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

President Donald Trump continued his trend of making comments about candidates’ bodies ahead of the midterm elections, talking about Rep. Ashley Hinson’s (R-IA) weight loss during a Sunday rally in Iowa.

“I knew Ashley for a long time, and she was a little bit heavier. And she put herself — she knew what she was doing, she knew the weight that was on her, really, literally, the weight, and she knew the importance of what she was doing — and she went out the old-fashioned way, too. Not with, you know, ‘Give me a shot,'” Trump said.

The president has repeatedly discussed candidates’ bodies on the campaign trail, often talking about Sen. Jon Husted’s (R-OH) backside. He said that Hinson, who is running for Senate in Iowa, said, ‘Please, sir, don’t do this,’ when he said he was planning on talking about her weight loss at the rally, but he said it is something he “respects about her.”

“Ashley knew the importance of what this was and how important it was, and the boy she put herself, she wanted to wait because she put herself in shape. She’s in perfect shape. She was good — I thought she was great the other way — but she put herself in shape, and she did that for you,” Trump said.

Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico proposed bipartisan cooperation with President Donald Trump, claiming the two could work together to fulfill the promise of the Make America Great Again movement.

Talarico sat down with Steven Bartlett for The Diary of a CEO podcast released Monday and said he would “love” to work with Trump despite the president’s frequent attacks, including coining the candidate “Talafreako.”

“I would love, as the next U.S. senator from Texas, to work with Donald Trump to actually fulfill some of the promise of his political project,” Talarico said. “Because the promise of MAGA was that we were going to transform this government so that it delivered for the people who have been left behind, the people who have been forgotten in this country, and there’s still time to do that.”

The Senate hopeful said he would work with Trump to expand healthcare access, reform education, and housing. On the housing front, Talarico appealed to Trump’s resume, as he built his career as a property developer before entering politics.

“If he wants to tackle the housing problem, Donald Trump is a builder,” he said. “If he wants us to slash the red tape in this country so we could build millions of new homes and ensure everyone in this country has a place to call home, I’m there. I’ll work with them to do it. I would love to do that.”

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Election officials in multiple Georgia counties are working to resolve complaints that voters are not receiving their absentee ballots ahead of Election Day, after lawsuits filed by voting groups alleged thousands of ballots never arrived.

In Gwinnett and Cobb counties, officials have said they will contact voters who have not received the absentee ballots they requested after a pair of lawsuits in the past week claimed that nearly 5,000 residents in both counties did not receive their requested absentee ballots. The lawsuit in Cobb County, filed by the left-wing Elias Law Group on behalf of an affected resident, claimed roughly 2,900 voters did not receive their absentee ballots. The county released a statement last week acknowledging that “a limited number of voters who requested an absentee-by-mail ballot may have experienced a delay in receiving their ballot” and pinned the blame on the ballot vendor.

“In order to address the delays caused by the county’s third-party vendor, Cobb BOER, will provide voters whose ballots were issued during that time period (Oct.7 through Oct. 15) an opportunity to request a new absentee ballot to be mailed to them by priority express mail, with a prepaid return priority express envelope,” the county’s statement said.

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The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s emergency bid to force California election officials to set aside roughly 20,000 ballots linked to suspected noncitizens, delivering a major setback to the Justice Department one day before the midterm elections.

Just hours after the DOJ filed its emergency petition to the high court, the justices declined to intervene without any noted dissents, leaving intact lower court decisions denying the administration’s request. Federal officials contend the voters’ citizenship must be verified before their ballots are counted, while California officials say the government’s list contains substantial inaccuracies and risks disenfranchising eligible citizens.

The DOJ asked the high court to intervene Monday after a federal district judge rejected its request and a divided appeals court refused to grant relief. State and local officials argued that separating the disputed ballots so close to Election Day would disrupt voting and ballot processing.

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Democrats are slated to take control of the House, and control of the Senate is up in the air, according to Cook Political Report’s final analysis of the midterm elections.

According to the nonpartisan analyst, Democrats are expected to flip between 15 and 25 seats Tuesday night, meaning the party will have between 230 and 240 seats in the lower chamber, a comfortable majority compared to Republicans’ current standing.

Control of the Senate is less clear, as the pollster predicts Democrats will flip a net of three to six seats, which still leaves room for the GOP to control the upper chamber.

Additionally, the Cook Political Report moved the Michigan Senate race from a “toss-up” to “lean Democrat,” painting optimism for Democrat Abdul el Sayed despite his former primary competitor Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) endorsing Republican Mike Rogers in the eleventh hour. The outlet said Stevens’s move holds little bearing, as recent polls have shown el Sayed with a significant lead over Rogers.

