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

Democrats’ main political action committee is spending for the first time on South Carolina’s Senate race, as polls appear to show a rather unexpectedly tight race between Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) and Democrat Annie Andrews.

Senate Majority PAC is pumping $750,000 into South Carolina on digital ads focused on healthcare and drug prices.

While South Carolina has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1998 and Graham is still expected to win in the red state, the apparently more competitive nature of the latest race featuring Andrews has raised Democrats’ hopes that it could be in play down the road.

President Donald Trump revealed on Friday that he recommitted to holding in-person rallies in Iowa and Kansas this weekend after officials from those states called him to visit one last time before the election.

Trump was planning to proceed with tele-rallies for the two red states before he changed his mind.

“I wanted to see if I could do tele-rallies,” he said at the White House. “I do them well, and it’s a great instrument, and it only seems to work for me because other people call and nobody gets on the phone.”

“I got a call from both states, Kansas and Iowa. We’re in good shape, I think, in a lot of states. We had a great rally yesterday, as you know, for Darline [Graham] in South Carolina,” he continued. “But I got a call from Iowa and from other people, and from my friends that are very, very good, and we have a couple of races that are very important. And they said, ‘If you could go, it would be better than a tele-rally.’ And I tried to talk them out of that. I said, ‘What about a tele-rally?’ But they asked me, so I’m going to do two on Sunday.”

Trump will travel to Iowa first, then to Kansas on Sunday. They will be his last in-person rallies of the election cycle. In the final days before the general election, Trump will be hosting tele-rallies across nearly 20 states.

The president explained his decision to move forward with the Iowa and Kansas rallies while hosting Stephen Hubbard, a U.S. citizen recently freed from Russia, in the Oval Office.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg donated another $36 million to Democrats in a mix of House, Senate, and gubernatorial races in the final week before Election Day, according to Politico.

The contribution comes after Bloomberg already gave $80 million to candidates in his party last week.

The Democratic megadonor gave $16 million to the House Majority PAC and $12 million to Everytown for Gun Safety. He also donated $2.5 million to Georgia gubernatorial hopeful Keisha Lance Bottoms, $2.5 million to Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, $2 million to Kansas Senate contender Adam Hamilton, and $750,000 to Texas gubernatorial hopeful Gina Hinojosa.

While Bloomberg has been an influential donor to the Democratic Party for the midterm elections, he is far surpassed by SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is considered the single largest donor this election cycle. Musk has contributed over $445 million to support Republicans.

Vice President JD Vance is set to return to his home state of Ohio on Monday, the day before the election.

Vance will be campaigning in Swanton to show support for Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s running for governor, and Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH), who’s seeking his first full term in the Senate. Swanton is located about 20 miles west of Toledo.

The vice president’s appearance will mark the sixth rally that he or President Donald Trump has held in the Buckeye State over the past month.

Also on Monday, Vance will visit Rome, New York, in the final campaign push before Election Day.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) weighed into California’s general elections with three new, home-stretch endorsements against incumbent Democratic lawmakers.

According to a report from Axios, Khanna has endorsed against incumbent Reps. Doris Matsui (D-CA), Mike Thompson (D-CA), and Jimmy Gomez (D-CA), backing each of their Democratic challengers, Mai Vang, Eric Jones, and Angela Gonzales-Torres, respectively, calling them “new generation leaders.”

Each of the districts is ranked “solid Democrat” by Cook Political Report, with primary voters elevating two Democrats to the general election ballots in the open-primary state.

A new Washington Post-Schar School poll has Democrat Adam Hamilton leading Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) by 10 points. This has given the megachurch pastor a lead of 2.6 points in the RealClearPolitics average, up from 0.2 points just last night. Kansas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. But the outlet has its own concerns about the poll.

“After more than 85,000 phone calls and nearly 50,000 text messages, a potential problem emerged,” the Washington Post reported Friday. “Democrats were far more enthusiastic about taking the poll than Republicans were.” The story went on to note that “Democrats were more than twice as likely as registered Republicans to complete the survey” after taking the interviewer’s call.

We’ve seen big red-state Senate polling misses before, including in Kansas. Six years ago, polls showed a close race, but Marshall won by 11 points. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) was down by a small margin in 2014, but he also won by 11 points. In 2020, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was only leading by 6 points in the same poll currently showing his sister tied with her Democratic opponent. He won by 14.

