Polls Open With 59 Million Ballots Already Cast, Democrats Favored for the House
The Senate is anyone's guess as Democrats need four flips in a map built on Republican turf, and counting in the closest races could take days or weeks.
Voting in the 2026 midterm elections ends today with control of both chambers of Congress on the line, and more than 59 million Americans have already cast ballots, according to NPR. That is nearly half of the total ballots cast in the last midterm election, and early-vote data shows Democrats holding a double-digit advantage among those who have voted.
Democrats are favored to win the House of Representatives. They need to flip only three seats to take control, and the landscape has shifted considerably in their favor over the past month. Republicans tried to insulate themselves with rare mid-decade redistricting, but NPR reports that it likely will not be enough to help the party keep the chamber.
The Senate is a different story. Democrats need to flip four seats to take control, something that was unthinkable at the start of the cycle. Strong Democratic recruits and a difficult national environment for Republicans have made it a real possibility, but the party is favored to flip only one seat, North Carolina. Beyond that, the races are either toss-ups or lean slightly Republican.
The terrain is also hostile. Apart from Maine, the five toss-up seats held by Republicans are in states that President Trump won by double digits in 2024. That is why Trump has spent the final stretch in so many red states trying to turn out his base, and why he has also hosted 19 virtual "telerallies" alongside his in-person events, NPR reported last week. Republicans' top target is Michigan, and if they win it, the Democratic path to a Senate majority narrows sharply.
The size of Republican turnout today is the main variable. Republicans vote overwhelmingly in person on Election Day, so the Democratic lead in early voting may shrink as those ballots are counted. NPR's Domenico Montanaro wrote that high Republican turnout could limit Democrats to a single Senate pickup, while low turnout could produce a Democratic wipeout of up to six or seven seats and control of the chamber.
Results begin arriving at 6 p.m. Eastern, when polls close in Kentucky and Indiana, and NPR's live election special starts at 8 p.m. The first results will not settle the outcome. In many places the vote will not be known tonight, and with several close races expected, it could take days or even weeks to know who won.
The final hours have been dominated by legal fights as well as campaigning. A federal judge in Alaska on Sunday threw out the Trump administration's attempt to block certification of that state's Senate results if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses, and the Supreme Court rejected a Justice Department push to separate California ballots. Both rulings underline why election officials and analysts are urging patience tonight: a slow count is the normal process in a close election, not evidence of fraud.