Maine Democratic Senate nominee Troy Jackson said there is no bad blood with Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME), who previously sought the nomination, nor his possible colleague Sen. Angus King (I-ME), as both lawmakers have not endorsed the hopeful.

“No, not really,” Jackson said when asked if he was disappointed Mills hadn’t backed him. “I mean, you know, it’d have been fine if she had or not. But I mean, this campaign is about the people of Maine. It’s not about me or Janet. So yeah, that’s fine.”

Jackson said the same could be said for King.

“I don’t have any hard feelings one way or the other,” he said, adding that he doesn’t think the lack of support from lawmakers in the state has hurt his campaign.

A RealClearPolitics polling average of surveys conducted from Oct. 8 until Nov. 1 found Jackson leading Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) by less than 3 percentage points.

President Donald Trump said in his closing message ahead of the midterms that Republicans have given the 2026 elections a “very strong shot.”

“For some reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms,” Trump said. “But we gave this a very strong shot.”

The president gave the election-eve speech in front of the newly completed Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C. After giving an update on the state of the renovations for much of the speech, Trump then delved into his final message, discussing how his administration has worked to combat fraud and bring down crime rates, while painting the Democrats’ slate as “extreme and dangerous.”

CONROE, Texas — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) warned of his own past reelection struggles in a bid Monday to fire up supporters of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on the eve of one of the country’s tightest Senate elections.

In his latest appearance on the campaign trail to stump for the Republican Senate nominee, Cruz characterized the Lone Star State’s battleground contest as not unlike his own narrow 2018 reelection against Democrat Beto O’Rourke. But this time, the Democrat giving Texas Republicans a run for their money is state Rep. James Talarico.

The 2018 races, the midterm cycle under President Donald Trump’s first term that saw the Democrats retake the House, “was the last election we had like this,” Cruz told a couple hundred attendees gathered at an outdoor event space in the Houston suburb of Conroe. “2018 was a rough cycle.”

“When the polls closed, I was down 5 [points],” the third-term senator recalled. “We’re at our victory party. A bunch of y’all were there. I tell you, I was back in the war room looking at the screens. And I looked: there were some sphincters that could have turned a lump of coal into a diamond.”

DEMOCRATS LEAD IN SEVEN SENATE BATTLEGROUNDS AS TRUMP APPROVAL WEIGHS ON GOP: POLL

The toss-up seat is among the contests Tuesday that will determine whether Republicans can maintain control of the upper chamber. And Paxton is under no illusions about just how close the results might be.

“Texas, as Ted mentioned, has never been this close to slipping away. We have never been this close to losing everything that we fear: our jobs, our livelihoods, our way of life,” Paxton said. “Every poll shows this is going to come down to the wire.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Republican former Gov. Glenn Youngkin brought their GOP star power to Virginia’s 1st Congressional District on Monday to campaign for Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA).

Johnson is making an election-eve blitz to campaign in Virginia for Wittman and Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-VA) in the tight-margin districts in the eastern part of the state.

Wittman is facing a challenge from Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor, while Kiggans is facing Democratic former Rep. Elaine Luria, whom Kiggans previously unseated in Virginia’s 2nd District. The Cook Political Report ranks Wittman’s district as a toss-up and Kiggans’s district as leaning Democrat.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, the nation’s leading anti-abortion political organization, spent $80 million campaigning in key battleground states ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

The organization said on Monday that it had met its goal of contacting 10.5 million “persuadable and low-turnout voters” ahead of the Nov. 3 election, including 3.7 million door-to-door visits.

The group contacted voters in key House districts as well as in gubernatorial and Senate races in Iowa, South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Montana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Texas, and Arizona.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, SBA’s president, said in a press release her organization reached low-turnout voters “with tested, strategic messages exposing radical Democrats who would impose abortion on demand with no limits through the ninth month in every state.”

“The stakes are higher than ever this cycle, with more than 1.1 million children’s lives lost to abortion in America each year,” Dannefelser said. “The power of the pro-life issue is proven in competitive battlegrounds where tens of thousands of votes can change everything.”

Planned Parenthood Votes, the abortion provider’s super PAC arm, pledged $47 million to the midterm campaign cycle. The group Reproductive Freedom For All pledged to spend $23.5 million.

Michigan’s Democratic Senate candidate Abdul el Sayed released his final ad of the campaign cycle on Monday, tying himself closely to Michigan’s culture while focusing his message on his slogan of “money out of politics, money in your pocket, and Medicare for All.”