Maybe we’ll see another big polling miss this time. Or maybe the polls are telling the GOP something. “We’re having problems just getting Republican voters to respond to polls,” a Republican pollster told Axios. “At what point do we think these guys aren’t showing up at the actual polls on Election Day?”

It’s hard to tell the difference between a polling failure and a rural revolt. Trump’s Kansas rally with Marshall is back on.

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) reaffirmed her support for Michigan’s Democratic Senate candidate Abdul el Sayed against his GOP opponent Mike Rogers on Friday, after criticizing his stance on Israel.

“Make no mistake: Democrats are united in a big blue wave For The People. To lower costs, protect healthcare and defend our democracy, we must elect a Democratic House and Senate” Pelosi wrote on X. “I urge everyone across America to support our Democratic Senate nominees, including @AbdulElSayed. Every seat matters. Every vote counts. Let’s win together!”

PELOSI SLAMS EL SAYED’S REFUSAL TO SAY ISRAEL SHOULD EXIST: ‘IT’S WRONG’

Her post came one day after she criticized el Sayed and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on the On Brand podcast, when the host, Donny Deutsch, said it was concerning “when you say Israel doesn’t have the right to be a Jewish state,” referring to Mamdani and el Sayed.

“It’s more than concerning. It’s wrong,” Pelosi said. “It’s wrong, and it isn’t a reflection of the Democrats in the Congress of the United States. This new person in Michigan, we’ll see if he gets elected to the Congress.”

Sen. Dan S. Sullivan (R-AK) released a Superman-themed video advertisement on Friday about his middle initial as he faces a challenge from a candidate with the same name and a different middle initial, Dan J. Sullivan Jr.

The advertisement features a hopeful speech from Sen. Sullivan, followed by theme music and a voiceover from Man of Steel (2013) about Superman’s “S,” which is also the incumbent’s middle initial, standing for “hope.”

“Yes, Alaska, we have challenges, but the opportunities for our state in so many areas, like resource development, the gas line, our historic military buildup, and the thousands of good-paying jobs that these initiatives are bringing, are bringing a bright future for us,” Sullivan said in the ad. “That creates opportunities that far outweigh our challenges.”

Dan J. Sullivan Jr. is a former Forest Service employee who Republicans believe is a spoiler candidate propped up by Democrats. The New York Times released a report on Friday that the campaign of Democratic candidate Mary Peltola had a project to recruit a spoiler candidate named Dan Sullivan, though Peltola has denied the report.

Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams released the numbers from the first day of early in-person voting on Thursday, showing that Bluegrass State voters are turning out more so far in the 2026 midterm elections than they did to date in the 2022 elections by a large margin.

According to Adams, 66,166 Democrats voted in person on Thursday, compared to 37,640 Democrats on the same first day in 2022; 60,793 Republicans voted early Thursday, compared to 39,349 Republicans on the same day in 2022; and 8,942 Independents voted early Thursday, compared to 4,972 Independents in 2022.

After the first day of in-person early voting, combined with the votes from in-person absentee voting and mail-in absentee voting, 7% of registered Democrats, 5% of registered Republicans, and 7% of registered independents have already voted in Kentucky.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) flew to Atlanta to campaign for Georgia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms four days ahead of Election Day.

Sherrill is the latest Democratic governor to hit the trail for Bottoms in the final days before her toss-up race against Republican candidate Rick Jackson. Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), the other Democratic governor elected by a double-digit margin in 2025, stumped in Georgia with Bottoms earlier this week.

Chairman of the Democratic Governors’ Association, Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY), recently announced an additional $5 million boost toward Bottoms’s campaign as blue governors push to add another to their fold in the Peach State.

The Department of Justice is sending poll monitors to Maricopa County, one of the nation’s tightest battleground districts in Arizona, on Election Day.

“We have been notified by the DOJ that they plan to have federal monitors in Maricopa County on Election Day. This is in line with previous experiences during past elections,” Jennifer Liewer of the Maricopa County Elections Department told the Washington Examiner.

This comes as local Arizona outlets report that the DOJ is sending election monitors in other parts of the state as well, including Navajo County. Navajo County is located in Arizona’s “leans Republican” 2nd Congressional District, while Maricopa is split among multiple congressional districts

“As the Civil Rights Division has done in the past, our monitors only observe. They do not intrude or interfere in any way in the voting process,” Justice Department Civil Rights Division attorney Anelise Powers told the Arizona Republic.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) met with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani at Gracie Mansion in Manhattan on Friday, just days ahead of the midterm elections on Nov. 3.

