Trump Faces a Midterm Verdict Today, With the House Leaning Democratic and the Senate Too Close to Call
American voters deliver the first nationwide verdict on President Donald Trump's second term today. Reuters reports polls favor Democrats to take the House, the Senate fight runs through nearly ten close races, and about 1,000 Justice Department monitors fan out across the country.
The verdict arrives today. American voters are deciding whether President Donald Trump's Republicans keep control of Congress for his final two years or hand one or both chambers to the Democrats — and by the eve-of-election evidence Reuters assembled, the president's party is defending on unfavorable ground: his approval rating hovers near its all-time lows, dragged down, Reuters reports, by deep voter frustration over the war with Iran and the resulting rise in fuel prices, with affordability the concern voters name most.
The arithmetic is exact. All 435 House seats are up, along with 35 of the Senate's 100. Democrats must flip at least three House seats and four Senate seats to hold a majority in each chamber. Polls and nonpartisan analysts favor them to wrest the House; the Senate, Reuters reports, remains uncertain, its battle unfolding across nearly ten closely contested statewide races, most in Republican strongholds. Democrats must defend every seat they hold — including a tight Michigan race — while winning at least two states Trump carried by double digits in 2024, among them Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas.
Michigan supplied the final weekend's strangest turn: Democrat Haley Stevens, who narrowly lost the party's Senate primary, on Sunday endorsed the Republican, former Rep. Mike Rogers, against the Democratic nominee, Abdul El-Sayed — a cross-party endorsement Reuters reported as a fresh jolt in one of the races that will decide the chamber. Around the voting itself, Trump's Justice Department plans to deploy about 1,000 monitors nationwide, roughly triple the last midterms — a move the department defends and some local officials worry could intimidate voters — while election officials warn that close races could spark disputes over eligibility, counting and certification.
History is the last number in the file: the sitting president's party has lost ground in Congress in all but two midterm elections since World War Two. What that history cannot say is the scale — a Democratic House alone, a Senate flip with it, or a Republican hold that defies the pattern. New York's polls close at 9 p.m. Eastern; the first decisive returns follow tonight, and this desk will report control of Congress when the races are called, not when they are predicted.
