What is being decided in the midterms and why do they matter?
David Smith
The US Congress has two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate. Both must approve federal legislation before it can become law and both play important roles in overseeing the executive branch.
The House is elected every two years, meaning all 435 voting seats are contested at every congressional election. The Senate has 100 members serving staggered six-year terms, so roughly a third of its seats are up for election every two years.
This year’s ballot includes:
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All 435 seats in the House of Representatives. Republicans are defending a narrow majority, with Democrats needing a net gain of four seats to take control.
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35 seats in the Senate. Thirty-three seats are up in regular elections, along with two special elections in Florida and Ohio to fill the remainder of terms that were vacated early. Republicans currently hold 53 seats, against 47 held by Democrats and independents who caucus with them. Democrats need to gain four seats to secure a majority.
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39 governorships. Voters will choose governors in 36 states and three US territories.
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Thousands of state legislative seats, as well as local offices, judicial contests and ballot measures on issues including taxes, abortion rights and voting rules.
The elections for Congress will determine which party controls Congress for the final two years of Trump’s second term. The governorships and state legislative contests will shape policymaking closer to home, from education and reproductive rights to taxation and the administration of elections.
The midterms have a long history of punishing the occupant of the White House. The president’s party has lost House seats in 18 of the past 20 midterm elections, a 90% rate of loss that stretches back to 1946.
Key events
In New York state, Westchester county executive Kenneth Jenkins has told a news conference that voting machines have been unable to scan as many as 250,000 ballots in 332 polling locations across more than 40 of the county’s municipalities.
Jenkins stressed that people will still be able to vote, and would be directed to cast their vote on emergency ballots (via orange bags that will be counted later).
Let us be absolutely clear: every eligible vote will be counted. No voter should be discouraged from participating in this election because of this issue. Your voice matters and your vote matters. Please stay in line and vote.
Ken Jenkins, Westchester county executive, speaks during a press conference to address the issues that ballot scanners on 3 November. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Republican representative Mike Lawler, who is seeking re-election in New York’s 17th congressional district, reassured voters on social media: “Every ballot will be counted. Stay on line and vote.”
His challenger, Democrat Cait Conley, also urged voters: “Don’t be dissuaded and have your voice heard.”
The Westchester County Board of Elections said it was in communication with New York state officials and the Westchester county government “to address this issue and ensure that voting continues with as little disruption as possible”.
New York attorney general Letitia James also wrote on X that her office is monitoring the issue. “Westchester voters can still safely fill out and turn in their ballots at their polling locations. Your votes will count,” she said.
The first election results of the 2026 midterms have come in from Guam, the Pacific island territory across the International Date Line where America’s day – and its elections – officially begin.
The unofficial results published by the Guam Election Commission show that Republicans wrested away control of Guam’s governorship, with the GOP ticket headed by Vicente Ada. Democrats, meanwhile, flipped the state’s nonvoting delegate to Congress blue, as voters opted to send Democratic candidate Alicia Anne Garrido Limtiaco to Washington.
Donald Trump took to his personal social media platform to remark on the results, which he considered a strong showing for the Republicans.
“Guam, which has always been considered strongly Democrat, just had an early call for a REPUBLICAN Victory in the top spot, Governor — Congratulations to Tony Ada! Also, the Republicans have the Majority in the State Senate. Wow, hopefully that’s an indication for things to come!”
José Olivares
in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Voters in Minneapolis have slowly been trickling in to vote at a polling site in a predominantly immigrant community, as groups and organizations observe at various sites around the city.
Observers and voters have told the Guardian it has been a relatively relaxed election day so far at the site, likely due to a strong early voting push in the state.
As voters arrive to the community center in downtown Minneapolis, a reverend has been standing in front to observe, in case of any anxieties or escalations and to make sure people can exercise their right to vote.