Khanna has publicly said he is “thinking seriously” about a potential 2028 Democratic presidential bid, with pundits expecting him to be one of many Democrats to announce a run after the midterm cycle concludes. The leftist California Democrat has been campaigning across the country alongside Democrats and progressives in states such as Michigan, Iowa, and Nebraska.

If he is seeking to test the waters in or shore up the leftist flank of the Democratic Party, Mamdani, a socialist, may be a key surrogate for progressive Democrats and socialist-aligned candidates in 2028.

Texas Republican Brandon Herrera, who’s running for Congress, touted his opposition to the administration’s proposed border wall construction in Big Bend National Park.

“When Big Bend faced unnecessary construction that didn’t make the border any more secure, I brought the fight directly to the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, D.C., and pressured them to stop the project,” Herrera said in a 30-second ad released on Friday.

“I’m asking for your vote for Congress, so I can keep up the fight to both secure our border and protect Big Bend,” he concluded.

Herrera is running to represent Texas’s 23rd Congressional District, which represents the longest stretch of the southern border in a single district. The district spans roughly 800 miles, about one-third of the U.S.-Mexico border.

The candidate’s stance on the border wall construction is notable, considering he had been endorsed by President Donald Trump. In 2024, Trump won the district by 15 percentage points.

Construction of the border wall in the Texas national park remains paused while the issue plays out in court. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction earlier this month, prohibiting the administration from carrying out the project. The administration asked the Supreme Court to lift the injunction and allow construction to resume. The appeal remains pending.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) announced that she will make her first campaign trail appearance with Michigan’s Democratic Senate candidate Abdul el Sayed after their bruising primary.

Stevens will attend a church service with el Sayed and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) in Detroit on Sunday morning, she said. Stevens endorsed el Sayed after her primary loss to him, but has refrained from campaigning with him as he has faced scrutiny from the Jewish community in Michigan over his associations with controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker and his criticism of Israel.

Stevens ripped el Sayed in her statement announcing the campaign over his initial response to a controversial ad from Rebellion PAC that blamed high grocery prices on U.S. support for Israel and its military. El Sayed distanced himself from the ad that supported his candidacy, saying he was not associated with it. Stevens said she agreed to the event with el Sayed because she heard he plans to denounce the ad.

“I have learned from Democratic Party leaders and emissaries, as reported in the news media, that Dr. El-Sayed has heard the deep concerns of the Jewish community and is now, for the first time in this campaign, formally condemning that ad for what it is,” Stevens said. “That is why I accepted Congressman Clyburn’s invitation to appear with Abdul on Sunday.”

She added that she “expect[s] him to apologize” for other criticisms that el Sayed has made against Israel as well.

“The ad did not invent its argument; it dramatized one Dr. El-Sayed has made in his own words throughout this campaign: that Israel is the reason Michigan cannot afford schools, health care, and child care. The standard here is simple. If those words are wrong when a Political Action Committee supporting his campaign says them, then they are equally wrong when Abdul says them, and Abdul has said them from the start,” Stevens said.

Just four days out from Election Day 2026, election forecaster Cook Political Report shifted 12 U.S. House races toward Democratic candidates’ favor.

The forecaster shifted three former “leans Republican” races to toss-ups: Rep. Jeff Crank’s (R-CO) seat in Colorado’s 5th Congressional District, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick’s (R-PA) seat in Pennsylvania’s 1st District, and Rep. Nancy Mace’s (R-SC) open seat in South Carolina’s 1st District.

Cook Political Report also shifted two toss-up races to “leans Democrat” — one in Pennsylvania’s 8th District held by Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-PA) and one in Ohio’s 9th District held by Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH).

The rest of the shifts were four “solid Republican” seats shifting to “likely Republican” in states including North Carolina, New Jersey, and Washington, and three “likely Republican” seats shifting to “leans Republican” in Florida and Indiana. The forecaster pointed to President Donald Trump’s low approval rating and weaker GOP candidates at the top of some state tickets for the shifts, saying “heavy spending from Republicans doesn’t appear to be moving the needle.”

“Republicans are particularly concerned about turnout in places like North Carolina and Pennsylvania, where Democrats are poised to win statewide races by comfortable margins,” Cook Political Report’s Erin Covey wrote.