Trump Closes Midterm Campaign in Farm Belt as Early Vote Hits Record 52 Million

President Trump capped his campaign travel for the 2026 midterms with back-to-back rallies in Dubuque, Iowa, and Salina, Kansas, on Sunday, betting that two Farm Belt states he carried easily in 2024 need a late personal push to hold onto Senate seats Republicans cannot afford to lose. The stops, two days before Tuesday's election, had been called off and then put back on the schedule within the same week, an on-again, off-again sequence that underscored how closely the party is watching turnout in states it once considered safe.

Iowa's open Senate seat, contested between Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson and Democrat Josh Turek, is rated a toss-up by independent handicappers — a striking shift in a state Trump won by double digits two years ago. Kansas, which has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, has likewise turned competitive, with Republican Sen. Roger Marshall facing a tighter-than-expected challenge from Democrat Adam Hamilton.

A record pace of early voting

The closing argument comes against a backdrop of extraordinary early turnout. More than 52 million Americans had already voted in person or by mail as of Sunday, according to the early-voting tracker run by University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald — a midterm record, well ahead of the roughly 46 million ballots cast before Election Day in 2022. All 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats are on Tuesday's ballot. Republicans currently hold the chamber 53 to 47, a split reflected in the Senate's own roster of the 119th Congress, with Democrats needing a net gain of four seats to retake control.

Trump's travel this week also took him to Daytona Beach, Florida, on Friday night, where he campaigned for Sen. Ashley Moody against Democratic nominee Angie Nixon, telling the crowd at the Ocean Center Arena to "defeat the communist candidate for Senate," according to an NBC News account of the rally. It was his second Florida stop of the final stretch, after an appearance in Fort Myers the previous Friday.

Warning signs for Republicans

Polling cited in that same coverage found Trump's approval among rural voters, a core constituency, had slipped to a new low of 45 percent in October, a Reuters/Ipsos finding Republican strategists have cited privately as a reason for shoring up states like Iowa and Kansas rather than campaigning further afield. Trump has otherwise expressed confidence about Tuesday's results, telling reporters he feels "very good" heading into the vote, even as he scaled back his travel schedule earlier in the week before reversing course for the Sunday swing, according to AP's report on the Iowa and Kansas stops.

With Election Day two days away, both parties are treating turnout, not persuasion, as the deciding factor in a map that has expanded well beyond the traditional battlegrounds.