Reverend Shandon Klein, a progressive pastor from the Park Avenue United Methodist Church in Minneapolis said she is “keeping a watchful eye over the polling place just to make sure I’m a non-anxious presence that’s available here and just ensuring that everybody has access to voting.”
Klein told the Guardian that various community groups are visiting polling sites around the city to support for voters.
“There’s a general just feeling of empowerment and really excited to get out there and vote,” Klein said.
The voters in the primarily Somali neighborhood have been arriving to the community center in downtown Minneapolis. So far, no federal law enforcement officials have been spotted, despite threats by the Trump administrating of deploying them to voting sites.
At the end of 2025 and early this year, Minnesota became a major target for the Trump administration. Federal immigration officials descended on the area in a large-scale operation. Community groups organized rapid response teams throughout the city to prevent officials from arresting immigrants. The immigration operation led to the shooting deaths of two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Many groups involved in the immigration rapid response work have shifted their attention onto the elections.
Earlier, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and Democrat Amy Acton spoke after voting in the midterm election that will decide the Ohio governor’s race. Acton called her opponent a “danger” and added that she believed he had “crossed the line” during their campaigns. In the closing weeks of the contest, Ramaswamy aired a controversial ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother that prompted bipartisan backlash across the country.
Rachel Leingang
in Des Moines, Iowa
Erin Moynihan, an Iowa Democrat, knocks doors in a working-class neighborhood in south Des Moines, finding waterlogged campaign literature on the doorsteps of several homes already visited by Iowa candidates.
At one door, she asks a man if he was planning to vote today. “Already did,” he responded. Most people aren’t home, or aren’t answering their doors. One man asks if she’s selling stuff.
And then she meets Jerry Heck, a 92-year-old who said he’s voted in nearly all elections in his life. He said he doesn’t plan to go out and vote today. He didn’t get his mail ballot in time, and several health conditions prevent him from going in person. Moynihan offers to find him a ride and get him there, but he’s not interested.
“Everybody that votes, I appreciate them, and I should have done it, but I’m not going to,” he said.
Heck is no fan of Donald Trump, and he closely follows politics. He likes Rob Sand, the democratic candidate for governor. But he says he’s “disgusted” with the whole political process at this point.
“I don’t know how you people cope with it who are younger than me,” Heck said. “It’s just total insanity nowadays.”
Moynihan said she will keep working today to find a way for Heck to get to the polls.
George Chidi
in Georgia
David Boy, an attorney from Johns Creek, Georgia voted for Republicans down the ballot on Tuesday, despite his antipathy toward Donald Trump.
“I don’t like Trump. I’ve never voted for him,” Boy said. “I want to go to my deathbed saying I never did.”
Boy said he wants the war in Iran to end, and gas prices to go down and for Congress to set aside partisan politics and accomplish something useful.
He told the Guardian: “I’ve got school-age kids, so making sure the schools are good for them. Taxes. I’m in the prime earning years right now so paying taxes … and then also for me, personally, my faith and integrity and moral issues. And then, I want things to be run well. Honestly, I want our government to be run efficiently and effectively.”
Boy measured Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson by his independence.
I like how Jackson has sort of distanced himself from Trump and has been saying ‘hey, I’m willing to work with both sides.’ I’m hoping he won’t be another one of these politicians who is just a pawn of Trump and does what Trump says. Hopefully he stays an outsider.
Meanwhile, from behind a groovy pair of hitman glasses, Jennifer Thurman, a market researcher in Suwanee, had one eye out for malcontents at a voting station at Suwanee’s recreation center on Tuesday.
Amid the reported presence of federal elections observers in and around Atlanta has inspired a concomitant degree of vigilance, she said she was prepared to “face off against anybody who tried to stop someone else from voting.”
Thurman, who has always been a Democrat, voted a straight Democratic ballot. Abortion rights drew her to Democratic politics, she said, adding: “It’s not just about women. It is about whether the government can tell someone what to do with their body, which seems to me to be the most personal thing — more personal than voting.”
