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

Republican Guam gubernatorial candidate Tony Ada defeated Democratic candidate Therese Terlaje, according to the Guam Election Commission’s final unofficial tally, flipping the territory’s governorship.

Incumbent Guam Gov. Leon Guerrero first won in 2018, then won reelection in 2022, and finally hit her term limit this year. Republicans held the governorship of the island from 2003 to 2019, and have been eager to return since. After Guerrero won reelection handily in 2022 with 55.49% of the vote, Republicans appear to have found a winning team with Ada and his running mate, E.J. Calvo, who received 51.45% of the vote compared to the 48.15% supporting Terlaje and her lieutenant governor candidate, Sabina Perez.

Ada and Calvo’s unofficial total is above the 50% required to avoid a runoff. The Guam Election Commission still has to certify the results, but the percentages are unlikely to change, with the Republicans receiving over 1,000 more votes than their rivals on the island, which has 59,146 registered voters.

Voter turnout exceeded 53%. Republicans also held the lead in the attorney general race, and Republicans occupied eight of the top 15 positions in the Guam legislature race, giving them a narrow majority, according to the Guam Daily Post.

Republicans experienced one notable loss, however, with Democrats set to flip the territory’s nonvoting delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Several NASA astronauts voted in the 2026 elections from the International Space Station, showing the country how they are casting ballots far from Earth, “just like you on the ground.”

Anil Menon, Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney voted from orbit, with footage from the Associated Press showing Menon voting in a sleeping compartment that doubled as his voting booth.

“Welcome to space station, where today we have the privilege of being able to vote here as well, just like you on the ground. This is my room that doubles as a voting booth for me,” Menon said. “Inside of it is my computer, where I was able to fill out an electronic form and then send it to Harris County, so I can vote today.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is holding an election night phone bank watch party before results begin to roll in later Tuesday night.

“With a few hours left, we take nothing for granted,” Jeffries told reporter. “We want to continue to run through the finish line. The early vote numbers were strong, and today’s vote numbers all across the country are strong in blue states, in swing states, and in red states, but ultimately, this is in the hands of the American people. We believe that the American people are going to make clear that they want things done in a different way here in this country, and Democrats are the ones to deliver that change.”

Over 60 phone bankers gathered to make calls in the last few hours before polls close as part of a last effort to get people out to vote across the country in what is expected to be a good night for Democrats.

Jeffries said he will be watching Kentucky, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina early in the night.

“Every single House Democrat, whether progressive, a New Dem, or a Blue Dog, are all locked in on the need to deal with the affordability crisis,” Jeffries answered when asked how he would unify a caucus if he takes the majority. “Housing costs are too high, health insurance is too high, grocery bills are too high, gas prices are too high. People are drowning in this failed Trump economy, and the need to do something decisively to improve the lives of the American people is the thing that will unify House Democrats across the country and across the ideological spectrum.”

He singled out Kentucky’s sixth district as something to watch in the early hours after polls close.

The event is live streaming CNN and NBC while decorated with signs that read “VOTE!” and “Fighting for an Affordable America.”

The Department of Justice is warning Americans against intimidating its election monitors stationed outside polling locations across the U.S.

“The Justice Department’s election monitors are public servants doing a job the Department has done for decades: making sure that every eligible American can cast a ballot free from intimidation and discrimination,” the Justice Department rapid response account wrote on X. “Publishing their personal information to harass or threaten them is an attempt to frighten federal employees out of doing their jobs.”

The Department said that in the face of any possible intimidation efforts, the poll monitors “will continue their work on Election Day to make sure every eligible voter is able to cast their ballot.”

The Justice Department sent election monitors to all 50 states for the first time on Tuesday, sending about 1,000 monitors across the country.

The first polls in the 2026 midterm election cycle have closed in Kentucky and Indiana.

In Indiana, the election will determine control of Congress, with all nine of its U.S. House seats on the ballot. Republicans have maintained a strong foothold in the state, but several congressional contests could offer Democrats an opportunity to make gains as they seek to break the GOP’s hold on Washington.

Indiana is not electing a new senator this cycle, leaving the state’s House contests and local races as the primary focus for election watchers.

In Kentucky, meanwhile, voters are deciding a slate of federal, state, and local contests. Voting locations closed at 6 p.m. Eastern, while the state’s Central time counties will remain open until 7 p.m. Eastern, or 6 p.m. Central.

The state is not considered a major battleground in the fight for control of the Senate, with Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) expected to sail to victory, but its congressional races remain important to Republicans seeking to preserve their majority in the House.

