{"id":229658,"date":"2026-11-03T21:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T21:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/americans-head-to-polls-in-midterm-elections-seen-as-referendum-on-trump-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T21:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T21:47:08","slug":"americans-head-to-polls-in-midterm-elections-seen-as-referendum-on-trump-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/americans-head-to-polls-in-midterm-elections-seen-as-referendum-on-trump-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans head to polls in midterm elections seen as referendum on Trump – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Control of the Senate and House of Representatives, both currently held by the Republicans, is at stake
US midterm elections 2026: latest updates<\/a>
Americans are heading to the polls today in US midterm elections widely seen as a referendum on Donald Trump\u2019s second presidency and a chance for opponents to rein in his untrammeled power.
Democrats and Republicans have scrambled in recent days to deliver their final pitches to voters, with control of the US Senate and House of Representatives<\/a> \u2013 both currently held by the Republicans \u2013 at stake. Also on the ballot are 36 governor\u2019s races, as well as control of state legislatures, sheriff\u2019s races and ballot measures.
The campaign has been overshadowed by Trump, who has staged several dozen rallies across the country while urging his make America great again (Maga) base to vote for Republican candidates and pretend his name was on the ballot.
The party holding the White House typically loses congressional seats at midterm elections, and Democrats<\/a> are hoping Trump\u2019s nose-diving popularity can be exploited to generate a \u201cblue wave\u201d groundswell of popular opposition that will win them the Senate and the House.
They are seeking to wrest control over both chambers of Congress to put a brake on Trump\u2019s presidential power, which has gone largely unchecked as he launched a fierce immigration crackdown involving mass arrests and deportations, waged war on Iran, imposed tariffs on foreign imports and embarked on vainglorious building projects, including a White House ballroom.
Opinion surveys have suggested the Democrats are well positioned to win the House. The party faces a tougher task to regain control of the Senate, although it has targeted several Republican-held seats including Ohio, Texas and Maine.
\u201cThere has to be a better way for everyday people to be able to live their lives out here,\u201d said Maine\u2019s Democratic Senate candidate, Troy Jackson, in final pitch to voters on Monday. \u201cAnd if we quit wasting money on foreign wars, if we quit giving money to billionaires, if we quit doing these dumbass tariffs and things like that, we can make people\u2019s lives better by prioritizing what we want to do in this country to help regular, everyday people, and that\u2019s what this race is about. I\u2019m tired of watching elected officials cater to people like Elon Musk.\u201d
A final set of polls from the New York Times and Siena University, published<\/a> on Sunday, put Democratic candidates ahead in five of seven key battleground contests \u2013 including Texas and Kansas, where voters have not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1988 and 1932 respectively.
The final stretch of the campaign was not without drama for the Democrats, however. In Michigan \u2013 widely seen as a crucial pillar to either party\u2019s ambitions of control in the Senate \u2013 the Democratic congresswoman Haley Stevens, who lost her party\u2019s Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed his Republican rival, Mike Rogers<\/a>, on Sunday.
Stevens was widely condemned<\/a> by fellow Democrats over the move, which followed a feud with the El-Sayed campaign over an outside group\u2019s campaign ad that blamed the high cost of living on US support for Israel. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, described her endorsement of Rogers as \u201ca despicable betrayal\u201d.
\u201cWhatever they\u2019re trying to distract you, it\u2019s because they\u2019re picking your pocket,\u201d El-Sayed told hundreds of supporters in Royal Oak, Michigan, on Monday.
The extraordinary rupture took places days after the party faced damaging headlines in Alaska, where it was reported<\/a> that the Democratic Senate candidate\u2019s campaign was behind an effort to recruit a challenger with almost the same name as her rival, the Republican senator Dan Sullivan. (The Democratic candidate, Mary Peltola, has denied any knowledge of such a scheme on the part of her campaign.)
Before the report of the Peltola campaign\u2019s involvement, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit to block the certification of Alaska\u2019s Senate results in the event of a Republican defeat, citing potential \u201cvoter confusion\u201d over the presence of two Dan Sullivans on the ballot. The lawsuit has since been dismissed by a judge<\/a>.
Trump has put himself center stage by crisscrossing the country to deliver a succession of speeches for Republican candidates, despite opinion polls showing his approval ratings falling to record lows of between 33 and 37%.
In his final public campaign appearance on Monday<\/a>, Trump spent most of the time in a rambling talk about his problem-plagued renovation of Washington\u2019s reflecting Pool. \u201cThis is the last day before the midterm elections, the most important midterm I believe in our lifetime,\u201d he said, 26 minutes into the speech, before quickly returning to talking about renovations. Schumer called it a \u201cpathetic closing message\u201d.
Democrats have sought to reinforce the message that the election is about Trump while trying to highlight the perceived corruption of the US president and his family, along with affordability issues and the impact of the conflict with Iran, which is seen as having exacerbated the cost of living.
Opinion surveys have shown that voters have become increasingly concerned about corruption in government. A recent Harris poll for the Guardian<\/a> found that 76% think elected officials care more about enriching themselves than improving the economy for ordinary people.
Disclosures to the US office of government ethics<\/a> show that Trump has made about $2.2bn since returning to the White House, including royalties from his own name-branded memecoin.
As the president has grown wealthier, voters have chafed under rising living costs, which Trump vowed to reduce during his 2024 presidential campaign.
The war with Iran \u2013 which Trump launched in February in tandem with Israel \u2013 has stoked inflation by increasing global oil prices, which has led to higher prices at the pump for American motorists and raised the cost of diesel, a vital fuel for supply chains and farmers.
\u201cWe need to focus that anger and point it at where it ought to be pointed, which is at a broken two-choice political system that is too easily abused to allow elected officials to be corrupt and to be lazy and still hold power,\u201d Rob Sand, Iowa\u2019s Democratic candidate for governor, said on Monday.
The US elections also take place under a shadow of uncertainty about whether Trump will accept the results if they do not go the Republicans\u2019 way.
Alaska is just one of the cases being pursued by the justice department \u2013 under the control of Trump\u2019s close ally, Todd Blanche, the attorney general \u2013 that opponents say are designed to cast doubt on the election\u2019s integrity, including through baseless claims of mass voting by non-US citizens.
The department plans to deploy a record 1,000 election monitors to polling stations across the US. Critics have denounced the move as voter intimidation.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Control of the Senate and House of Representatives, both currently held by the Republicans, is at stakeUS midterm elections 2026: latest updatesAmericans are heading to the polls today in US midterm elections widely seen as a referendum on Donald Trump\u2019s second presidency and a chance for opponents to rein in his untrammeled power.Democrats and Republicans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":229659,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}