Election Day 2026: Voters Deliver Their Verdict on Trump as Control of Congress Hangs in the Balance
Polls and nonpartisan analysts favor Democrats to take the House while the Senate stays uncertain, Reuters reports — with all 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats on ballots that will shape the last two years of the president's term. Chicago and Cook County vote 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.
American voters deliver their verdict Tuesday on the first two years of President Donald Trump's second term, in midterm elections that Reuters reports have polls and nonpartisan analysts favoring Democrats to wrest the House of Representatives from Republicans — while control of the Senate remains uncertain.
The arithmetic is tight in both chambers. All 435 House seats are up for election, along with 35 of the Senate's 100 seats, though most contests are not considered competitive. Democrats must flip at least three House seats and four Senate seats to win a majority in each chamber, and the Senate battle is unfolding across nearly 10 closely contested statewide races, most of them in Republican strongholds where Democrats must defend every seat they hold and win at least two states Trump carried by double digits in 2024.
History and the mood are both against the president's party: the sitting president's party has lost ground in Congress in all but two midterm elections since World War Two, and Trump's approval rating is hovering near his all-time lows, Reuters reports, dragged down by deep voter frustration over the war with Iran and the resulting rise in fuel prices. Polls show voters most concerned about affordability. Trump, who has held more than two dozen campaign rallies since the start of October and has told supporters repeatedly to "pretend I'm on the ballot," said Monday in Washington that "the Democrat Party has nominated the most extreme and dangerous slate of candidates in American history," as Reuters reported.
In the House, 47 races are widely seen as competitive, according to a Reuters analysis of the leading election forecasters; if the other contests proceed as predicted, Democrats would need to win only 13 of those races to secure a majority. Three dozen governors' races also run Tuesday, alongside thousands of state legislative contests. In Chicago and Cook County, the national verdict runs through the same hours as every local race on the ballot: polls are open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., and anyone in line by 7 p.m. votes.
