The United States has reached the midterm elections, and voters will have an opportunity to deliver a judgment on the country’s direction two years into President Trump’s second term.
Mr. Trump enters the midterms on Tuesday with his approval rating near its lowest level ever, dragged down by the unpopular war in Iran and rising consumer prices that have outpaced wages and left many Americans struggling to cover their basic needs.
The president’s diminished standing and the country’s gloomy mood have given Democrats hope that voters will hand them majorities in Congress, which is controlled by Republicans.
More often than not, the party that controls the White House loses seats in the midterms. From 1934 to 2022, the president’s party bled an average of 27 seats in the House and three in the Senate, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
This year, strategists in both parties say it is likely that Democrats will wrest back the 435-seat House, offering the party a check on the Trump administration. But the picture in the 100-seat Senate is more complicated.
Here’s what to know.
What is the state of play in the Senate?
Both parties see the battle for the Senate as a tossup, and recent polling has encouraged Democrats.
In this chamber, where lawmakers serve six-years terms and only 35 of 100 seats are on the ballot, Democrats have a more challenging path than they do in the House.
Democrats’ route to a Senate majority goes through a number of states that are traditionally Republican strongholds.
Democrats hold 47 Senate seats. To take back the chamber, they must flip at least four seats held by Republicans. At the same time, Democrats are trying to defend seats in two states Mr. Trump won in 2024. And five of the seven most competitive Senate races are in states that Mr. Trump carried by double digits in 2024.
The seven most competitive races are in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio and Texas.
Early this year, even the most optimistic Democrats viewed their chances of winning back the Senate as low, given the daunting map. But then Mr. Trump took the country to war, and the conflict clogged a vital oil-shipping corridor, sending the price of gasoline and diesel soaring. Rising shipping costs made myriad goods more expensive, upending Mr. Trump’s vows to make America “affordable again.”
Democrats have campaigned on promises to curb inflation and end the war. Although the party is still viewed skeptically by much of the public, according to opinion polls, the message has appeared to resonate.
Now polls suggest Democrats are ahead in almost all of the key Senate battlegrounds. Still, polls are imperfect, and some Democrats have sought to manage expectations, cognizant that they must overcome a challenging partisan tilt in many of those states.
What is the state of play in the House?
More than in the Senate, races in the House tend to closely follow the national mood. Americans often vote for parties rather than specific candidates when they elect representatives, who serve two-year terms and are on the ballot every election cycle.
This year, the powerful political headwinds facing Republicans have left them with long odds of keeping the chamber. At the moment, Republicans have a razor-thin advantage in the House: 218 seats to 214 seats.
The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election forecaster, projects that Democrats will flip between 12 and 25 seats and finish with up to 240 seats.
The vast majority of the most competitive House races are playing out in districts held by Republicans.
The national House battle was reshaped earlier this year, after Republicans, urged on by Mr. Trump, redrew congressional district lines to advantage their party, starting in Texas.
Democrats fought back, redrawing districts in blue states such as California, but in some cases they were foiled by courts. In the end, Republicans emerged from the redistricting war with a structural advantage, aided by a Supreme Court decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act and allowed them to redraw more districts.
Still, that edge is seen as unlikely to be enough for Republicans to keep the House in a difficult political climate.
What are the parties saying?
Mr. Trump has spent weeks crisscrossing the country, delivering an unusual midterm pitch.
“Pretend I’m on the ballot, because essentially I am on the ballot,” Mr. Trump pleaded at a rally Sunday in Iowa, a Senate battleground. The line invariably appears in his long, winding and often unscripted speeches.
It’s the same message Democrats are relaying to voters.
Unpopular presidents don’t typically try to make midterms referendums of their presidencies. But Mr. Trump and his advisers are hoping to juice turnout among Americans who don’t always vote but turned out to elect him to the White House in 2016 and 2024.
Democrats have prosecuted a case that Mr. Trump has made America unaffordable and lost touch with the needs of voters. They have accused his administration of corruption and described the Iran war as ill-planned and unnecessary. They have pilloried the president’s efforts to make over Washington and renovate the White House, saying that they are gaudy vanity projects.
“He should be on HGTV,” former President Barack Obama said at a rally in Ohio in October, mocking Mr. Trump. “He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere.”
Republicans have also sought to persuade voters that Democratic candidates are unacceptable options, casting them as politically extreme — and sometimes worse. The strategy has produced one of the darkest elections in modern American history, as Republicans have attacked Democrats with false and incendiary claims.
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