2026 midterm elections live updates: Latest news, results, and analysis

Affordability

Democrats have repeatedly hammered their opponents on the issue and tied them to the president, who is facing record-low approval numbers.

“This is the rot at the core of our broken system. It’s why so many Texans can’t get ahead no matter how hard they work,” Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico said at a Sunday rally. “It’s why we can’t afford the basics in this economy — gas, groceries, utilities, healthcare — because the system has been rigged by crooked politicians just like Ken Paxton.”

Transgender issues

The Senate Leadership Fund is out with an ad hitting Iowa Democratic Senate nominee Josh Turek for voting to “allow boys to use girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms in schools.”

“Josh Turek chose cocktail hour with his liberal donors over representing Iowans in Des Moines,” said Chris Gustafson, the GOP super PAC’s communications director. “Turek skipped over half his votes in the state House and only showed up to advance the Far-Left’s radical agenda, like allowing men in girls’ bathrooms. Turek is far too liberal for Iowa.”

Corruption

This cycle, both Democrats and Republicans are making an issue of congressional stock trading. The main super PAC affiliated with House Democrats is running ads attacking incumbent GOP lawmakers over their stock trades while serving in office.

“Take Victoria Spartz,” says one Democrat ad targeting the Indiana Republican. “Her family traded up to $5 million in stocks in just the last five years, and got caught failing to disclose her trades on time. All while voting to make our lives more expensive, Spartz is keeping the game rigged for herself, leaving us behind.”

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The Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC is launching a $1.2 million ad buy in Mississippi days before the state’s Senate election, going all in on the messaging against Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s (R-MS) quote suggesting Mississippians choose another protein.

Hyde-Smith’s Democratic challenger, Scott Colom, has hit the Republican hard on her quote from an interview in which she told constituents that there are many other proteins to choose from if people are worried about the high price of beef. Colom has picked up the slogan “pick another senator” in response to the quote.

On Wednesday, the super PAC stood firm on its main attack line against Hyde-Smith, with an ad that features a voice at a fast-food drive-thru telling a customer who wants a burger to choose again.

“It’s real expensive right now, but the senator’s got a suggestion: ‘You know you have so many proteins to choose from,'” the ad says.

Polling in the race puts Hyde-Smith ahead, with the Cook Political Report deeming it “likely Republican.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) predicted that if Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed wins next week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) will be the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee.

“I told you, the eyes of the country are on Michigan,” Cruz said while stumping for Republican Mike Rogers. “I believe if el Sayed wins, the Democrat nominee for president in 2028 will be AOC.”

Cruz explained that his prediction is based on the idea that el Sayed, a progressive Democrat, winning a statewide election would be viewed as a sign of success for the left-wing flank of the party.

“Look, in the primary, the No. 1 argument against AOC is she’s too extreme to win the general,” Cruz said. “If el Sayed wins, they’ll say, ‘Nope. You can nominate a complete moonbat, and a swing state like Michigan will vote for her.'”

The senator, who has also floated the possibility of running in 2028, also warned against viewing an Ocasio-Cortez candidacy as a win for the GOP.

“I just want to warn you: we’re a divided country,” he said. “How many people on Sept. 11, 2001, could possibly imagine that Zohran Mamdani would be the mayor of New York City? Look, if AOC is the nominee, she could win.”

Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ) is aiming to boost his bipartisan appeal ahead of Election Day in Arizona, touting cross-party endorsements from Democrats and support from local leaders seven days before voters cast their ballots.

“Our campaign is supported by local leaders from across AZ06 — county supervisors, mayors and council members. Independents. Republicans. And Democrats,” Ciscomani wrote on X.

CANDIDATES IN PURPLE STATES TOUT CROSS-PARTY ENDORSEMENTS IN APPEAL TO MARGINAL VOTERS

The incumbent Republican is facing a challenge in Arizona’s 6th Congressional District from Democrat Marine veteran JoAnna Mendoza, who has received a large push in support from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The Cook Political Report shifted the race in October to “leans Democrat.”

Ciscomani, who is also endorsed by national Republicans including President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), also rebuked a Trump rally in October, telling the Arizona Republic that he had prior plans.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio will join President Donald Trump in Ohio on Wednesday, marking the second day in a row the Cabinet official will rally with the commander in chief ahead of the midterm elections.

Rubio appeared with Trump twice on Tuesday as the president held back-to-back rallies in Texas. The secretary of state will now travel with Trump again to Chillicothe, Ohio, according to Bloomberg. The president has visited Ohio twice this month.

