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

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) recruited former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to help him campaign for reelection in Georgia on Saturday afternoon, as the incumbent lawmaker looks to fend off a competitive challenge from Republican nominee Mike Collins.

Ossoff and Buttigieg, both floated as possible presidential contenders in 2028, are scheduled to make a joint appearance in Atlanta over the weekend.

Buttigieg is known as a more centrist politician, making him a viable surrogate for Ossoff in the swing state. The former transportation secretary’s profile has risen in recent months as he has signaled he is open to making a second presidential run after a failed bid in the 2020 election.

Ossoff has been described by controversial socialist media personality Hasan Piker as his “dark-horse pick” for 2028.

The betting markets have Ossoff and Buttigieg coming in second and sixth, respectively, in the next Democratic battle for the presidential nomination. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is in first place, according to Polymarket.

Texas Democrat James Talarico has received millions of more dollars from major donors in the first half of October.

Among the most notable donors contributing to Talarico’s super PAC were former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg with $2.5 million, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman with another $5 million, and Texas personal injury attorney Thomas J. Henry with $1 million. Additionally, the Democrat-aligned Senate Majority PAC gave $1 million in support of Talarico.

The donation from Henry is notable, considering he formerly backed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Lone Star State’s Republican primary election before switching to Talarico’s side. Meanwhile, Hoffman has given a total of $16.5 million to the Democratic candidate.

At a campaign event this week, Talarico boasted that his candidacy is “funded by 1.3 million individuals who have donated their hard-earned money to our campaign,” whereas his Republican opponent is primarily bankrolled by “one dude” named Elon Musk.

Elon Musk poured an additional $76 million into his own America PAC in the first two weeks of October as the midterm elections heat up.

The latest contribution brings his total spending this election cycle to over $442 million, considerably more than the roughly $290 million he spent in 2024 to support President Donald Trump and other Republicans.

Musk is considered the largest single donor this election cycle, drawing criticism from Texas Democrat James Talarico earlier this week. The Senate candidate said the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive was “trying to buy” the open Senate seat in Texas by donating between $158 million and $190 million to back Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Musk made the contributions to Paxton primarily through the Senate Leadership Fund, which sent the money to the pro-Paxton Texas PAC. The world’s richest man also contributed to Paxton’s Senate campaign through the Lone Star Liberty PAC and the America PAC, which he founded during the 2024 election cycle.

Keisha Lance Bottoms and David Jolly, the respective Democratic gubernatorial nominees in Georgia and Florida, are campaigning together at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee on Friday.

The two candidates will appear at a joint Get Out the Vote rally, where they will be joined by director and producer Will Packer. Florida A&M University is Bottoms’s alma mater.

In a media advisory, Jolly’s campaign said the Tallahassee-Thomasville media market reaches “voters across ten counties in Georgia and nine counties in Florida.”

Bottoms and Jolly are joining forces less than two weeks before Election Day. Bottoms is facing businessman Rick Jackson in Georgia’s gubernatorial race, and Jolly is challenging Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) for the governor’s mansion in Florida.

Both parties in Michigan are turning to some of their biggest names in the final stretch, seeking to consolidate their coalitions while reaching voters who could decide the outcome.

Former President Barack Obama will campaign for Democratic nominee Abdul el Sayed on Saturday. The following day, President Donald Trump will headline a rally for Republican nominee Mike Rogers and others. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) will also be in Grand Rapids on Sunday to campaign for el Sayed, while Rogers is set to join Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) next week for a discussion aimed at Jewish voters.

“Michigan is a fascinating race because we’re watching two very different political coalitions try to accomplish the same thing: energize their bases without scaring away the voters in the middle,” campaign expert Michael Fahey told the Washington Examiner. “Obama, Trump, Sanders, and Cruz are all descending on the same state, and that tells you everything you need to know about how important this Senate seat has become. Nobody is flying these people in because the race is comfortable.”