The effects of “haphazard, slapdash” Doge cuts on foreign aid, the deterioration of our international relationships and the damage to the fundamental functioning of the government has left scars that may take a long time to heal, Thurman said, adding that she expects the next two years to be frustrating.
I think [Trump is] going to try everything. He’s so morally reprehensible. And when he says he can grab anything he wants, that’s what he’s doing. Somebody who does sexual assault will take what he wants, and that’s him.
If Democrats take the House and Senate, “we’ll be able to at least stop the worst, and investigate,” she said, “but they need a policy platform to run on in ’28 and this is their time to develop it.”
Thurman added that she wants congressional Democrats to offer the best legislation they can and to be “caught trying” – even if it doesn’t pass. “And then they need to publicize what they try to do … so that they can be seen, because so often what happens legislatively gets sort of buried.”
Voter turnout has surged in the lead up to this year’s midterm election, with the number of early ballots cast significantly outstripping the totals from the 2022 midterm.
Elections workers across the country were expecting that trend to continued into election day. Officials in states including North Carolina, Georgia, and Michigan — a major battleground – reported strong turnout in the opening hours of voting.
Joseph Gedeon
in Dearborn, Michigan
One Dearborn voter who cast a full Republican ballot on Tuesday said she wishes the race for governor were getting more attention, because she believes Michigan is falling behind.
“Michigan is in a dumpster fire,” said Sona, a resident in her 60s who didn’t want to give her last name.
She described herself as a lifelong conservative who opposes abortion and is concerned about “transgenderism”, specifically transgender athletes in women’s sports. She also pointed to wages she said run about $10,000 below those in neighboring states, and to high electric bills.
Democrat Jocelyn Benson is running for governor, and Sona said she expects her to win despite what she sees as a weak campaign.
“Benson has hardly put up a fight for anything, and yet she’s gonna probably skate right in there,” she said. “I just don’t understand it.”
Meanwhile, Ali Bakri, a 33-year-old small business owner and Dearborn native, said that he is voting for Abdul El-Sayed for US Senate because he sees him as a champion of small businesses and everyday people.
“He advocates for the small guys more than the big guys,” Bakri, who owns his own coffee shop, said.
Bakri said he has met El-Sayed more than a dozen times, attended some of his campaign events, and has been a booster of his ever since El-Sayed ran for governor in 2018.
Bakri explained how it matters to him to get as many people from his community into positions of power as possible, and he described El-Sayed as “more of a community man.”
The big guys have enough support. We need our voices to be heard on the small side. And that’s what I respect.
Gaya Gupta
in Topeka, Kansas
In an interview with the Guardian in Topeka, Adam Hamilton, who wore a pin with the bible verse, “love one another,” said that he believes that many people watching the election abroad may “know Americans are good people,” but are “really uncertain about our government right now.”
He described his campaign as an effort to “stand up to the bully that’s Washington DC right now, doing things that are not okay.”
“We have been in an uncertain time, and I think we are restoring America to who it is,” he said. “We want our trading partners and our allies to know that you can count on America.”
This year’s midterms have largely revolved around the issue of affordability, and Hamilton said his first priority to get costs lower for Kansans would be to end the war in Iran, which have nearly doubled diesel and fertilizer prices for the thousands of farmers in the state. Kansas’s land is about 88% farmland, and roughly 1 in 5 of its residents work in the agriculture industry, according to the state’s department of agriculture.
If Hamilton wins tonight, it would be the first time since 1938 – in 94 years – that a Democrat would occupy a Kansas senate seat. Polls show him effectively tied with his Republican opponent, Roy Marshall, a competitiveness Hamilton credits to desire for decency among people in his state.
“Kansans are just salt of the earth, decent people. They want to do the right thing … and their senator, who I’m running against, is not speaking up for them,” he said. “And I think they wish that somebody had the courage to speak up to their boss and say this is not okay.”
