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

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick joined Trump onstage in North Carolina to announce two semiconductor manufacturing efforts being brought to the state, one by industrial mining company Sibelco and another by the Department of War.

The two investments will bring semiconductor production closer to home as the largest manufacturing hub is in Taiwan.

“It’s all made in Taiwan, right? And that’s just too far away for America, so he’s bringing it home,” Lutnick said of the effort. “We’re announcing Sabelco is going to build silicon manufacturing. It’s quartz manufacturing. It is basically the foundation of semiconductors, and they’re going to build it right here in North Carolina. Hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Trump then took back the podium to tout the investment and announce that the War Department would be making an additional $1.5 billion investment in semiconductor chip production.

The New York Times published an editor’s note in which the newspaper revealed it pulled 15 polls conducted by Wedgewood after the pollster admitted to fabricating data.

“This page previously included surveys from Wedgewood Polls,” the editor’s note reads. “On Oct. 20, after being questioned by the polling site FiftyPlusOne, Wedgewood released a statement admitting it had fabricated data for its polls. All of Wedgewood’s polls have been removed from our poll tracking project.”

The polls were published between June and October in multiple state and congressional races, including those in Michigan, Georgia, Mississippi, Maine, and Kansas.

The New York Times said it vetted Wedgewood before adding the polls to its database, asking about the pollster’s team, sampling methodology, weighting procedures, and the source of its funding.

The news outlet’s statement came one day after Wedgewood said it intentionally fabricated polling numbers as part of an “experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry.”

Wedgewood is the latest pollster that faked its figures this election cycle, following a similar admission from Median Strategies in August. The New York Times never included Median’s surveys in its trackers because the fake pollster didn’t answer its methodology questions.

Maine Democrat Troy Jackson revealed he voted for Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) in 1996 when she first ran for the Senate.

Speaking at a Maine AFL-CIO event last week, Jackson said he shared voters’ frustration with the five-term incumbent over the past three decades because he once supported her. He was a Republican before joining the Democratic Party in 2004.

“She’s not willing to stand up to [President Donald] Trump. She’s given up her role as a U.S. senator,” Jackson said.

The Democratic nominee has been open about his displeasure with Collins as the two candidates make their final pleas to voters before Election Day.

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) is leading Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) by 8 points in the latest poll on the Georgia Senate race.

The Democratic incumbent’s polling lead is the latest sign that he will hold on to his Senate seat for a second term. The survey shows 48% of voters backing Ossoff to Rogers’s 40% support, though 12% of Georgia voters are still undecided. Despite an endorsement from President Donald Trump, Collins has consistently failed to make a dent in his opponent’s electoral edge.

While Ossoff is far ahead of his competition, the same can’t be said for Democratic nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms in the state’s gubernatorial race. She sits 1 point behind Republican candidate Rick Jackson, who’s at 46%, according to the new poll.

The University of Georgia, in partnership with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, surveyed 1,000 likely voters from Oct. 7 to 15. The poll has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

MAGA Inc., the primary super PAC of President Donald Trump, spent just over $201 million in September to boost Republican candidates ahead of the midterm elections.

The number was revealed in the latest Federal Election Commission filings submitted late Tuesday.

Starting September with more than $415 million in cash on hand, MAGA Inc. spent an additional $75 million in the first half of October. The super PAC transferred money to its two affiliates, $25 million to the Safety and Affordability PAC and $200 million to the No Going Back PAC. Much of that money was spent on political ads across the country.

The newly released spending figures came hours after Trump said he plans to spend more than $400 million before Election Day through MAGA Inc. The president previously promised he would spend up to $500 million on the midterm elections.

President Donald Trump obsessed over Sen. Jon Husted’s (R-OH) strong physique again while headlining a midterm election rally in North Carolina on Tuesday.

During his speech, Trump called Husted’s backside a “pile of muscle” and complimented other parts of the senator’s anatomy.

“I’m studying his body. I’ve never studied the body of a man before. It’s not my thing. Nothing wrong with it, of course,” he said before chuckling.

“But I looked at his a**, and then I looked at his legs,” he continued. “I said, ‘His a**, s***, it’s like a pile of muscle.’ Then I looked at his legs and I said, ‘Man, his feet are big.’ And I looked at his shoulders and tapped him on the shoulder, and it actually hurt my hand. He’s like a piece of steel. And I said, ‘This guy’s a monster.'”

The president first commented on Husted’s body during a recent campaign rally in Ohio.