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OPINION — Democrats lost control of Washington in 2024 because they were living in a bubble. Trump’s comeback from the depths of Jan. 6 to the heights of a popular vote victory couldn’t be spun or explained away. Democrats had to face it.

As they searched their souls, Trump stormed into Washington and had his way with it. And it didn’t take him long to alienate the voters who had just handed him a mandate to clean up the Democrats’ mess. Chaotic ICE raids, whiplash tariffs, a ballroom funded by companies with business before the government, a military parade on his birthday, a $400 million gift jet from Qatar, pardons for the Jan. 6 rioters: The list of self-inflicted wounds goes on.

The sheer amount of activity in Trump’s second term overwhelmed, stupefied, and ultimately numbed even his own supporters: the perfect condition for a bubble to form. And a thick one did.

At the midpoint of Trump’s second term, the MAGA movement has lost all sense of how it is perceived by normal people: Those who don’t obsessively follow politics and just want lower prices and a president who doesn’t embarrass them.

Read more from Peter Laffin.

Mississippi hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1982, but what was long considered an untouchable state, punctuated by President Donald Trump’s 24-point victory two years ago, is now raising eyebrows as a possibly competitive seat in the midterm elections.

Trump will rally voters Monday in the Magnolia State to reelect Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) just as Democrats and election watchers are paying closer attention to what was once an unthinkable seat to flip for Democrat Scott Colom.

Democrats have outspent Republicans on the Mississippi airwaves with roughly $7.5 million to the GOP’s less than $4.9 million, according to ad tracking firm AdImpact. Republicans are taking notice of Democrats’ last-minute cash infusion, including $1.2 million from a group aligned with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). The GOP counterpart, Senate Leadership Fund, responded with its own ad buy of more than $1 million.

Colom took the unusual step to challenge the president to a debate and accused Hyde-Smith, who is seeking a second full term, of running “scared, and that’s why she’s sending Donald Trump down here.”

Read more about the Mississippi race.

Republican House candidate Joe Mitchell presented President Donald Trump with a “Man of the Century” award toward the conclusion of the GOP rally in Sioux City, Iowa.

“They’ve never given you the Nobel Peace Prize, by the way, which is a disgrace. So what I came up with, Mr. President, is a new award. It’s called the Man of the Century Award,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell is running to represent northeastern Iowa and replace current Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA), who is running for Senate.

Mitchell, 29, said Trump has done “more for humanity and for America than any other president ever.”

President Donald Trump announced that he would be using the Defense Production Act to boost diesel and gasoline production in the United States, putting downward pressure on prices that have risen because of the war in Iran.

Trump said he would be releasing $150 million to increase oil refining capacity for both gasoline and diesel production.

“We have so much now, and the thing we need is, and we’re building them rapidly as refineries,” Trump said. “We have so much oil, you wouldn’t believe even all of that oil pouring out.”

President Donald Trump said he believes he has the right to run for president for a fourth time in 2028 despite the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution capping presidents at only two terms in office.

“I think I have the right to run again because they cheated,” Trump said, referring to his 2020 reelection campaign. “They cheated. They rigged the election.”

Trump said multiple times during the rally in Sioux City, Iowa, on Thursday that he has only two more years in the White House. The president said “there’s not a lot of wiggle room” in the 22nd Amendment, which was ratified after President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in his third term in office.

“I don’t know who’s going to be your next president, and I think the law said. I’m not 100% sure, but I think the law says that I’m not allowed to run again,” Trump said.

President Donald Trump told the crowd at his Sioux City, Iowa, rally that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) must be removed from office because her former legal name is different than what she used to campaign and be sworn in.

“Her real name is openly admitted to fraud, and she will not be legally allowed to be a member of that august body any longer,” Trump said.

Trump said Omar’s name is actually “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi.” Trump said Omar used “an entirely different name” than her given name to run for office and be sworn into Congress, which the president said is disqualifying. He said he would inform House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) that she ought to be removed on those grounds.

