Americans vote on Tuesday 3 November in midterm elections that will decide who controls Congress for the last two years of Donald Trump's second term. Republicans hold 53 of the 100 Senate seats and a slim majority in the House of Representatives. Democrats need a net gain of three seats to take the House and four to take the Senate.
More than 54m ballots had been cast before polling day, according to the Associated Press. That is a record for early voting, nearly 9m more than in 2022.
The polls favour the Democrats. CBS News's Battleground Tracker last estimated that they would win 229 House seats, within a range of 215 to 237. The Fifty Plus One polling aggregate gives them a 99 per cent chance of winning the House and 80 per cent in the Senate. Pollsters have, however, underestimated Mr Trump's party before.
The bill at the pump
The cost of living has dominated the campaign, and fuel above all. AAA put the national average price of regular petrol at $4.17 a gallon on Monday, against $3.04 a year earlier. Diesel, which runs the lorries that carry most of America's goods, stood at $6.29, up from $3.68.
Brent crude has swung between $72 and $126 a barrel since the war with Iran began in late February. It fell 6.7 per cent to about $106 on Monday, after Tehran said it had a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Mr Trump said in September that petrol prices would fall once the war ended after the midterms. Tariffs have added to costs in manufacturing states such as Michigan.
Investors were cautious on the eve of the vote. On Monday the S&P 500 fell 0.5 per cent, the Nasdaq fell 1.1 per cent and the Dow Jones rose 0.4 per cent.
The tone of the campaign
Mr Trump has made 28 campaign trips since 1 October, including to states that are normally safe for his party, such as Texas and Kansas.
At a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on 12 October he described Somali immigrants as "low IQ". He also said Ohio should not be "plundered, ransacked and destroyed like Minnesota is being destroyed", a reference to Minnesota's large Somali community. At the same rally he repeated his debunked claim about Haitian migrants in Springfield, saying: "I was right."
On 25 October in Port Huron, Michigan, he said he was there "to keep a jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator". He was referring to Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate, who was born in America and is a former public-health official. Mr Trump added that Mr El-Sayed "would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector". There is no evidence that Mr El-Sayed has any link to the Muslim Brotherhood. He has dismissed the attacks as "distractions" from the cost of living and health care.
The courts have also intervened. On Sunday a federal judge dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit that sought to block certification of the Alaska Senate result if the Republican Dan Sullivan lost; the department has appealed. Separately, the Supreme Court rejected the administration's emergency request to set aside thousands of California ballots.
What to watch
The first polls close at midnight GMT in Georgia, Virginia and South Carolina, followed at 01:00 GMT by Pennsylvania, Maine and most of Texas and Michigan. The Senate races to follow are Texas, where James Talarico faces Ken Paxton; Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed faces Mike Rogers; and Kansas, Maine, Ohio, Alaska and Iowa.
Two ballot measures carry particular economic weight. Californians vote on Proposition 40, a one-off 5 per cent tax on wealth above $1bn. In Washington state, voters decide whether to repeal a 9.9 per cent tax on income above $1m.
