Three days to the US midterms: Democrats lead House polls as more than 43 million vote early and both parties make their final case
With three days left until the 3 November US midterm elections, more than 43 million Americans have already voted, polls point to a Democratic House win while Senate control remains contested, and Trump, Obama and Harris have all taken to the campaign trail in the final stretch.
The United States has entered the final three days before its midterm elections on 3 November, with more than 43 million Americans already having voted early, national polls pointing towards a Democratic victory in the House of Representatives, and control of the Senate still hanging in the balance. The contest will decide which party controls Congress, leads its committees and sets the legislative agenda for the final two years of President Donald Trump's term.
The scale of early voting is one of the clearest features of this election. According to an Associated Press analysis released on Friday, more than 43 million people had already voted in person or returned mail-in ballots five days before polling day, a figure significantly higher than at the same stage in 2022. Campaigns on both sides are reading that surge as a sign of unusually high engagement for a midterm contest, in which the president's own name is not on the ballot.
The polling picture, as it stood at the weekend, favoured the Democrats in the House race. The RealClearPolling national congressional ballot average put Democrats ahead of Republicans by 8.2 percentage points, at 51.4% against 43.2%, while an Economist/YouGov survey found that 44% of registered voters expected Democrats to control the House after the election, compared with 31% who thought Republicans would hold it. The Silver Bulletin forecast, updated on 29 October, gave Democrats a 95.1% chance of winning the House, projecting an average of 240 Democratic seats against 195 Republican seats.
The Senate contest looks closer. Republicans currently hold a 53-47 advantage, and Democrats would need a net gain of four seats to secure an outright majority, because Vice-President JD Vance can break a 50-50 tie in the Republicans' favour, meaning 51 seats are required for Democratic control. Polling and forecasts suggest the outcome could turn on a handful of toss-up races in states including Maine, Ohio and Texas, where neither party has established a commanding lead.
President Trump has spent the closing days urging his supporters to treat the midterms as a referendum on his presidency. He addressed Republican supporters in Daytona Beach, Florida, on Friday, describing the elections as the most important midterms ever, and had planned further rallies in Kansas and Iowa at the weekend before those in-person events were cancelled, with virtual rallies planned instead. His message has been to counter voter concern about the economy by framing the vote as a judgement on his administration as a whole.
Former President Barack Obama campaigned for Democrats in Ohio and Michigan on Saturday, urging voters to use the election as what he called a circuit breaker that could bring accountability to the Trump administration. He criticised the administration's handling of the conflict with Iran, arguing that it had strengthened Tehran's leverage over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and mocked the White House renovations and the administration's focus on what he described as superficial issues. In Michigan he campaigned for Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who faces Republican Mike Rogers in a closely fought race.
Former Vice-President Kamala Harris has also been on the trail, campaigning for candidates across seven states and ending with a two-day visit to Georgia. She described Trump as callous, corrupt and incompetent, called him the decorator in chief over the White House renovations and gold adornments, and urged voters, including Black Americans, to turn anger into action at the ballot box. She has also used the campaign to argue for structural changes to American democracy, including expanding the Supreme Court and granting statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
The closing days have also been marked by legal disputes over ballots themselves. The Justice Department wrote to election officials in all 50 states on 29 October, reminding them of their obligation under federal law to preserve election records for at least 22 months and warning of possible criminal prosecution, including up to a year in prison, for failing to do so. The department has also asked a federal judge to order Alaska officials to preserve and segregate ballots ranking Daniel J. Sullivan, a Senate candidate whose name closely resembles that of Republican incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan, in a dispute that has drawn national attention.
A federal appeals court on Friday again refused to order California to set aside more than 20,000 mail-in ballots, while the Justice Department has widened its subpoenas in California and Alaska. Democratic groups have sued Trump, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, accusing the administration of unlawfully pressuring election authorities, and a federal judge has directed the departments to identify states where they formally asked officials to remove specific voters or refuse ballots. The department says its nationwide letters concern record preservation rather than removing individual voters.
One more factor could shape turnout itself: the weather. A storm developing off the US West Coast is expected to move into the central United States on Saturday night, bringing heavy rainfall and possible flash flooding to the Four Corners states of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado from Sunday into Monday, just as voters head to the polls. Campaigns will be watching whether that disruption, combined with the record early vote, changes who actually casts a ballot on Tuesday.
What happens next is, in the end, a matter of counting. The polls point one way in the House and remain uncertain in the Senate, the early vote is already banked, and the final rallies, court rulings and weather forecasts are all competing for attention in the last 72 hours. On Tuesday night, the question will no longer be who led the polls, but who won the seats that decide control of Congress, and with it the balance of power in Washington for the next two years.
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