US president Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail on Sunday with rallies in Iowa and Kansas, Republican-leaning states where his party is fighting to hold US Senate seats, two days before midterm elections that will decide control of Congress.
Trump, who spent Saturday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after weeks of campaigning across multiple states, won Iowa by double digits in 2024. But polls show Democrats tied with or leading Republicans in many of the state’s races. And Trump’s approval among rural Americans fell to a new low of 45 per cent in October, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.
Kansas, which last elected a Democratic senator in 1932, is also facing an unexpectedly close race.
If Democrats take control of the House or Senate, they could block Trump’s legislative agenda for his final two years in office and launch investigations of an administration that has so far faced largely compliant Republican majorities. The White House has been preparing to implement portions of Trump’s agenda without the aid of Congress.
More than 52 million Americans have already voted in person or by mail, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, a record for a midterm and up from nearly 46 million who voted before election day in 2022.
Senate control could come down to a handful of states, including Alaska, where polls show incumbent senator Dan S Sullivan, a Republican, in a tight race with Democrat Mary Peltola.
Sullivan on Sunday said he would accept the results of Tuesday’s election even before, in a blow to Trump later in the day, a federal judge threw out a lawsuit by the president’s administration seeking to block Alaska from certifying any loss by Sullivan in the midterms if votes for a rival who shares his name could have changed the outcome.
Although the senator said he would accept the election result, he joined his party colleagues in accusing the other Sullivan – Daniel J Sullivan jnr – of trying to confuse voters with his similar name.
“They got the decoy guy on the ballot,” the senator told CNN’s State of the Union programme. “I’m sure I’m going to lose a lot of votes to that trickery. So what I say to Alaskans is don’t let them get away with the tricks.”
Peltola and the campaign committee have denied involvement, and Sullivan jnr has denied co-ordinating with Peltola’s campaign.
Congressman James Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, said on Sunday his panel has opened its own investigation into Peltola’s role.
In Michigan, where Democrat Abdul El-Sayed faces Republican Mike Rogers in another closely watched Senate race, congresswoman Haley Stevens, a Democrat and the rival whom El-Sayed defeated in the primary, broke with her party and endorsed Rogers in the Michigan Senate race. Stevens, who made a surprise appearance on Sunday alongside Rogers at a Detroit church, posted a video to social media making the endorsement. “You may have seen our Democratic nominee for US Senate, Abdul, said I was no longer welcome in his campaign and I should stay away,” Stevens said. “And he’s right. And that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today. I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign.”
El-Sayed’s campaign had asked Stevens to skip his events up to election day so as “not to distract from the central issues of the campaign”, a person familiar with the matter said. Stevens has demanded he condemn an outside group’s ad that she says blames Israel for high grocery prices. – Reuters
Source: The Irish Times · Sun Nov 01 2026 - 18:45 • 3 MIN READ
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