WASHINGTON — Voting started Tuesday in the midterm elections. At stake is control of Congress for the last two years of President Donald Trump’s second term. Reuters reported that the polls point to Democrats taking the House. The Senate, by those same polls, is too close to call.
Every House seat is up, all 435 of them. So are 35 Senate seats, and voters in 36 states are also picking a governor. The House breakdown is 218 Republicans, 214 Democrats. In the Senate it is 53 to 47, Republican. Four seats. That is the net gain Democrats need in the Senate.
The vote follows a record early turnout. By Monday, more than 57 million ballots were already in. An Associated Press analysis put that well past the 45.9 million early votes cast in the whole of the 2022 midterms.
Virginia Votes Until 7 P.M.
Virginia’s polls opened at 6 a.m. and they close at 7 p.m. Anyone already in line at 7 can still cast a ballot. Warner is a Democrat. His Republican opponent is Bert Mizusawa, and he is running for another term in the Senate. Virginia has 11 House seats and every one of them is being contested. The ballot also carries three proposed changes to the state constitution.
The Associated Press described a campaign shaped by high prices, dissatisfaction with the economy and the war with Iran. The AP’s own operation is a big one, nearly 7,000 races in all 50 states. It calls a race only when the candidate in second place has no plausible way left to catch up.
Reuters also asked analysts what a change of control would mean in practice in Washington. What would change?
“The most visible effects of a change in congressional control would likely be greater oversight of the administration and more difficult fiscal negotiations,”
Haefele said it in a note on Monday. He is chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management.
At UBS, the odds on Democrats winning both chambers are put at 50%. A split result, Democrats taking the House while Republicans keep the Senate, gets 40%. And the chance Republicans keep both? Ten percent, in figures reported by Reuters. At Citigroup, U.S. equity strategist Scott Chronert sounded less sure of the outcome. Writing in a research note, he pointed to the close Senate races and said Republicans could still end up holding that chamber.
Indiana and Kentucky come first. Parts of both states stop voting at 6 p.m. Eastern, and Virginia follows at 7. Close margins, late-arriving mail ballots and ranked-choice counts in Alaska and Maine could leave the fight for control of one or both chambers unresolved well past election night.
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