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

Former President Barack Obama is set to appear with Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms at a rally in Atlanta at the end of October.

“Georgia! I’ll be in Atlanta on October 28 for a rally to support @KeishaforGA, @Ossoff, and Democrats fighting to make your life better,” Obama wrote in a post on X.

Obama has endorsed Ossoff and Bottoms as they vie for election in the Peach State. Cook Political Report has listed Ossoff’s race against Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) as a “likely Democrat” race, while Bottoms is in a tighter toss-up race against Republican Rick Jackson.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is set to campaign virtually with Florida’s Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon on Tuesday afternoon, backing a progressive challenger in a race where Democrats face steep odds of flipping a Republican-held seat.

Nixon, who is in the Florida House of Representatives, will face Republican nominee Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL) in November. Moody was appointed to the Senate after then-Sen. Marco Rubio was tapped to be secretary of state in President Donald Trump’s administration.

A staunch progressive associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, Nixon pulled off an upset in the Democratic primary over better-funded establishment candidate Alex Vindman.

Schumer has endorsed Nixon despite her progressive politics, even as he has sparred with the party’s left flank over candidate recruitment and campaign strategy during the 2026 election cycle. The New York Democrat has faced pressure from progressives to embrace candidates who better reflect the party’s liberal base, while party leaders have emphasized electability and the need to reclaim the Senate majority.

Florida, which has shifted toward Republicans in recent election cycles, presents a difficult path for Democrats hoping to expand their Senate map. Moody, a former Florida attorney general, also benefits from the advantages of incumbency and the state’s Republican lean.

A super PAC backed by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America launched a new $500,000 ad campaign against Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico in Texas, calling him a “pro-abortion fanatic.”

The ad highlights that Talarico, following the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June 2022, called on former President Joe Biden to lease federal property to abortion clinics to circumvent state laws prohibiting elective abortion. Talarico in the June 2022 letter to Biden also urged the president to hire abortion providers “as federal employees to provide immunity from state lawsuits.”

Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, has long been criticized by anti-abortion advocates for citing biblical passages referencing life beginning at “first breath” rather than at the moment of conception.

PAC spokeswoman Kelsy Pritchard, in a press statement, called Talarico “one of the most extreme, deceptive candidates Texas has ever seen.”

“Voters must examine not only what Talarico says, but what he does, because his record shows a true pro-abortion fanatic,” Pritchard said. “The hundreds of thousands of Texans we speak with at their doors overwhelmingly reject the agenda of Talarico and the Democrats and we are confident they can be defeated this fall.”

Former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper holds a double-digit lead over Republican nominee Michael Whatley in the race for
the state’s open Senate seat just 14 days before the election.

Elon University/YouGov poll conducted Sept. 28 through Oct. 8 found Cooper was favored by 52% of likely voters, compared with 39% who favored Whatley.

“Roy Cooper’s sustained lead over Michael Whatley in North Carolina is being driven in large part by strong support among moderates, true independents and women,” director of the Elon University Poll Jason Husser said.

The poll also found Cooper held a recognizability advantage over his opponent. Surveying likely voters, 67% said they had heard a “great deal” about Cooper, compared with 38% who said they had heard a “great deal” about Whatley. Cooper served as North Carolina’s governor for two terms, which stretched from 2017 to 2025.

Cooper and Whatley are campaigning to replace the seat currently held by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who announced he would not seek reelection following several high-profile disagreements with President Donald Trump.

President Donald Trump portrayed the French protests as a cautionary tale for the United States during a rally in Kansas for under-pressure Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KY).

“If you want to see what is at stake in this election, just look at what’s happening in France, a once great nation that is being conquered, looted, and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists, and communists who hate Christianity, and they hate, frankly, the Western civilization itself,” Trump told a crowd in Wichita on Monday.

Trump claimed that in Europe, “globalist, left-wing politicians have treasonously imported millions and millions of third-world migrants who are totally incompatible with [the] West, and they are incompatible with Western values.”

“They despise everything about France, and they’re destroying that country,” he said. “We’re not going to let that happen to this country. … This is what’s happening to France. They want it to happen to our country. It’s never happening here.”

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Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) is facing his most competitive reelection battle yet, with a tough political environment for Republicans as his Democratic challenger, Gina Hinojosa, creeps up in the polls.

Abbott, who is seeking a fourth term, faces possible headwinds as President Donald Trump grapples with low approval ratings amid rising gas prices and the war in Iran. The president’s party has historically faced challenges in midterm elections.

“I’ll tell you in football terms: It’s like playing an away game, as opposed to a home game,” Abbott told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “It doesn’t mean you can’t win. You just got to play harder, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

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KATY, Texas — Early voting kicked off in Texas on Monday as hundreds of supporters of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott showed up in support at Clays, a Southern restaurant north of Houston.

“All of us, we got to fight together, and we will win this election,” Abbott said. “We will destroy the Democrats, and we will keep Texas, Texas.”

Supporters arrived at the restaurant in the hours leading up to the governor’s stop, where he spoke for about 15 minutes before taking pictures with his supporters. Rally attendees snacked on burgers and nachos while sipping on sweet tea.

The governor encouraged attendees to vote early and celebrated those who voted as soon as the first polls opened.

Other attendees shared a similar belief.

“What I’ve been working on is going door to door, knocking on, trying to get people motivated to get out and vote, and also sending out messages, text messages to people, trying to not just encourage them, but also remind them that hey, early voting starting,” Mike Michna, candidate for Texas House’s 134th District, told the Washington Examiner at the rally. “Let’s get out and vote.”

