WASHINGTON — Voting is underway across the United States on Tuesday, November 3, in midterm elections that will decide who controls Congress for the last two years of President Donald Trump’s second term, according to Al Jazeera and other reporting on Election Day.
Follow the results: Follow verified election results and race calls on Zark News, updated through the night as decision desks call races.
More than 230 million Americans are eligible to vote. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the Senate’s 100 seats are being contested, and voters in 36 states are also electing governors. Republicans currently hold both chambers of Congress, with a 53 to 47 majority in the Senate and the House held at the 218-seat majority mark.
The margins Democrats need are small but specific: a net gain of three seats would give them the House, and a net gain of four seats would give them the Senate. That is why the day will be settled less by the national mood than by a handful of close races, above all the Senate contests in Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Alaska and Iowa, where the final New York Times and Siena University polls showed Democrats ahead in most and effectively tied in Iowa.
More than 51 million people had already voted early or by mail before Election Day, according to figures reported by Al Jazeera, passing the total early vote recorded in the 2022 midterms. Both parties spent the final weekend urging their supporters to vote, with President Trump campaigning in states Republicans usually hold easily and Democratic leaders, including former President Barack Obama, making closing appeals.
Polling hours are set by each state. The first polls opened in Vermont at 5 a.m. Eastern Time. Voting began at 6 a.m. in New Jersey, Virginia, Connecticut and Kentucky, between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. in Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania and New York, at 6:30 a.m. in Ohio and North Carolina, and at 7 a.m. in Michigan. Voters who are in line when their polling place closes are still entitled to cast a ballot.
Polls close in waves through the evening. The earliest closures are at 6 p.m. Eastern Time in Indiana and Kentucky, and the last polls, in Alaska, close at about 1 a.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday. The first results are expected soon after the early closures, but close races may not be called on election night, and mail and provisional ballots will continue to be counted after Tuesday.
The cost of living has run through the whole campaign. In the final Siena polls across the seven Senate battleground states, only 38 percent of likely voters approved of President Trump’s job performance, and Democrats held an advantage on the cost of living. Whatever the outcome, the new Congress will decide how much of the president’s agenda can move in his final two years, and both parties say Election Day turnout, not the early vote, will make the difference.