“She used a fake name to be sworn in. I assume she must immediately have to resign from Congress,” Trump said.

President Donald Trump promised Iowans during his appearance in Sioux City on Thursday night that he would ensure the Republican Party keeps the Iowa caucuses as the first nominating activity in every presidential election.

“I kept the Iowa caucuses first in the nation. I did that for you,” Trump said, adding, “As I’m around in any capacity, you’re going to be No. 1.”

The Democratic Party moved the Iowa caucuses for nominating the Democratic presidential candidate in 2024 to Super Tuesday, but Trump promised to keep Iowa first for the GOP even after he leaves office in two years.

“You’ll always be No. 1,” Trump said. “I’ll always have that little extra power.”

EDINBURG, Texas — Nearly 100 people gathered at Citrus Live on Thursday night to hear Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton take the stage.

Attendees ate catered quesadillas and burgers while sipping Dr. Pepper before the rally opened with a prayer and the pledge, similar to Paxton’s rally earlier in the day in Brownsville, Texas.

This is Paxton’s second stop in the Rio Grande Valley on his “Come and Take It” tour that began with early voting Monday.

His visit to border towns comes as the Texas Republican has to maintain the gains President Donald Trump made with Latino voters in 2024.

Both rallies had speakers who emphasized the importance of high turnout, telling attendees to take their friends and families out to vote, as Texas reached record-high turnout on the first day of early voting.

“I believe it is a close race right now, but Republicans are starting to vote in its early voting,” Paxton said at the rally.

“I want every single person in this room to vote early, and then spend every day between now and Nov. 3 getting everybody else to the polls,” he continued.

Paxton’s Democratic opponent, James Talarico, is expected to visit the southern Texas border next week as part of his bus tour in the weeks leading up to the election.

Supporters of Talarico protested outside the event, calling Paxton a pedophile protector, referencing a lenient one-day jail sentence for a man who admitted to sexually abusing a child.

Iowa Republican gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn encouraged attendees of the GOP rally on Thursday in Sioux City, Iowa, to vote for Republicans down the ticket for Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA who was assassinated last year.

“Let me just tell you how important this is: 13 months ago, my friend Charlie’s Kirk life was taken on live TV. We cannot sit out these midterms. Not even a chance,” Lahn said. “We’re doing this for Charlie Kirk. Let’s go!”

Lahn was one of a litany of speakers ahead of President Donald Trump’s appearance at a get-out-the-vote rally in Sioux City. His comment regarding Kirk, who was assassinated on Sept. 10, 2025, received a standing ovation from the crowd.

Republicans are out to strong starts in early and absentee vote totals in more than a dozen House seats President Donald Trump won by double digits in 2024, potentially casting doubt on Democrats’ ability to flip deep-red terrain.

According to a GOP analysis, Republicans hold early vote leads in districts such as Arizona’s 2nd, Arkansas’s 2nd, Colorado’s 3rd, Indiana’s 5th, and South Carolina’s 1st districts.

Republicans are also over-performing their 2022 early vote margins in four competitive districts in Pennsylvania, considered the epicenter of the battlefield and crucial seats for Republicans to hold.

Democrats in recent weeks have begun spending in deep-red territory, a sign of their growing confidence as Republicans face a difficult political environment.

However, Republicans in those districts hold serious cash-on-hand advantages over their opponents. For example, Rep. French Hill (R-AR) has $1.6 million in the bank, compared to Democratic opponent Chris Jones’s $280,000.

Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) has a $2.3 million cash lead over his opponent, who has just $81,000 in the bank.

Flipping these long-shot seats, even in difficult political cycles, has proven a tall order in recent years. In 2018, considered the last wave year when Democrats flipped 40 House districts, the party won five districts that Trump carried by double digits, amounting to less than 3% of all those seats.