Campaign for Control of Congress Enters Final Weekend With 49 Million Early Ballots Cast
The fight for Congress is in its final weekend: early voting has already passed 49 million ballots, a midterm record, and the Justice Department has stepped up its intervention in a closely watched Alaska Senate race ahead of Tuesday's vote.
The campaign for control of the United States Congress reached its final weekend on Saturday, with control of both chambers in play on Tuesday and early voting already at a record for a midterm election. More than 49 million Americans have cast ballots, in person or by mail, according to the University of Florida's Election Lab — up from nearly 46 million who voted before Election Day in the last midterms, in 2022. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are on the ballot, along with 35 races in the 100-member Senate.
The sharpest federal intervention of the weekend is in Alaska. The Department of Justice accelerated its criminal investigation there on Friday, following reports that aides to a Democratic Senate candidate recruited a retired schoolteacher from a remote fishing village to get on the ballot because he shares the name of the Republican incumbent, Dan S. Sullivan; the nonpartisan candidate is Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. The department, acting on a civil lawsuit that President Donald Trump said he instigated, also filed further motions seeking to block Alaska from certifying the Senate results if the incumbent loses a close race. The Alaska contest is seen as crucial to Democratic hopes of taking the Senate.
The administration's election litigation is not limited to Alaska. It has also sued California to try to prevent the counting of ballots cast by more than 20,000 registered voters who the administration alleged could be noncitizens, part of a nationwide pattern of federal involvement in state-run races in the closing days.
President Trump, after a month-long campaign blitz in multiple states, is not scheduled to travel on Saturday — a day Reuters described as a mash-up of American traditions: politics, Halloween and college football. He returns to the campaign trail on Sunday in Kansas and Iowa. A Democratic victory in one or both chambers could bring congressional investigations of an administration that has worked for two years with largely compliant Republican majorities, which is why the final weekend's turnout — and Tuesday's — carries the stakes it does.
