The Latest: Voters cast their ballots as Republicans hope to hold control of Congress
Election Day is here. Voters nationwide will decide control of the U.S. House and Senate. Democrats must flip four seats in the Senate and three seats in the House to wrest control of the chambers from Republicans. Control of Congress would give Democrats a way to push back against President Donald Trump’s agenda during the final two years of his term. The battle for control is playing out mostly in states and districts Trump previously won by wide margins.
All eyes are on Senate contests in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio and Texas, while House battlegrounds are scattered across the country.
Democrats have homed in on Trump’s poor approval rating, public dissatisfaction with the war in Iran and affordability concerns. Republicans have focused on social issues, while Trump has made himself the central character of the midterms.
The latest:
Astronaut Anil Menon’s sleeping compartment aboard the International Space Station doubled as his voting booth. Menon said in a brief video posted via X on Tuesday that he used his computer to fill out and submit an electronic ballot to Harris County, Texas. Crewmates Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney did the same.
Harris County is home to NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Mission Control.
U.S. astronauts have been voting in space since 1997.
In the Dallas suburbs, two voters say Christian values factored into their votes.
James Bender said he wants the country to get back to an identity rooted in Judeo-Christian values.
He said he respected Talarico’s religious roots and faith but said, “At the end of the day, I just, I don’t agree with him.”
Bender, 47, said he wasn’t voting for Paxton’s character as much as the policies he’d try to enact if elected.
Paxton has faced a string of legal and ethical problems and allegations of marital infidelity.
April Vindiola said those issues made Paxton a “no” for her. She said a candidate’s morals and values are important.
“I’ve been following Talarico for quite some time,” Vindiola said. “I think whenever I’ve heard him speak … it resonates with me what his beliefs are.”
The last time California elected a Republican to statewide office, George W. Bush was president, entertainer James Brown was still alive and the second “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie was the biggest film of the year.
Republican Steve Hilton is trying to defy those odds and end his party’s 16-year drought in a state with 4.5 million more registered Democratic voters than Republicans.
He’s tried to win over Californians who rarely vote Republican by repeating the motto “Just try it!”; blaming Democratic leadership for the state’s high cost of living; and releasing splashy ads, sometimes using AI to mock his Democratic rival, Xavier Becerra.
Becerra, meanwhile, has campaigned on a promise to uphold the state’s status as a liberal counterweight to Trump’s policies. He’s tried to tie Hilton to Trump, who endorsed him in the primary.
The ballot measure, known as Proposition 40, has racked up support from progressives like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has framed it as a monumental step toward reining in deep wealth inequality, while also drawing criticism from Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats, who say it will trigger wealthy people to flee the state.
The ballot fight has also been defined by the copious amount of money tech moguls and venture capitalists have poured into it. Google co-founder Sergey Brin alone has donated more than $100 million to a political committee working to defeat the proposal.
The first-in-the-nation measure would levy a one-time, 5% tax on the wealth of Californians whose net worth exceeds $1 billion. Most of the money would be used to backfill federal funding cuts to healthcare, while 10% would go toward education and food assistance programs.
Joni Borrell, 67, and her father, Herman Jamerson, 91, described themselves as solidly Republican. They voted that way a week before Election Day, casting ballots in Henrico, Virginia, for GOP Rep. Rob Wittman and Bert Mizusawa, the Republican mounting a long-shot bid against Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Warner.
Jamerson, a retired plumbing contractor, said he thinks the president has “done a great job” so far this term.
“He’s for the common person. To me, that’s his biggest success. I mean, he looks out for the little guy, just the average person,” Jamerson said.
As for Trump and the economy, Jamerson added: “Well, he ain’t done yet, that’s the thing. And it was in such a mess.”
Borrell, a retired nurse who now works with youth camps, said her strong objections to Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger factored into her vote. Keeping Republicans in control of Washington would help preserve some “balance,” she said.
Abortion is on the ballot in four states including Missouri, where voters are being asked to erase the constitutional right to abortion they adopted two years ago.
The Republican-dominated state legislature advanced the measure, which also would write into the state constitution a ban on much gender-affirming healthcare for transgender minors.
Conservative Idaho’s question would remove a ban if it were adopted.
A measure in Nevada would ensure access until at least fetal viability and one in Virginia would create a right to abortion for the first two trimesters of pregnancy.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and allowed enforcement of state abortion bans, abortion-rights supporters have prevailed on 14 of the 17 ballot measures across the U.S.