Rubio’s stage presence in Texas was brief, and it was not immediately clear whether he would be handling other business while in the Buckeye State. He has largely steered clear of the midterm elections in the past several months.

The secretary of state’s showing his face on the campaign trail is notable, as he is floated as one of the Republican Party’s top picks for the 2028 presidential nomination. Vice President JD Vance has also been considered a likely 2028 nominee, but Trump has not indicated his preference, only noting that he “likes” both officials.

The Washington Examiner reached out to the State Department for confirmation.

Georgia’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson is spending big in his own race, investing over $200 million of his personal funds into his campaign.

Jackson, the billionaire founder of Jackson Healthcare, self-funded his February campaign launch and has since heavily invested his own money. Jackson reached the nine-digit figure after he gave $92.5 million since the previous funding reports in August, and gave $4.5 million within the last week after the Oct. 20 deadline, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Jackson has a massive fundraising advantage over Democratic candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms, who raised $23.2 million in the latest reporting period since August, $69.3 million less than Jackson, per the outlet.

The race is listed as a toss-up by Cook Political Report, with Jackson leading within the margin of error according to RealClearPolitics’s average of the election’s polls.

With just six days before Election Day, over 35 million voters have cast their ballots either by mail or in-person early voting.

According to NBC News, 47% of votes counted thus far were cast by registered Democrats. Republicans trail at 35%, while third-party voters have cast 18% of early votes.

In battleground states, the margins are somewhat closer, as Republicans have cast 39% of early and mail-in votes counted while Democrats remain at 47%. The states included as battlegrounds in the dataset are Maine, New Hampshire, Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, Kansas, North Carolina, Arkansas, Georgia, and Texas.

While approximately 35.4 million votes have been counted so far, 16.8 million were sent by mail, and 18.5 million were cast in person.

Texas leads in the number of early votes cast, as 5.2 million voters have submitted their ballots in the highly contested Senate race between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico. In the same period during the 2022 midterm elections, only 3.4 million votes had been counted.

Democrats have gained ground in two gubernatorial races as the nonpartisan political analysis firm Cook Political Report shifted the Nebraska and Kansas races in the party’s favor.

According to CPR, the party is slated to win two chief executive seats currently held by Republicans. The partisan split in governors’ mansions is 26-24, with the GOP in the lead, but a particularly bad election could see the party lose as many as four seats.

On the chopping block are Iowa, Alaska, and Ohio, with Georgia also seeing the possibility of going for Democrats.

The pollster shifted the Nebraska governor’s race from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican,” and the Kansas race was moved from “lean Republican” to “toss-up.”

The GOP appears to have lost some of its edge in Kansas, as CPR shifted the race in favor of Democrat Cindy Holscher as she takes on Republican nominee Ty Masterson, who has the backing of President Donald Trump. The pollster said the reason for the shift in part has to do with the state’s competitive Senate race growing closer in recent weeks.

“Republicans still feel optimistic about flipping this race, and it remains their best takeover opportunity, but the volatility of the contest merits it being in a more competitive column,” CPR said.

In the Cornhusker State, Gov. Jim Pillen (R-NE) is facing Democratic challenger Lynne Walz, as well as two other candidates from the state’s America First Party and the Legal Marijuana Now party.

“The crowded ballot and Pillen’s unpopularity create enough uncertainty that we are moving it into a more competitive category,” CPR said in its analysis.

Should Democrats win between two and four governorships in the midterm elections, it will mark the first time the party holds more chief executives than the GOP since 2010.

Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) hit the campaign trail in Georgia this week to stump for Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) in his reelection campaign against Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA).

“GEORGIA is fired up to reelect Jon Ossoff!” Spanberger wrote on X with images of herself at his campaign event.

Ossoff is leading Collins in the polls, with the race ranked “likely Democrat” by election forecaster Cook Political Report. Spanberger’s visit comes just ahead of Ossoff’s rally with former President Barack Obama and Georgia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms.

Bottoms is locked in a toss-up race against Republican Rick Jackson and just received a $5 million funding boost from the Democratic Governors’ Association.

Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed is scaling back his expectation that he’d beat Republican Mike Rogers by 7 points in the general election, leaving his margin prediction more open-ended.

In an interview with Politico, el Sayed was asked if he still believes he will win by 7 points next week, as he had told the outlet earlier this month.

