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

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — President Donald Trump praised Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) 2016 primary bid against him at a rally Tuesday, as the Texas Republican looks to a possible 2028 run.

“We had 18 of them [challengers], including Ted, who, by the way, was very tough,” the president said at the Port of Corpus Christi. “He was the last remainder. He was a nasty son of a gun.”

“Now we get along, I think, better than we’ve ever gotten along,” Trump continued.

Cruz was the last remaining candidate in the 2016 Republican primary before he dropped out that May and refused to endorse Trump at the Republican National Convention later in the year. The two have since reconciled.

The two-term senator told the Washington Examiner in an interview earlier this month that while he’s not ready to make any announcements about another potential campaign, “that conversation is coming.”

“My focus today is 100% on the midterms, and I am spending every waking moment fighting to help save our Republican Senate, our Republican House,” Cruz said in a wide-ranging phone interview. “The conversation about 2028 will begin after the midterms. That conversation is coming. It’s coming for any potential candidate. But the right time to engage in it is when the midterms are behind us.”

Cruz is among the list of Republicans with widespread name recognition who are expected to launch a campaign to succeed Trump. And as he crisscrosses the country in a campaign blitz for Republicans, Cruz faces an early test of his abilities to turn out the base in what he warned could be a bruising midterm election cycle for the party, similar to that of two years into Trump’s first term in 2018.

With just six days before election day, over 35 millions 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 the Republicans have cast 39% of early and mail in votes counted while Democrats remain at 47%. The states included as battlegrounds in the data set 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 Ken Paxton and 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 nonpartisan political analysis, 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 her 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 seven 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 seven 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 Real Clear Polling, 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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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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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.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) endorsed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, a cross-party backing that could move the needle for the only Democrat on Alaska’s ranked choice ballot.

Murkowski released an email statement in which she urged voters to set partisan politics aside and support Kreiss-Tomkins, colloquially known as JKT, and his running mate, Anchorage Assemblyman Zac Johnson, an independent.

“Our future is too important to be hamstrung by partisan divisions,” Murkowski said. “Jonathan understands that governing requires listening to people with different perspectives and finding common ground to solve the problems all of us face.”

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Iowa Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand promised to veto any further restrictions on abortion passed by the state legislature if he is elected governor.

Iowa currently has a prohibition on elective abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, at which point a heartbeat is usually detectable via ultrasound.

Sand throughout the campaign has promised to veto any so-called culture war bills passed by the Republican-led legislature. When asked by the moderators during the final Iowa gubernatorial debate, Sand cited abortion as a prime example of a culture war issue.

“We now have a six-week ban. It’s incredibly restrictive,” Sand said. “I do not think that we need to go further, but a lot of the folks in the legislature said when that ban became law that they want to go further. I would veto going further.”

Sand has been criticized on the campaign trail by anti-abortion advocates for citing biblical passages that support the claim that life begins at “first breath” rather than conception.

GOP candidate Zach Lahn said that he would take action on certain culture war issues, such as protecting women’s sports and private spaces, banning certain books related to transgenderism from schools, and safeguarding unborn life.

“I believe that the most vulnerable people in our society need to be protected. That’s the lives of the unborn. That’s our daughters. That’s the young kids in school,” Lahn said.

Both Democrat Rob Sand and Republican Zach Lahn slammed data centers when asked by debate moderators in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, about the state’s budget deficit.

Sand and Lahn each said data centers should be required to pay more in taxes and should not receive tax breaks from a state that is struggling to balance its budget.

“Financially speaking, they should be contributing to the state of Iowa. And if they don’t want to contribute, they can build somewhere else,” Sand said.

Lahn said he agreed with Sand on the issue, saying multiple times that data centers need to “pay their fair share,” including higher property taxes.

“By some of the calculations, this would increase revenues to the government by $200 [million] to $300 million a year,” Lahn said. “Look, I believe if somebody’s going to get relief, it should be the people. It shouldn’t be a multinational company.”

Trump resurrected his pitch to elect Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to the Supreme Court should an opening occur, claiming both Democrats and Republicans would support the idea because they dislike the senator.

“I would pick Ted Cruz to be the next Supreme Court justice, and I wouldn’t have to worry about,” Trump said. “I wouldn’t even have to make a phone call. The Democrats will 100% vote for it because they hate the guy and they want to get rid of him. And the Republicans would 100% vote for it because they can’t stand him. They would like to get rid of him, so I’d get 100% of the vote, and he would be a Supreme Court justice.”

The president has pitched the idea in the past while visiting Texas. Trump has filled three of the last four Supreme Court vacancies.