Trump spent part of Election Day complaining about reaction to his Monday speech at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, criticizing a news outlet and a Democratic congressman.
Trump spoke in great detail on social media about his upgrades to infrastructure and plumbing at the Reflecting Pool, devoting more time to that project than to Republican candidates he hopes will help the party retain control of Congress.
Trump ripped the Daily Mail for describing the speech as a “final midterms speech.” He said his rallies Sunday in Iowa and Kansas were meant to close out the campaign.
He also went after Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., who on social media shared an edited clip of Trump suggesting he might rename the iconic spot on the National Mall the “Trump Reflecting Pool.”
Trump followed up by saying he was joking.
“I said, very clearly, ‘I’m joking,’” he wrote.
Later tonight, we’ll start sharing data from The AP Voter Poll, a large survey of verified voters conducted for The Associated Press and the major broadcast news networks.
It’s a high-quality preelection survey of voters merged with the best practices of the historic exit poll, which major broadcasters have relied on for decades. Reflecting the complexity of American elections, it uses a combination of methods to find voters no matter how they cast a ballot, whether early, by mail or on Election Day.
We’ll start sharing data around 5 p.m. EST.
An Oklahoma City man is charged with sending hundreds of letters containing nonhazardous white powder to public officials ahead of the 2024 and 2026 elections.
The powders turned out to be yeast or flour, though not all letters have been fully tested, the FBI said in a court filing.
Robin Martin is charged with conveying a hoax and mailing threatening communications. He was in custody, and online records didn’t list an attorney who could comment on his behalf. He is expected to make an appearance Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City.
Authorities said last month that they were investigating suspicious letters mailed to congressional and election offices nationwide and urged recipients to treat the mailings as “potentially hazardous.”
Some letters bore ominous messages that could only be read under ultraviolet light. The sender wrote a return address as “U.S.T.E.A., United States Traitor Elimination Army, Takoma Park, MD.”
Outside an early voting site in Dripping Springs, Texas, 25-year-old Ian Brown said he had just voted for a straight Republican ticket.
He referenced some of Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico’s past statements about God and gender, which Republican Ken Paxton has highlighted in attack ads.
“He claims he’s Christian, but he says you know there’s multiple genders. That’s not even biblically accurate,” Brown said.
The self-described Republican Libertarian said he thinks Trump is “the best thing for our country right now.”
Sofia Sites, meanwhile, voted for the first time this election and supported Democrats.
Sites, 21, has a transgender sibling, and Talarico’s stance on transgender and LGBTQ+ rights was something that drew her to him, she said.
“There’s no perfect politician; there’s no one I like to bow down to,” Sites said. “I just think that I’m wanting to see more empathy."
The vote-counting issues bedeviling Westchester County stem from a program update that happened after polling equipment was initially prepared and tested, according to the state Board of Elections.
A change in an unnamed local race required an update that wasn’t made to machines in other counties, the board said. As a result, those tabulators were unable to recognize completed Election Day ballots.
State officials said they’re working with their counterparts in Westchester County to restore ballot-scanning capability to at least one vote-counting machine at every polling location. Voting continues through established emergency ballot procedures.
Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins vowed to launch a bipartisan investigation into what he called a “debacle.”
John Shaw of Phoenix said he showed up to the polls on Tuesday to support “American values” and “patriotic things.”
Shaw, who declined to say which candidates he picked, said he hoped to see government “be a little more conservative” and to see “less government” overall after the election.
Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs is seeking a second term but faces a challenge from Republican Rep. Andy Biggs. Voters will also decide a full slate of contests, including congressional and state legislative races that could shift the balance of power both in Washington and in the state government.
While there were long lines at Shaw’s polling place, he said it was still exciting to talk to fellow voters.
Alaska voters last elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 2008 and as governor in 1998. But Democrats are making strong pushes in both races ahead of the ranked choice general election.
In the Senate race, two-term Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan has gotten support from Trump and Vance as he seeks to fend off Democrat Mary Peltola, a former congresswoman. Peltola finished first in August’s open primary.
Two other candidates, including another Dan Sullivan, also are running but have done almost no campaigning. Trump has directed the Justice Department to investigate the presence of another candidate with the same name as the incumbent, even calling for Peltola’s prosecution. He also continued voicing his opposition to the state’s use of ranked voting.
State Republican leaders have long expressed skepticism about ranked voting but encouraged voters to rank the Republicans. Many Republicans see the strategy as essential to winning the governor’s race, featuring Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and three Republicans, including Trump-backed Bernadette Wilson.