Kentucky has consistently favored Republican candidates in federal elections, making the state an important part of the GOP’s broader electoral map. Attention will turn to early returns from the state’s congressional districts as results begin to arrive.

The later poll closures in western Kentucky mean statewide results will continue to develop after the first batch of votes is reported.

Texas Republicans are urging voters to stay in line at polling sites until their ballots are cast and to remain undeterred by voting equipment malfunctions.

The Republican Party of Texas said it has received reports of voters being turned away across multiple counties due to the technological issues. The state party and Republican National Committee are looking into the reports, and Texas Secretary of State Robert Howden has been notified.

“We want every Texas voter to know their rights and ensure that every legally cast ballot is properly secured and counted,” Texas Republican Party of Texas Chairwoman D’rinda Randall said in a statement.

“If you experience an issue, do not leave the polling location until you have personally deposited your ballot into the scanner or designated emergency ballot bin,” she said. “Do not surrender your ballot to an election worker. Remain at the polling location and request assistance from the presiding election judge. Every voter deserves confidence that their ballot is protected and properly handled.”

The RNC released a similar statement, saying it is “not correct” for election workers to tell voters to come back after the equipment malfunctions are resolved. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’s running for the Senate, is also aware of the situation.

There were reports of longer-than-normal wait times at polling locations, especially in North Texas, throughout the day before the Republican Party made statements on the issue.

President Donald Trump said he turned off Fox News’s midterm election coverage because he “can’t stand Jessica Tarlov’s voice” and will return to watching the network if she is removed from the air.

“Watching the Pre-Election Results on FoxNews, but I can’t stand Jessica Tarlov’s voice — DUMB AS A ROCK, but it’s the voice that gets me. Have to go somewhere else until that LOSER is off the air — I’ll be back later!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Tarlov is known as one of the network’s more liberal voices and has often drawn the ire of the president and conservative viewers.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) has reportedly requested protection from the U.S. Marshals Service after she received death threats over her endorsement of Michigan’s Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers.

According to a report from Axios, Stevens requested the protection, and a Trump administration official says she is expected to have her request fulfilled.

Stevens made a shock endorsement for Rogers on Sunday, flipping from her prior support for Democratic candidate Abdul el Sayed after their rifts over his criticism of Israel’s government boiled over. She has received a lot of blowback from Democrats for her last-minute backing of Rogers, including several members of her congressional staff who resigned over the endorsement.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running for the Senate in the state, said on Tuesday his office’s investigation into suspected voter fraud in a swing county will continue past Election Day.

Two men in Harris County were recently charged with illegally voting while they were on parole for felony crimes, after a resident tipped off authorities about the matter, according to Paxton’s office. The attorney general, now engaged in a race to beat Democrat James Talarico’s bid to flip the Senate seat blue, said he was probing concerns about further voting violations, revealing “my Election Integrity Unit is actively investigating additional reports of election crime.”

In an interview with Newsmax Tuesday, Paxton said the inquiry would continue past the election.

“There are definitely some examples of felons voting we believe in Harris County,” he said. “We’ll be pursuing this. It won’t be resolved by the time the election is over.”

Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed responded to news that President Donald Trump plans to phase out funding for Israel.

The president announced Tuesday during a Fox News interview that the United States will end its annual aid of roughly $4 billion to Israel by the end of this year “because they don’t need it.” Trump stated this was a decision mutually agreed upon by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While speaking to reporters in Detroit on Election Day, el Sayed was asked about his thoughts on the announcement and whether he believed Trump was being genuine. El Sayed responded, saying, “Even a broken clock can be right twice a day; look at that.”

The midterm elections aren’t over yet, but you can already see 2028 fault lines emerging.

Vice President JD Vance has been out on the campaign trail as much as President Donald Trump and is the Republican National Committee’s finance chairman, a major fundraising position. That’s obvious.

But Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has been out imploring Republicans to vote, especially in Texas, warning that the early voting numbers would swamp not just Ken Paxton but virtually the whole statewide GOP ticket. Getting Paxton elected to the Senate has been a major Cruz priority. Either way, he will become the state’s senior senator and clearly has 2028 ambitions. He was runner-up to Trump a decade ago.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) distanced himself from the Iran war ahead of the midterm elections. While he offered the war and the resulting spike in gasoline prices, he’s also creating a lane for himself in the 2028 primaries. He was the hero of the 2022 midterm elections when the red wave otherwise sputtered, but wasn’t able to capitalize against Trump in 2024.

