More than 57 million Americans had already voted early before Tuesday, indicating the high energy
\nwashington
\nAmerican voters will deliver a verdict on the first two years of President Donald Trump\u2019s second term in Tuesday\u2019s midterm elections, with polls and nonpartisan analysts favoring Democrats to wrest the House from Republicans while control of the Senate remains uncertain.
\nThe battle for the Senate is unfolding across nearly 10 closely \u200bcontested statewide races, most in Republican strongholds.
\nHistory is against Trump\u2019s Republicans: the sitting president\u2019s party has lost ground in Congress in all but two midterm elections since World War Two. Trump\u2019s approval rating is hovering \u200cnear his all-time lows, dragged down by deep voter frustration over the war with Iran and the resulting rise in fuel prices.
\nThere is little doubt this year\u2019s election is all about Trump, the central US political figure for most of the last decade. Trump himself has told his supporters repeatedly to \u201cpretend I\u2019m on the ballot,\u201d a message Democratic leaders have happily echoed.
\nThe president has held more than two dozen campaign rallies since the start of October, the vast majority in states he easily won in 2024, underscoring the extent to which Republicans are playing defence.
\nLed \u200bby Trump, Republicans have portrayed Democratic candidates as radical, un-American and even communist. \u201cThe Democrat Party has nominated the most extreme and dangerous slate of candidates in American history,\u201d Trump said on Monday during a speech in Washington.
\nBut opinion \u200bpolls show voters are most concerned about affordability and disapprove of Trump\u2019s handling of the issue, after his sweeping tariff policy and his decision to attack Iran in February increased domestic costs. Republican candidates, meanwhile, have struggled to distance themselves from a president who demands fealty and rarely acknowledges mistakes.
\nAll 435 seats in the US House of Representatives are up for election, along with 35 of the Senate\u2019s 100 seats, though the majority \u200bof contests are not considered competitive. Democrats must flip at least three House seats and four Senate seats to win a majority in each chamber.
\nA Democratic House or Senate could launch investigations into what Democrats describe as self-dealing by the Trump administration and \u200bdemand concessions to approve legislation.
\nA Democratic Senate would also have the power to block Trump appointments, including US Supreme Court nominations if vacancies arise.
\nBut while Democrats have put Republicans on the defensive on much of their home turf, they have little margin for error. The party must defend all of its current seats, including a tight race in Michigan, while winning at least two states that voted for Trump by a double-digit margin two years ago: Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas.
\nOpinion polls show Democrats either narrowly leading or within striking distance in all of \u200bthose states.
\nMichigan race roiled by cross-party endorsement
\nThe Michigan Senate contest between progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, 42, and Republican former US Representative Mike Rogers, 63, received a fresh jolt on Sunday, when Democrat Haley Stevens, who narrowly lost to El-Sayed in the party\u2019s primary \u200belection, endorsed Rogers in a surprise reversal.
\nIn addition to the implications for Senate control, the Michigan race represents a high-profile test of whether Republicans\u2019 identity-based attacks \u2013 El-Sayed would be the nation\u2019s first Muslim senator \u2014 prove effective in a battleground state.
\nA win for El-Sayed, who has criticised Israel and supports liberal policies such as universal healthcare, would also boost the party\u2019s left wing ahead of the 2028 presidential election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More than 57 million Americans had already voted early before Tuesday, indicating the high energy washington American voters will deliver a verdict on the first two years of President Donald Trump\u2019s second term in Tuesday\u2019s midterm elections, with polls and nonpartisan analysts favoring Democrats to wrest the House from Republicans while control of the Senate …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":94191,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105363,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105352\/revisions\/105363"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}