A year ago, Ossoff was considered Democrats’ most vulnerable incumbent. The campaign hasn’t turned out that way.
Ossoff had no primary opposition, and he quickly became a fundraising machine, exciting Democrats nationally with his broadsides against Trump. He collected at least $109 million, tops among all Senate candidates.
Republicans had an extended primary battle. Rep. Mike Collins, a self-declared “MAGA warrior” who echoes Trump’s 2020 election denial, received the president’s late endorsement and defeated Derek Dooley.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, the Republican whom GOP leaders wanted to run, backed Dooley and spent the spring telling voters Collins couldn’t win in November.
Collins struggled to hit the $10 million fundraising mark, and he was dogged by questions about an unresolved House ethics investigation and his ties to white nationalists.
Ossoff is trying to capitalize on Election Day as some Democrats openly hope he runs for president in 2028.
Voters in reliably Democratic Colorado and Washington are deciding on ballot measures that would ban transgender girls from girls’ sports competitions.
Both supporters and opponents say that if one or both are adopted, it could open the door to further measures in Democratic-led states in coming elections.
Similar measures are on the ballot in Arizona, where voters are being asked to apply an existing ban to private schools, and in Nebraska, where a measure would add an existing ban in state law to the state constitution.
Every state where both the legislature and governor’s office are held by Republicans has already passed a law like this. But no state has done it through a ballot question so far.
The votes come at a time when a growing number of Democratic politicians are saying transgender girls shouldn’t be allowed to play girls’ sports.
In a post on X, the vice president sought to remind voters about the Trump administration’s effort to cut taxes over the past year and a half.
“We ended taxes on overtime. We ended taxes on tips. We ended taxes on Social Security,” Vance wrote on the social media platform.
But the changes made by the wide-ranging tax law enacted by Trump are not that clear-cut.
More than 40 states have not implemented the federal law ending taxes on tips, meaning workers who receive a federal tax deduction for tips or overtime still will owe state taxes on those earnings.
As for taxes on Social Security, the legislation targeted seniors’ income with a temporary benefit, not just Social Security.
Opposition to data centers in communities across the U.S. has snowballed from a local issue into a midterm election weapon in statewide races from Texas to Ohio to Florida amid the artificial intelligence revolution.
Candidates spent millions to paint their opponents as data center patsies — giving them nicknames like “Data Nate” — as onetime data center boosters worked to distance themselves or get tough on the industry.
They had an ally: Trump urged communities to accept data centers, as the industry spent millions to boost its image.
Meanwhile, the issue crossed traditional ideological boundaries.
Labor unions became allies of tech giants, as they scrambled to build the behemoth projects.
Clean energy advocates became staunch critics of data centers, as energy-hungry server warehouses set off the biggest-ever construction boom of natural gas-fired power plants. Ranchers and farmers worried about water shortages or losing agricultural land.
Kim Dean, 74, is a Democrat who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 but says he’s never voted strictly for Democrats — until this year.
Dean has a long list of grievances about how Trump has governed: the way U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is “running around” and deporting people, the president “tearing down” the White House, the war in Iran, the way Trump “berates” people.
“A lot of this stuff, I just don’t agree with it. It just don’t make sense to me,” the retired steel worker from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, said after dropping off his mail ballot.
“I’ll be honest with you, I would have voted for Pepe the dog this year, you know what I mean? To try to get this administration changed. Yes, I’m voting against the whole administration.”
If Republicans lose ground in Congress, it won’t be because they didn’t have more money than Democrats.
Republicans have held a financial advantage leading up to the midterm elections, owing to GOP-aligned outside groups’ outsized role, notably in Senate races.
Combined, the Republican National Committee, its related congressional committees and corresponding super PACs, including Trump’s MAGA Inc., raised more than $2.2 billion, compared with about $1.3 billion for the Democratic National Committee and its aligned committees and groups.
Democratic candidates, however, have outraised Republicans in their individual races, more than $2.3 billion to about $1.6 billion. That money goes further than super PAC dollars because candidates get lower advertising rates.
The two sides have spent an astronomical amount on the midterm campaigns — more than $11.9 billion, according to Federal Election Commission records. The vast majority of spending has been on advertising: Republicans and allied groups have spent more than $5.5 billion while Democrats and allied groups have spent a little more than $5 billion, according to the media-tracking firm AdImpact.
© Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
