Americans head to the polls for elections that could define Trump's closing chapter

Americans head to the polls for elections that could define Trump's closing chapter

By

North America editor

With two years of his presidency remaining, Donald Trump, who has dominated American politics over the past decade and transformed it in remarkable ways, is facing potentially pivotal elections.

And the midterm elections on Tuesday that will decide control of Congress come at a difficult moment for his Republican Party.

Voters overwhelmingly say they are most concerned about the cost of living. Food and fuel prices have soared in part due to the president's aggressive tariffs and unpopular war with Iran, so it will be top of mind as many head to the polls.

Trump, who has faced record low approval ratings in recent months, has been campaigning hard, headlining dozens of rallies across the country.

But high prices are a concern for voters on all sides - which helps explain why he has been campaigning in previously safe Republican territory, appearing in Iowa and Kansas during a final weekend blitz.

His party has also poured hundreds of millions of dollars of campaign advertising into these traditionally safe contests, such as the Senate race in Kansas.

"When they start spending hard American dollars on political advertising in a state that they should be winning, that's how you know that they think they're in trouble," Carrie Dann, the managing editor of the Cook Political Report, which analyses campaigns and elections, told the BBC.

"The spending [in Kansas] is going to be far more than Republicans ever anticipated," she added. That points to a party that is approaching these elections on the defensive.

At many of his rallies, Trump has also made a plea to voters. "In this election, I'm asking you to pretend, please, that I'm on the ballot," he said last month. "Just pretend."

Of course, he is not on the ballot. But this plea - which he made again in Iowa on Sunday - gets to the heart of a critical question: Is he still an electoral asset for his Republican Party?

The answer to that is not as simple as it once was.

Trump returned to the White House as a formidable force following his crushing 2024 election win - and had the healthy approval ratings to match. Before that, during the previous midterm elections in 2022, his endorsement was courted by Republicans who saw it as vital to success.

Now, with the war with Iran dragging on and hitting many Americans in the pocket, his approval ratings have sunk. The price of a gallon of diesel - which was $3.75 before the war started in February - hit a record high of $6.52 in September.

"I literally just had my son drive across the country, and he called me in every state and told me the price of gas," one voter in Iowa told me. "And I was like - 'oh my gosh, this is horrible'."

Inflation has also ticked up from 3% when Trump took office to 3.7% today, and economists estimate it would have been lower without his sweeping regime of global tariffs.

There is concern among Republicans that this economic picture has left them vulnerable in typically safe races, in states such as Texas, Ohio and Kansas.

"The southern states, the midwestern states, the American heartland - that is where Republicans tend to thrive," said Stephen Hawkins, the global director of research at the pollster More in Common.

"But that is where the Senate races that are so interesting are playing out right now."

"Places where President Trump won by 10, 12, 15 points just two years ago in the presidential race are now states where Democrats have a very viable chance of taking a Senate seat," he said.

When I asked voters in Iowa, a state Trump won in 2024 that has been hit by soaring fuel and fertiliser costs, whether the president would make people more or less likely to back Republicans - the answer was revealing.

"With the current climate, I would think possibly less, believe it or not," Paul Ross told me outside a busy college football game. "As a Republican myself, I would think it might be detrimental."

"I think it definitely puts voters off, there's no doubt about that, and I do think it probably raises the Democratic side to a level that isn't always there, just because it's Donald Trump," added Zach Shimp.

"He's got us in the war," another voter, Rose Heming, said. "Prices and groceries [are] high - sky high - gas is sky high."

That is the story of this election. Many voters, including in solidly Republican states, are hurting financially and polls suggest they may want to make this known at the ballot box on Tuesday.

But it is too simplistic to think this backdrop of war, tariffs and soaring price will usher in a thumping Democratic victory in the House, Senate and governors' races.

Many Republican voters are angry with the president, but not so angry that they would vote for a Democrat. It is a mistake to assume that Trump's weak approval ratings translate to increasing popularity for the other side.

In fact, final polls taken before the elections suggest Trump's approval rating is around 38%. That is low - but the same polls, including a national NBC poll released on Sunday, external, indicate that only 29% of voters view the Democratic Party positively.