“We’ll see,” el Sayed said.

According to an average of polls by RealClearPolitics, el Sayed holds a slight lead over Rogers, roughly 2.5 percentage points. Prediction market Kalshi says el Sayed is likely to beat Rogers, with the Democratic candidate’s chance of winning standing at 69%.

The battle for el Sayed rests in swaying voters who sided with his more moderate primary competitor, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI). But powerful Democrats have lent their campaign strength over the last week, including former President Barack Obama and Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI).

By all accounts, Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson’s bid to succeed retiring Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) is a long shot. But with just one week until Election Day, Democrats are eyeing the seat as early voting in the gerrymandered district significantly outpaces 2022 levels and the race’s only campaign poll shows Pearson within striking distance.

In Shelby County, which contains the Memphis part of the district, there has been a 60% increase in ballots cast at this point in 2022, according to Tennessee’s secretary of state’s office. Early voting is lagging behind 2018 totals, however, by almost 8 points.

The turnout surge comes amid a broader nationwide battle over race and redistricting, following an April Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Louisiana congressional map drawn to create a second majority-black district. In May, the Tennessee Republican legislature, led by Gov. Bill Lee (R-TN), moved to pass a new congressional map of its own.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and his closest allies in Washington could hold sweeping new power if Democrats retake the Senate in November, shifting the party closer to his trademark brand of economic populism.

Sanders, the Vermont socialist and two-time presidential candidate, is likely to chair the Senate panel responsible for overseeing labor, education, and healthcare next year if Democrats reclaim the chamber.

The financial sector could also be subject to more scrutiny if Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who rose to prominence as a fierce critic of Wall Street, takes over the banking committee.

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President Donald Trump alluded to the likelihood that the Iran war will resume in earnest after next week’s midterm elections.

“You’ll see Iran in a couple of weeks, if you don’t mind,” Trump told a crowd on Tuesday during a rally in Lubbock, Texas.

Trump has used the campaign trail to defend the Iran war, contending Tehran’s regime cannot have a nuclear weapon.

At the same time, he has argued that gas prices, a midterm election pressure point, will drop precipitously once the war has ended, announcing on Tuesday he is terminating former President Joe Biden‘s “expensive and unnecessary methane regulations to save consumers and energy producers.”

Trump was accompanied to Texas by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a rare campaign appearance from the country’s top diplomat to coincide with the arrival of an oil tanker carrying 1 million barrels of heavy Venezuelan crude oil, part of a bilateral energy agreement reached after the United States captured deposed leader Nicolas Maduro.

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The debate between Rep. Zach Nunn (R-IA) and Democratic state Rep. Sarah Trone Garriott traded jabs with one another during their last debate before Election Day over each other’s attack ads.

Trone Garriott accused Nunn multiple times of not voting to release the names of the perpetrators in the Epstein files, saying, “He took $50,000 from people named in the Epstein files and then he voted twice not to release those files.”

Nunn clarified that he did not support the original versions of the Epstein files release, which would have made the identities of the victims public rather than just the perpetrators.

“I want to make sure Jeffrey Epstein and all of his accomplices are held fully accountable,” Nunn said. “He’s a disgusting human being, and we’ve been able to lead that legislation here in Iowa. Simply opening up and making the files transparent for the victims — their names, their addresses, their background —that’s not fair to the victims.”

Nunn attacked Trone Garriott in turn, saying she supports biological men in women’s and girls’ sports and teaching transgender ideology to elementary school children.

“Here’s the reality: I haven’t found a kindergarten teacher in America that wants to teach the curriculum she would dictate upon us,” Nunn said.

Rep. Zach Nunn (R-IA) said during the debate on Tuesday night against Democratic state Rep. Sarah Trone Garriott that Iowa has “paid a disproportionately high price” for the war in Iran.

Nunn, running for reelection to represent southwestern Iowa, referenced the six Iowa residents killed in the conflict in Iran as well as two Iowans killed last year in a terrorist attack that the congressman said was likely funded by Iran.

“We owe it to them to be able to provide a battle plan on how to protect our country and what this looks like going forward,” Nunn said, adding that he has supported increasing sanctions on Iran.

Trone Garriott said the conflict needs “better leadership in the Department of Defense” by impeaching War Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“He does not have the experience,” she said. “He is not accomplishing the goal, and we need someone who understands what global conflict means and how to bring this home so we can achieve our goals and bring stability to the world.”