On the Democratic side, how the socialist and socialist-adjacent candidates perform in competitive Senate races — mainly Michigan, Maine, and Minnesota, with Florida always being more of a long shot — will be important to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) if she decides to run for president. Democrats who have positioned themselves as centrists, whether they really are or not, are faring better as Senate candidates despite running in redder states. In that vein, Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) are topping the 2028 Democratic field in a super-early Atlas Intel poll.

For Washington, D.C., voters anxiously awaiting the results of the city’s proposed ban on foie gras, a French delicacy made from the fattened livers of ducks and geese, the New York Times has launched a prediction needle for the initiative.

The proposed ballot initiative would ban the production and sale of foie gras in Washington. The ban has sparked a fierce debate among animal activists, who believe the force-feeding required to produce foie gras is abusive, and restaurant owners who serve the luxury food, as well as producers of foie gras.

The French delicacy is made from specially fattened livers of ducks and geese, in which a tube is used to feed the birds controlled amounts of corn mash or grain.

Polls close in Washington at 8 p.m.

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) said Tuesday he expects results for New York’s 17th Congressional District to bleed into the “wee hours” of Wednesday morning after ballot scanning problems in Westchester County prevented voting machines from accepting ballots.

Lawler, appearing on CNN, said his campaign, the state board of elections, and the campaign of his opponent, Cait Conley, have come to a “tentative” agreement about how to count the affected ballots. According to Lawler, uncounted ballots will be brought to the state board of elections, where attorneys and both parties can watch, to be counted.

“All of the ballots that have already been cast but not accepted by the machines and placed in the emergency orange bag will be police escorted to the Board of Elections from across the county, and it will be counted at the Board of Elections, a central location,” Lawler said. “Everybody will be able to see all of the ballots be counted tonight.”

However, Lawler said he expects the counting of the affected ballots to “take a few hours,” as machines are only able to process about 2,000 ballots an hour.

“There’s going to be roughly 10 machines at the Board of Elections to process them,” Lawler said. “So about 20,000 votes an hour will be processed and scanned. So it’s going to take a few hours, but we expect to have results certainly into the wee hours of tomorrow morning.”

Across the nation, officials are helping Election Day run smoothly, a top elections expert told reporters on Tuesday afternoon.

“We’re seeing elections go very normally with only minor problems,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

Some issues have occurred in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, where polling location hours have been extended to accommodate late openings. Scanners in Westchester County, New York, are having issues tabulating ballots. The Department of Justice also sent 1,000 election monitors to polls, although “we’ve heard of very few problems,” said Becker, who worked for seven years as a senior trial attorney in the Voting Section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.

“We’re at the point where everybody in the country is now voting, and we’re just not hearing as many problems,” said Becker. “And that’s really remarkable. It’s largely due to the preparation of those local and county election officials who worked so hard to pull it over, despite attempts at federal interference, and it also is due to the large numbers of people who chose early and mail voting.”

By Tuesday afternoon, more than 51 million Americans have already voted, 22% more than at the same point in 2022, according to TargetSmart. Becker identified 10 states where early voting hit record levels: Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.

Becker also cautioned reporters that it may take time before control of the House and Senate is called. “We will almost certainly not know who controls the Senate tonight or by tomorrow morning,” he said. “We may know who controls the House, but it might not be until late. We’ll have to see how the results go … officials are going to be staying up through the night, getting reports of ballots out as quickly as possible.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement warned noncitizens Tuesday that it would pursue anyone who illegally casts a ballot, posting the message on X as voters headed to the polls in the 2026 midterm elections.

The post echoed a message Attorney General Todd Blanche posted Monday. Blanche urged the public to report suspected noncitizen voting, double voting, and ballot-box stuffing to the FBI. “Violators will be found and prosecuted,” he wrote.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) responded to ICE about an hour later in a quote post. He turned the agency’s words into a warning aimed at federal agents: “If YOU show up to the polls illegally, we will find you.”

ICE’s post came the same day it announced that officers had arrested two foreign nationals in Tennessee on charges of voting in the 2024 presidential election.

Federal law makes it a felony to station troops or armed agents at polling places. President Donald Trump has declined to rule out sending troops or immigration agents to the polls. However, the military’s top officer has said there are no plans to send troops to polling sites. The Department of Homeland Security has said ICE “is not planning operations targeting polling locations.”

The Justice Department said in a court filing last week that no FBI or ICE employees would serve among its roughly 1,000 election monitors. The monitors come from agencies including the Bureau of Prisons and the Drug Enforcement Administration, and they are barred from carrying firearms. A federal judge on Monday night rejected an NAACP bid to block them.