Voter frustration is no guarantee of a willingness to switch sides on Tuesday.

"We like to stay out of people's business," Tim McKinnon, a Republican in Iowa who voted for Trump in 2024 told me last month. "And so [Trump's] world stage interventions time after time after time - we don't love it.

"We didn't expect him to necessarily be a perfect choir boy obviously," his wife, Michelle, added. "We voted for the underbelly of what he was standing for."

The Democratic Party cannot rely on voters like the McKinnons, who are frustrated with elements of Trump's recent agenda, to back them. They do not think Democrats will ever reflect their Christian, conservative values.

"One dollar more on gas is not going to change what we believe in," Tim McKinnon told me.

If Democrats do win a large swathe of seats on Tuesday night, it won't necessarily be because voters love them – they just hate them a little less.

The party, however, is already looking ahead to a 2028 presidential election in which they will have to unite behind a single candidate. That is easier said than done given their clear fractures - some of which spilled out publicly during this election cycle, including in Michigan over the weekend.

Democrats will be closely watching these results for lessons ahead of 2028. Can they really win in Texas? Can they tempt rural voters in deep Republican strongholds? And will some of their rising stars, such as Jon Ossoff in Georgia and James Talarico in Texas, live up to the hype?

If the answer to some of these questions is no, there will be much to ponder for the party over the next year. And the post-mortem may not be pretty.

"This represents an opportunity, really, for Democrats to expand a lot of their influence, not just in terms of numbers, but in terms of perception of where they can compete," Hawkins, from the pollster More in Common, said.

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Republican attempts, including from Trump himself, to paint the Democrats as dangerous communists have not landed with all voters.

In Detroit, Michigan, Nicole Williams - who owns her own hairdressing salon - summed up the view of many people I spoke to. "Anything is better than what we have now," she said. "Socialist? Socialised? It don't matter to me. Lower my cost of living."

"People are just tired of the disrespect to Americans, because he is an American," Gwen Jackson, another Michigan voter, said, referring to the state's left-wing Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed who Trump has repeatedly attacked.

"People are just tired," she said. "They're ready to see a change."

Even when a sitting president is more popular than Trump, their party usually loses seats in the midterms. This, combined with the latest polling, means there is confidence among Democrats that they will at least win the House of Representatives.

"It's the cost of living, it's the undeclared war," Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh said of the key issues. "Every Republican who did not stand up to Donald Trump is about to realise the consequences of believing he was invincible."

If the Democrats do win the House, the party could try to block any legislation Trump wants to pass. That is unlikely to worry him, given he has already tried to bypass Congress as much as possible and rule by signing executive orders from the Oval Office instead.

Trump will be more concerned about the investigations Democrats will be able to launch if they take control of the House. They may also try to impeach some of his cabinet members, with Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth seen as a likely candidate due to the war in Iran.

Winning the Senate on Tuesday is likely to be a much harder task for Democrats.

Thirty-five seats are up for election, and they will need a net gain of four to win control. If they lose in Michigan - a battleground seat they already hold - they will need a net gain of five seats to win it.

Most of the battleground races are close and several sit within the margin of error for pollsters. The crucial Senate races to watch are in Michigan, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Maine, Alaska and North Carolina.

This is, in reality, where these midterm elections will be won and lost.

There is, as always with American elections, an important caveat around the polls. They have historically overestimated the Democratic Party and underestimated President Trump, who appears convinced that he can once again defy them.

But if the polls are close to correct about the suggested surge of support for Democrats, then he could be looking at painful defeats in states that have been reliable Republican strongholds for decades.

How Trump may respond to any stinging losses is an open question. He has repeatedly questioned the integrity and security of these elections, and the possibility that he does so again as votes are still being counted or when results are declared is a very real one.

These elections, however, represent a hugely significant moment for Americans, many of whom want to see real change over the next two years.

For both parties, they will serve as the final electoral test before a 2028 presidential election that will determine what a post-Trump politics looks and feels like. And for the president himself, they are an opportunity for voters to cast judgement on how he and his party are performing.

As Trump looks to shape his legacy in the next two years, the question is whether a change in control of Congress, which he has largely bypassed, would really curb his presidency at all.