Control of Congress and 36 governorships on the line as midterm voting closes out

Polls are open across the country Tuesday for a midterm election that will decide which party controls both chambers of Congress, along with more than three dozen governorships, in the first nationwide test of the Trump administration since 2024.

Democrats need a net gain of three seats to retake the House majority, while control of the Senate is seen as resting on a handful of contests, including two open seats in the perennial battlegrounds of North Carolina and Michigan. Georgia's Senate race between Democratic incumbent Jon Ossoff and Republican Mike Collins, and a Texas contest pitting Republican Ken Paxton against Democrat James Talarico, have drawn heavy outside spending as Republicans try to defend their narrow majority.

The governor's races may be just as consequential. Voters in 36 states are choosing governors this cycle, with open seats in Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia drawing especially close scrutiny after incumbents in each state declined to seek re-election. In California, voters are picking a successor to term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom, closing out a tenure marked by repeated legal clashes with the White House over election administration. Arizona and Nevada round out the list of top-tier governor contests both parties view as a marker for 2028.

Turnout has been unusually heavy. More than 14 million Americans had already voted by late October, according to tracking by the University of Florida's Election Lab, running ahead of the comparable point in both the 2018 and 2022 midterms. Georgia alone had logged more than a million early votes by mid-October, and several states, including Tennessee and Colorado, reported turnout well above their 2022 pace heading into Tuesday.

Midterm elections have historically gone against the party holding the White House, and strategists in both parties have cast this cycle as a referendum on President Trump's second-term agenda, from tariffs to immigration enforcement. A Democratic sweep of the House would hand the party subpoena power over the administration and the ability to block the president's legislative priorities; Republican gains in the Senate would let the White House accelerate confirmation of judicial and executive nominees through the next Congress.

The election is unfolding against an unusually tense backdrop. It comes months after a 43-day federal government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, and a stopgap funding measure keeps federal agencies open only through Dec. 11 — meaning whichever party prevails Tuesday will face an immediate budget fight in a lame-duck session. Overseas, an unresolved military confrontation between the United States and Iran over the Strait of Hormuz has kept energy prices and foreign policy on voters' minds in the campaign's final days.

Election officials in several states have also prepared for a noisier information environment than in past cycles, after months of legal fights over mail ballots and voter rolls that reached the Supreme Court and lower federal courts this fall. Those disputes, layered on top of the ordinary late burst of advertising and get-out-the-vote operations, have left both parties bracing for results that may not be final for days in the closest races, particularly in states that count mail ballots received after Election Day.

Polls close at staggered times through the evening, with the earliest results expected from East Coast states around 7 p.m. The picture in the most competitive Senate and governor's races is unlikely to come into full focus until well after midnight, if not later in the week.