“Abdul el Sayed: grew up as Michigan as you can get,” a voiceover says in the advertisement before clips of el Sayed playing football, giving his class’s commencement speech at the University of Michigan, and sitting with his parents. The ad closes with el Sayed delivering his affordability and Medicare-for-all messaging, followed by a clip of Fox News’s Jesse Watters saying, “You got to respect Abdul because he beat the machine.”

Republican Senate candidate in Michigan Mike Rogers released a 2.5-minute Election Day eve video hammering comments el Sayed has made while closing by calling el Sayed “the most dangerous Senate candidate in history.”

Rogers’s ad clips comments that el Sayed has made about immigration, using higher taxes to pay for government programs, cars being a “modern-day cigarette,” and Israel in the final-day advertisement.

The Cook Political Report rates Michigan as a toss-up seat.

The Alaska Division of Elections told reporters on Monday that the state expects to have the first results of its midterm elections no earlier than around 8:45 p.m. Alaska Standard Time on Tuesday.

The news, reported first by Scripps News, means that the first batch of results in the state’s highly anticipated U.S. Senate race will not come in until at least 12:45 p.m. ET on Wednesday. The ranked choice ballot state also announced that it aims to certify the election results before Nov. 25, three weeks after Election Day.

Polls close in Alaska on Election Day at 12:00 a.m. and 1:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday, which is 8:00 p.m. in Alaska’s two time zones.

In the 2022 midterm elections, when polls closed at 8:00 p.m. Alaska Standard Time, the first results were posted at about 9:11 p.m., per the Alaska Beacon, which meant they came in at 1:11 a.m. ET.

Election forecaster Sabato’s Crystal Ball released its final race ratings on Monday, predicting Democrats will pick up six seats in the Senate and 24 seats in the House in the 2026 midterm elections.

The forecaster predicted that 239 seats in the House at least lean toward Democrats, while 53 seats in the Senate do the same. The outlet’s final predictions left no toss-up House or Senate races on the board, with the toss-ups breaking 14-3 in favor of Democrats in the House and 4-1 in favor of Democrats in the Senate.

The three House races that broke towards Republicans were Kentucky’s open 6th Congressional District, Rep. Ann Wagner’s (R-MO) seat in Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District, and Rep. Mike Lawler’s (R-NY) seat in New York’s 17th Congressional District. The previously toss-up Senate race that broke toward Republicans was in Iowa, where Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) is taking on Democrat Josh Turek.

The final race shifts in the House, which favored Democrats, put 19 “likely Democratic” seats, 36 “leans Democratic” seats, 21 “leans Republican,” and 16 “likely Republican” seats on the House map. On the Senate side, the final shifts put Democrats at 53 seats at least leaning their way and Republicans at 47 seats at least leaning their way.

The toss-up Senate races that the outlet moved toward Democrats were in Kansas, Maine, Ohio, and Texas.

American music icon Bruce Springsteen on Monday waded into Michigan’s close Senate race, offering an endorsement for Democrat Abdul el Sayed.

Springsteen called el Sayed, the socialist-leaning candidate running against Republican Mike Rogers, a “fighter” for the U.S. Constitution.

“He’s a fighter for our American Democracy, and he’s a fighter against the corrupt, lawless, and anti-American leadership currently in the White House,” the singer said in a statement slamming President Donald Trump. “That’s why I’m in his corner 100%.”

Springsteen’s announcement comes after several lawmakers known in Democratic circles snubbed el Sayed with an endorsement for Rogers.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), a more centrist Democrat who lost to el Sayed in Michigan’s Senate primary, backed Rogers on Sunday, citing concerns about the Democratic nominee’s views on Jews and Israel. Former Sen. Joe Manchin, a longtime Democrat-turned-independent, also backed Rogers in September, calling him a “good person” who will do “a great job.”

In September, the Detroit Regional Chamber also scorned el Sayed with an endorsement for Rogers, saying it backed many of his economic policies.

A former staffer of Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), who is seeking to unseat Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), is being accused of making questionable posts on social media.

Jonathon Hatzistefanou, who now works for Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL), made the posts, according to the Washington Post. The outlet linked him to posts stating, “I’d rather be a white supremacist than a degenerate impoverished minority,” that democracy should end and be replaced with authoritarianism, and that Turning Point USA employed too many women, among others.

The development comes after another former staffer for Collins was accused in August of allegedly posting images on social media depicting a swastika and photos of himself in a Ku Klux Klan-style robe. That staffer said his posts were a joke.