Ed Pilkington
in Anchorage, Alaska
After all the brouhaha over the two Dan Sullivans, after all Donald Trump’s legal threats and talk of blocking certification of the vote, Anchorage finally got to have its say on Tuesday from the far-flung vastness of Alaska.
With the sun not yet risen over the snowcapped Chugach mountains that surround the city, voters descended on the city’s Midtown Mall from 7am in a critical US Senate race that could determine which party controls the upper chamber.
One of the first to arrive, still in pitch blackness, was a former mayor of Anchorage and a candidate in Alaska’s gubernatorial race, David Bronson, who had some stern words for anyone considering voting Democrat in this highly-charged election.
“You only need to look as far as Great Britain and France to see what happens when you vote left,” the Republican said. “You get unrestricted immigration.”
Asked about the war with Iran that Trump started, he said: “It’s not really a war, it’s more of a policing action.”
John House, 62, a carpenter living and working Anchorage, had a similarly sharp warning for fellow voters amid polls which show the Democratic senate candidate Mary Peltola with a slim lead over the Republican incumbent senator Dan Sullivan.
“You’d be a damn fool to vote Democrat, we’ll go backwards,” he said. “You can’t give free medicaid to everybody. The trans stuff – they would drag this country down.”
Was he still backing Trump? “He talks too much but he’s done so much for us. No tax on overtime – that means a lot to me.”
The furor over the presence of two candidates named Dan Sullivan on the ballot appeared not to unduly concern Tuesday’s voters. After the New York Times (paywall) reported that Democratic operatives aligned with Peltola had recruited a second Dan Sullivan to run as a ballot-stacking ruse, all hell broke loose.
Peltola has denied the allegations. But they inflamed Trump’s attempt to interfere in the race, with the justice department launching a lawsuit that has since been dismissed, and the current governor of Alaska initiating a criminal investigation.
Juanita Cupa, 30, turning up at the Midtown Mall polling station, was entirely unfazed. “It’s just been a lot of foolishness around this, on both sides. We’re all ready for it to be over,” she said with a weary shrug.
Cupa voted for Peltola, driven by two motivating factors. The first is her animus towards Trump. “He is spreading hatred, racism. His leadership is disgusting – the way he talks about women and human life.”
The second factor was more personal. Prices are up, and life is tough. She spends $120 every two weeks filling up her truck which she can’t do without in Alaska’s snowy wilderness.
She is so hard up that she has had to move back in with her parents. “I’m living check to check.”
Chaunice Carr, 27, also voted for Peltola. She said that turning up on election day and casting her ballot was “insanely important” to her.
Asked why, she replied: “There are a lot of bad things happening in Alaska, in the world. A lot of violence. ICE raids, people being deported in horrid ways. I’m hoping that today we can start to get that violence out of our lives.”
Robert Tait
in Portland, Maine
A steady stream of voters entered the Merrill auditorium polling station in Portland’s busy downtown district in mid-morning, leading to queues of up to half an hour to cast a ballot, according to organizers.
Of six voters interviewed by the Guardian, five said they had voted Democrat, favoring the party’s candidate Troy Jackson over the five-term GOP incumbent, Susan Collins, in the race for US Senate.
All of those asked cited national issues associated with Donald Trump’s second presidency as motivating their vote. All the Democrat voters interviewed cited issues relating to democracy, human rights and Trump’s perceived authoritarianism before economic issues.
Maple Razsa, 55, a global studies professor at Colby College in Waterville, said he had motivated by the Trump administration’s support for Israel’s actions in Gaza, which he termed a genocide.
But he also feared growing authoritarianism at home. He been teaching a class on the 1973 coup that overthrew the leftist Chilean president Salvador Allende, ushering in a military dictatorship, and saw parallels with the contemporary US, citing the increasing attacks by Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents on American citizens.
I’m concerned about ICE raids that have been happening here in Portland. The political system is just run amok at this point.
