states to set aside those ballots.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., said in her decision late Monday that more voter data transmissions would likely confuse voters and election officials at a time when election resources need to be focused on administering the midterms.
States and voting rights groups have pushed back on the administration’s claims and said the lists are riddled with errors.
The decision is one in a string of court losses for the administration in its efforts to expand federal authority over elections, which are run by the states.
The Navajo Election Administration says it has altered five polling locations — two in Arizona and three in New Mexico.
The tribe’s reservation surrounds the Four Corners Monument, where Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado meet. The area has seen major flooding since October, with rivers overflowing their banks and some residents having to evacuate.
The tribe says it has more than 298,000 members.
Trump roared back to power due to the Biden administration’s border troubles. He cut illegal crossings of the border, which were already plummeting, to close to zero.
That’s when the trouble started.
The president turned to the trickier task of deporting people in the U.S. illegally from the interior. Soon the main image of illegal immigration wasn’t desperate people crossing the border, but mothers screaming as they were torn from their children, or masked federal agents chasing people — sometimes citizens — through streets.
Trump openly bemoaned how the U.S. didn’t get enough migrants from Scandinavian countries and only accepted white South Africans into the country as refugees. And then two citizen protesters were shot and killed by immigration agents during the administration’s raids on Minneapolis.
Now the GOP fears it will especially lose ground in immigrant-rich areas running from New Jersey to Florida to Texas. And polls show more voters oppose Trump on immigration than support him.
Lindsey Graham’s sudden death left South Carolina Republicans scrambling to pick a new nominee in a special primary, which his sister, Darline Graham, ultimately won.
The switch-up left the state’s Democrats with renewed hope they could break a 20-year drought on winning a statewide race.
But even some of Democratic nominee Annie Andrews’ supporters acknowledge their state might not yet be ready to go blue, despite Democrats’ advances in neighboring North Carolina and Georgia.
South Carolina has consistently backed Trump, who endorsed Graham, urged her to run and has stumped twice for her in the state.
Graham and Andrews have portrayed each other as ill-prepared for the role.
Trump might not be on the ballot, but Americans are very unhappy with his performance so far in his second term.
Only about one-third of U.S. adults, 35%, approve of how Trump is handling the presidency, according to AP-NORC polling from October.
Trump’s approval tends to stay within a fairly narrow range, but the most recent measure is below where his overall approval stood shortly after he started his second term, when 42% of U.S. adults approved of how he was handling the presidency.
He’s seen modest declines in approval among Republicans and independents. About 70% of Republicans approve of how Trump is handling the presidency, down from 82% at the start of his term.
Trump’s current approval rating is slightly below where it stood in October 2018.