Husted is not the only Republican candidate whose appearance has drawn Trump’s attention. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’s running for the Senate, has received playful compliments from the president about his fashion style. Trump joked that Paxton “may not dress right” or “may not be the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen,” but he noted that the Texas Republican looked “very spiffy” in a certain suit.

Voters across the country in this year’s midterm elections will decide on ballot initiatives to slow down development or issue guardrails for data centers, which have seen sharply increasing public backlash.

President Donald Trump has pushed for data center development, arguing they are necessary to win the artificial intelligence race against China. However, the 41 ballot measures across eight states reveal the growing public opposition to data centers.

Of the 41 ballot measures, three would temporarily pause data center development. For instance, the city of Bloomington, Illinois, will vote on an initiative to advise the city to impose a moratorium on large-scale data centers.

A measure in York County, Maine, would set a 180-day moratorium on data centers. One in Wiscasset, Maine, would set a six-month moratorium for new or expanded data centers.

Read more about the ballot measures.

Democrat James Talarico heads into the final two weeks of his pivotal Texas Senate race after months of working to close an enthusiasm gap with black voters, a key voting bloc that could complicate his path to victory in much the same way GOP rival Ken Paxton is struggling to unite the Right.

Talarico has made crucial headway to minimize what used to be nearly a third of black voters who said months ago they did not plan to support the state representative, but recent polling suggests he still lacks backing from 15% to 20% of the cohort that overwhelmingly tends to side with Democrats.

A pair of surveys conducted in recent weeks showed Talarico with 85% and 83% of black voters, while Paxton clocked in at 10% and 17%, respectively.

The results show the lingering side effect of the contentious primary between Talarico and Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) and the continued tensions between them. Crockett has not campaigned for Talarico, and her PAC did not endorse him despite her doing so.

Read more about Talarico’s strategy to gain support from the key voting bloc.

BANGOR, Maine — Hope Brogunier was visibly exasperated on Friday after watching Troy Jackson onstage for his final debate against Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).

“I was just wincing,” said Brogunier, a retiree from Bangor and former Graham Platner supporter who shook her head in disbelief that Collins was so well prepared. “I could barely stand it!”

It’s not that Brogunier doesn’t think Jackson, a former leader of the Maine Senate, is a good candidate for Democrats. She considers his working-class background as an Allagash logger “endearing” and, as a matter of principle, believes he’s committed to “helping people on the bottom of the pile.”

But the debate confirmed to her that Jackson wasn’t nearly as dynamic as Platner, an oysterman whose insurgent campaign in the Democratic primary was marked by large rallies and a certain Trump-like Teflon that made him nearly impervious to scandal.

Read more about Democrats’ apprehension about Troy Jackson.

Trump spent a hefty portion of his remarks in Greenville on Tuesday night drawing attention to what he says is Democratic Senate candidate Roy Cooper’s enabling of a deadly crime spree in North Carolina.

Stumping for Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley, Trump used his remarks to draw a stark contrast between his preferred candidate and the former governor.

“I came to tell you that Roy Cooper is a fool,” Trump said. “Roy Cooper is a liberal. He’s a liberal fool who let all these thousands and thousands of people out, and they went on a crime spree. … Four thousand people were let [out], and they went on a crime spree that lasted for years in North Carolina.”

“I just want to tell you that in this election, the citizens of North Carolina need to summon every natural protective instinct you have, and you have to defeat this guy because his vote will be a disaster,” he continued.

Trump is referring to a move by Cooper during his tenure in which he reached a legal settlement with the civil rights groups who alleged the state was not doing enough to protect inmates from COVID-19. In February 2021, Cooper signed the agreement that led to the early release of over 3,000 criminals.

Trump on Tuesday night compared a protester at his rally in Greenville, North Carolina, to those rioting in the streets of France.

“You watched nut jobs like him in France ruining their country,” Trump said of the person removed from the rally. “We’re not going to put up with it, by the way. … If a possible threat, which could happen, I hope you won’t get angry if I treat them very, very rough because that’s what’s going to happen. They’re not going to destroy our country.”

The individual who was removed was the second of the evening, with such demonstrators becoming a staple at Trump’s midterm election rallies.

Ohio Democratic gubernatorial nominee Amy Acton’s campaign has released an ad condemning Republican Vivek Ramaswamy for using her estranged mother in an attack spot ahead of Election Day.

The new ad features Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, defending his sister and accusing Ramaswamy of exploiting their childhood abuse for political gain.

“I received a lot of abuse, but Amy always got the worst of it,” Stearns says in the ad. He said Acton endured abuse as a child to protect him, adding that she was only 11 or 12 years old at the time.

