Show caption: A voter fills out a ballot at a polling location inside Wayn…
Midterms will serve as a referendum on President Donald Trump's first two years back in office
Follow live election results here
American voters will head to the polls on Tuesday to decide the make-up of next year's Congress and who will take up major roles at the state level.
Most polling stations will open at 7am and remain open until 8pm local time. Early voting opened in some states in mid-September, but all polling stations will be open to voters on Tuesday.
The elections come as the cost of living in the US has surged amid the Iran war, with prices for petrol, food and other necessities remaining high.
The midterms will serve as a referendum on President Donald Trump's first two years back in office, and although he is not on the ballot, he has urged voters to make their choices as if he is.
On Monday, he described the elections as "the most important midterm, I believe, in our lifetime".
"It's a Golden Age of America," Mr Trump said in a final pitch to voters in front of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. "We have a country that we can be proud of again."
The incumbent party typically loses seats during the midterms, but the number of seats and governorships Republicans lose will show just how happy the American electorate is with Mr Trump's performance so far.
The lead-up to the elections has been fraught, as the Trump administration engaged in a campaign to combat what it has described as voter fraud.
In Alaska, the Justice Department sued to block election officials from declaring a winner in the Senate race unless it was Republican incumbent Dan S Sullivan, arguing that voters would be confused by the presence of a candidate with a nearly identical name, Dan J Sullivan. The name issue has been widely reported on and the incumbent senator's name is clearly marked on the ballot, but the White House has alleged attempted fraud.
And in California, the White House has tried to request that up to 20,000 mail-in ballots be rejected on the claim that they were cast by non-citizens.
Mr Trump has a history of contesting election results. In the 2020 presidential election, he claimed that rampant fraud had allowed Democrat Joe Biden to defeat him. Election officials and members of his own administration said no widescale fraud had occurred.
Updated:
November 03, 2026, 4:00 AM
Source: The National · Sara Ruthven
At a glance
- Topic
- Politics
- Country
- 🇦🇪 AE
- Publisher language
- EN
- Added to Allnira