Other candidates are also ringing in the start of early voting across the state. Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico and Republican nominee Ken Paxton will rally 14 miles apart from one other Monday evening in Fort Worth, Texas, marking the start of each of their early voting tours.

Abbott’s opponent Gina Hinojosa held a press conference Monday morning in Austin in which she accused the governor of violating state law by withholding his communications with trillionaire Elon Musk.

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) has an 8-point lead over Democrat David Jolly in the 2026 race to be Florida’s next governor, according to the latest poll in the matchup.

Donalds had the support of 50% of respondents in a new Univision-YouGov poll released Monday, while Jolly carried only 42%. Likewise, in the Florida Senate race, incumbent Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL) leads her Democratic challenger, Angie Nixon, 51% to 42%.

Donalds’s race to succeed term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is listed as “leans Republican,” while Moody’s is listed as a “solid Republican” seat, per the Cook Political Report.

Vice President JD Vance was heckled by a protester who called for the full release of the Epstein files at a North Carolina rally on Monday, with Vance joking about the heckler being an illegal immigrant.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to have to amend something I said earlier. I said that we have had zero illegal border crossings in the United States. But one isn’t bad, right?” Vance said, as the protester was escorted out of the room by security.

The heckler had sat in the stand directly behind Vance at the Hendersonville, North Carolina, rally on Monday. Republican candidates from up and down the midterm ballot sat in the front row beside Vance, with GOP Senate candidate Michael Whatley in the first seat. Whatley is in a “likely Democratic” seat, facing off against former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.

A Kansas man has been charged with threatening to kill President Donald Trump after allegedly posting online comments about shooting the president and claiming to have mapped out nearby rooftops ahead of Trump’s Monday visit to Wichita.

Jaden John Read was charged with knowingly and willfully threatening to take the life of or inflict bodily harm on the president, according to a federal criminal complaint filed Oct. 17. The charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

The alleged threats surfaced ahead of Trump’s planned Monday evening rally in Wichita, where the president is scheduled to campaign for Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS). Marshall is facing a competitive reelection contest against Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton, making the president’s visit a significant moment in a race that could have implications for the Senate majority.

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President Donald Trump waved off concerns about his trip to historically red Kansas on Monday, telling reporters that the “polls are fake” and the race between incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) and Democrat Adam Hamilton “shouldn’t be” close.

“He’s one of the best senators. He’s, I think, he’s tied or up by a little bit, according to polls — look, the polls are fake — but according to polls,” Trump told reporters during a press gaggle ahead of his trip to Kansas on Monday. “So I want to make sure Roger Marshall gets in. Roger Marshall is a great man, and he’s a great senator. So that’s why I’m going.”

Trump will campaign for Marshall in a Park City, Kansas, event on Monday. Trump’s rally for the first-term senator comes just two days ahead of Marshall’s Wednesday night debate against Hamilton. According to RealClearPolitics’s average, Marshall has a 0.3-percentage-point margin over Hamilton in the state Trump won by over 16 percentage points in 2024.

Republican-backed midterm advertisements mentioning President Donald Trump dropped to just 1% of all GOP ads on the airwaves in October.

Trump’s name had been mentioned in 47% of all Republican video advertisements in May, marking a sharp drop from the primary season compared to the month before general elections, according to a report on advertising data from AdImpact.

The advertising analysis follows moves from several Trump-endorsed candidates to distance themselves from the president and the war with Iran as his approval rating lowers and the war polls as unpopular with American citizens. Trump’s presidential approval rating sat at 33% in a new poll from the Washington Post, ABC News, and Ipsos.

Former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will headline Turning Point USA’s “Make Heaven Crowded Tour” rally in New Hampshire this week.

Leavitt, who previously ran for U.S. House in the Granite State, is headed to her home state just three weeks before voters hit the polls in the midterm elections and make their voices heard in the state’s tight Senate race between Republican former Sen. John E. Sununu and Democratic candidate Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH).

Leavitt left her role leading the White House Press Office at the end of August, transitioning to President Donald Trump’s super PAC MAGA Inc. and to Fox News as a contributor. She has not yet hit the campaign trail in 2026.

Trump has endorsed Sununu for his race against Pappas, which is currently listed as “leans Democratic” by the Cook Political Report. Pappas is currently favored against Sununu by an average of 6.5 percentage points, per RealClear Polling’s average.

Texas’s two Senate candidates, Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico, will appear in the same city on Monday evening, as each will hold a rally in Fort Worth at 7 p.m. local time on the first day of early voting in the Lone Star State.

Paxton’s rally will include an appearance from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with doors opening at 6 p.m., per The Texan. His rally will take place at a wedding venue downtown, just 14 miles away from Talarico’s rally at a local high school.

The Republican attorney general recently launched his “Come and Take It” tour, a statewide bus trip that will include more than 30 stops with just over two weeks until Election Day.

The two candidates are wrapped up in a heated toss-up Senate election, with Talarico leading Paxton by an average 2.2-percentage-point margin in recent polling, according to RealClearPolling’s average. Texas has not elected a Democratic senator since the late 1980s.

Eighteen states across the United States will begin early voting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections this week, as the Nov. 3 Election Day is just three weeks away.

Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, South Carolina, and Texas each begin their early voting process on Monday. While Hawaii, Louisiana, Missouri, Utah, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York all begin later this week.

Several of these states have high-profile Senate and gubernatorial races, with Alaska, Michigan, and Texas each having toss-up Senate races, while Wisconsin has a toss-up gubernatorial race, per the Cook Political Report.