Americans are voting on Tuesday, November 3, in midterm elections that will decide control of Congress for the final two years of President Donald Trump’s second term. Every seat in the House of Representatives is on the ballot, along with 35 of the Senate’s 100 seats and 36 governorships, in a contest widely treated as a verdict on the president’s first two years back in office.
The arithmetic of contro
Republicans enter Election Day defending narrow majorities in both chambers: 53 seats to 47 in the Senate, and a slim edge in the House. According to Reuters, Democrats need a net gain of three House seats and four Senate seats to take a majority in each chamber — a lower House bar than in some forecasts because of vacancies, but a steep Senate climb that runs through states Trump won comfortably two years ago.
The party in power has lost ground in Congress in all but two midterm elections since World War II, and history is not the only headwind for Republicans this year. The president’s approval rating has fallen to near his all-time lows, dragged down by voter frustration over the war with Iran and the resulting rise in fuel prices, Reuters reported.
What voters say matters most
A Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,765 US adults, conducted Thursday through Monday with a margin of error of 3 percentage points, found the cost of living dominating voters’ minds. Some 48% of registered voters named it their top issue, compared with 26% who pointed to democratic norms and 13% who cited immigration.
The same poll found 48% of people who planned to vote — or already had — saying they thought of their ballot as a vote against Trump, against 25% who said they were voting for him. Nearly half of Americans, 49%, said their household finances had gotten worse since January 2025, when Trump returned to power, while only 13% said things had gotten better. On the war with Iran, 25% of voters said military action had been worth the cost, and 55% said it had not.
Trump has campaigned as though he were personally on the ballot, urging supporters to “pretend I’m on the ballot” and holding more than two dozen rallies since the start of October — most of them in states he won easily in 2024, a sign, Reuters noted, of how much Republicans are playing defense.
The races to watch
The battle for the Senate runs through nearly 10 closely contested statewide races, most of them in Republican strongholds. Marquee contests include Michigan, where progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed faces Republican former Representative Mike Rogers; Texas, where Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton faces Democratic state Representative James Talarico; and Ohio, where Jon Husted faces Sherrod Brown. Iowa, Alaska, Maine and Kansas are also in play, with polls showing Democrats narrowly leading or within striking distance in several of them.
Michigan’s race was jolted on Sunday when Democrat Haley Stevens, who narrowly lost the party’s primary to El-Sayed, endorsed Rogers — a cross-party endorsement that dominated the final days of the campaign.
A record-setting, slow-counting night
More than 57 million people had already voted early, above the 46 million early votes cast in the 2022 midterms, and OpenSecrets estimated total spending at $11.9 billion, which would make this the costliest election in US history. The first polls close at 6 p.m. Eastern Time, and the last, in Hawaii and Alaska, close between midnight and 1 a.m. Eastern.
Reuters cautioned that some states may not have complete results on election night, and that a delay in resolving a close contest is not, on its own, evidence of wrongdoing. Close races, late-arriving mail ballots and ranked-choice counts in states such as Alaska and Maine could leave control of one or both chambers uncertain for days. The new Congress takes office on January 3, 2027.
What to watch next
Watch the early calls in the most competitive House districts, the Senate margins in Texas and Michigan, and whether any chamber is decided before the western states finish counting. If neither party secures a clear majority on the night, the story shifts from who won to how long the count takes — and who accepts the result.
Sources: Reuters, “Trump faces midterm verdict with control of Congress at stake” (Nov 3, 2026); Reuters/Ipsos poll, “Nine things on US voters’ minds ahead of midterm elections” (Nov 3, 2026); Le Monde, “2026 US midterms: A quick guide” (Nov 2, 2026).