“To think that that’s somehow a talking point, shame on Vivek,” Stearns said. “It’s the contempt he has for Amy. It’s the contempt he has for Ohio. He’s not fit to lead.”

The response comes after an approximately 60-second spot featuring Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, urging voters not to support her daughter. Arthur, who said she helped establish one of the first two sexual abuse programs in the country through the Children and Family Service Association, accused Acton of having “lied her entire life.”

Stearns has described Arthur as an “estranged and abusive mother” and accused her of remaining married to a man who sexually abused Acton as a child, even after he was arrested and the children were removed from their custody.

“This desperate, disgusting attack reveals exactly who Vivek Ramaswamy is at his core — a pathetic excuse for a man,” Stearns said in a statement earlier Tuesday.

HOUSTON, Texas — Just a day after early voting began in Texas, Houstonians trickled into Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church ahead of the latest stop on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) Fighting Oligarchy Tour.

Sanders will be joined by Progressive Caucus Chairman Greg Casar (D-TX) and former Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke at 3 p.m. local time. The trio visited El Paso, Texas, on Monday.

The rally, held at a prominent black church in the backyard of the University of Houston, comes as Senate Democratic nominee James Talarico slightly leads his Republican opponent, Ken Paxton, in recent polls. Talarico will need his supporters, particularly black voters, to turn out en masse to get him elected as the first Democrat statewide since 1994.

“Normally I would say to a progressive like Bernie Sanders: stay away,” Democratic strategist Jon Reinish told the Washington Examiner. “This is not good ground for you here, but I’ll tell you this. In order to prevail, Talarico and Hinojosa need to drive those young voters, college students, first time voters, infrequent anti-establishment voters, voters of color, who stayed home the last several elections and who could make a difference in a beyond razor thin race, they could have a chance to really turn those people out.”

“In this case, especially with early voting having just kicked off, they could actually be effective, juicing the numbers for the Democratic ticket statewide in a strategically chosen area like that: Young voters and frequent voters, voters of color, college students, it actually makes sense,” Reinish continued.

Rallygoers arrived decked out in campaign merchandise for Talarico, Gina Hinojosa, and Sanders, as many bought shirts and pins outside the venue. Just a few hundred yards away sits a polling location, after more than 100,000 people cast ballots in Harris County on Monday, according to Houston Public Media.

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he plans to spend more than $400 million to help Republicans win the 2026 midterm elections.

“Because of my belief in the Republican Party … I am pleased to announce that, having to do with the Most Important Midterm Elections in our Country’s History, I have spent, or will be spending, over 400 Million Dollars by Election Day,” Trump wrote in a social media post.

Trump did not specify where the money would come from or how it would be allocated. However, MAGA Inc., his primary super PAC, has substantial resources available to support Republican candidates through advertising and other campaign spending.

According to its latest full monthly filing with the Federal Election Commission, MAGA Inc. had roughly $415 million in cash on hand and spent approximately $32 million during the 2026 election cycle. The group has backed Republican candidates across the country as the party seeks to defend its congressional majorities.

The next FEC filing deadline, Tuesday, Oct. 20, will provide a more recent look at the group’s spending and financial position.

Trump previewed the investment last month, telling reporters in the Oval Office that he expected to devote hundreds of millions of dollars to Republican campaigns.

“I think I have like close to a billion dollars in the super PAC, and I’m allocating probably four or $500 million,” Trump said in early September. “We’re going to spend a lot of money because we don’t want to lose our country.”

Democratic nominee Rob Sand, who is running for governor of Iowa, is skipping Wednesday’s PBS debate in the wake of his brother-in-law’s death.

Sand’s campaign announced he was withdrawing two days before the planned debate, which will be rescheduled sometime before the Nov. 3 election.

“Rob Sand is focused on his family during this difficult time,” campaign spokeswoman Emma O’Brien said. “We are in contact with the Lahn campaign on rescheduling, and appreciate their willingness to work with us. We will have more updates soon.”

Sand is running against Republican candidate Zach Lahn, who is endorsed by President Donald Trump. Sand and Lahn have already participated in two debates. In addition to the postponed debate, a fourth is scheduled for Oct. 27.

Sand announced the death of his wife’s brother, Walter Lauridsen II, a 42-year-old Des Moines businessman and philanthropist, late last week. Lauridsen died after he was hit by a vehicle on a highway in Lucas County, Iowa.

Sand said his brother-in-law “lived with mental health complexities,” suggesting he may have been suicidal. Lauridsen walked into the road after parking his vehicle.