One of the [preparations] for the military coup in Chile was that the military was sent out on raids before it happened to get it used to targeting its own populations, so that it was ready for the coup. It’s very hard for me not to see that with the targeting of my neighbors here.
Todd Cox, 63, a technology professional, said he voted for Jackson despite have twice previously voted for Collins because of “concern for the direction the country is going in”.
We definitely haven’t become kinder and gentler under this administration. There’s a lot of bullying that goes on. It goes back to affordability – it’s the war in Iran, that shouldn’t be happening. It’s the disregard for the rule of law. It just seems like they’re thumbing their nose at it.
Amal Kareem, 48, had emigrated to the US in 2009 from Iraq, where he had been an interpreter for American military occupation forces.
His vote for Jackson had been driven by concern over rising Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment, as well as issues arising from the Iran war. The economic impact of rising fuel costs meant he had to work two jobs to make ends meet.
A lot of Americans are being badly influenced by the news coverage, especially on Fox. This gives them a false idea of why people move to this country, without even having talked to them or their background.
But if our countries were stable and didn’t have war, we would never have thought of leaving our homeland. Now we have another war, and its impacting everyone. The president broke the promises he made before coming to office, when he said he wouldn’t be fighting any other war.
Sandra Braden, 85, said she had voted Democrat because of the administration’s “cruelty and greed”.
It makes me feel so ashamed and sad.
Diane Clukey-Chenard, 59, said she had been inspired to vote against Collins because of a concern for LGBTQ and transgender rights and by the senator’s 2018 vote to confirm the conservative US supreme court justice, Brett Kavanaugh, who subsequently voted in favor of a ruling overturning the national right to abortion.
My concerns are economic and also women’s rights. I just hope we can finally start supporting our LGBTQ+ community, especially trans folks, and that we can also get universal health care.
One 63-year-man who said he had voted Collins declined to give his name, saying: “This town doxxes you if they don’t like how you voted.”
He added: “I voted straight Republican. I don’t know much about the issues, but I’m not ready to throw away Israel yet. I don’t really see the war in Iran as a real war. What have we lost? Dozens. We lose hundreds and thousands in these war and if they have a nuclear bomb, we’re going to have a nuclear war anyway.
“If we didn’t go in, [Benjamin] Netanyahu [Israel’s prime minister] was going to take them out, so we’d have been in a world war.”
DeSantis says GOP ‘gaslighting’ voters over Iran war and higher gas prices
Richard Luscombe
Ron DeSantis isn’t on the ballot on Tuesday as Florida voters decide who will succeed the termed-out Republican governor. But he still managed to raise eyebrows with comments about his plans for the 2028 presidential race.
DeSantis, despite being hyped as a rising young Republican star, flamed out miserably in his campaign for his party’s 2024 nomination, which Donald Trump won. It was widely assumed that, once he completes his second and final term as Florida governor in January, he would turn his attention to a new White House run in 2028.
He appeared to cast doubt on that eventuality in an interview on Tuesday with political commentator Stephen A Smith on his SiriusXM show Straight Shooter with Stephen A.
We’ll see what happens. Maybe someday. I don’t know about ‘28, maybe later, maybe.
Smith pressed him further on his plans after leaving office. DeSantis joked: “Old governors never die, they just fade away, right? So we’ll see what happens.”
DeSantis has always enjoyed something of a fractious relationship with Trump, and expressed more criticism of the president when Smith asked him about the war in Iran.
“He obviously ran saying he wasn’t going to do a Middle East war. They did. So we have some of our voters who’ve checked out because they’re like, ‘I didn’t want any more Middle East wars, and now we’re doing it’,” DeSantis said. He went on:
Gas is higher. It hurts people, working-class people, 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.
If [the war] drags on for the rest of his presidency, it’s going to be devastating to his ability to get anything done, and it is going to be very, very difficult for Republicans.
DeSantis endorsed Republican congressman Byron Donalds to become Florida’s next governor in a close race with Democrat David Jolly.
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