Final hours of US midterm campaigning as polls point to Democratic gains

Campaigning in the US midterm elections is entering its final hours before polls open on Tuesday. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are being contested. BBC News put the number of Senate seats being contested at 35, while BBC Two's Newsnight panel referred to 33 Senate seats in cycle.

Democrats need at least 218 seats to control the House. In the Senate, a party needs 51 seats, though a 50-50 split would give the deciding vote to the vice president, which currently favours the Republicans, BBC News reported. The latest BBC News Newscast said Democrats had about a 9 percentage point national lead over Republicans, better than the historical expectation. It said Senate races in states Trump won by 10, 12 or 15 points two years ago, including Texas, Kansas and Iowa, were now competitive. The same programme put Trump's approval at around 35-36%, historically low for a president entering midterms, and said 60% of Americans were extremely concerned about corruption, citing a Fox poll. It also said the war with Iran had approval of only 25-30%. The Newscast put the total number of races at 470, 435 in the House and 35 in the Senate.

BBC Two's Newsnight panel treated a Democratic takeover of the House as likely and the Senate as a coin toss. Matthew Foldi, editor-in-chief of the conservative Washington Reporter, said the Senate map had always been hard for Republicans because the seats up were in Republican-leaning states, but Democrats were surprisingly competitive in Kansas, Texas and South Carolina. Miles Taylor, an official in the first Trump presidency, said the enthusiasm gap between the parties was substantial and that corruption had become voters' top issue for the first time in American polling history.

On the campaign trail, President Trump voted in person in Florida alongside Melania Trump before a rally in Georgia. BBC News reported that he used the Georgia rally to announce an Audi car plant, with construction due to begin next month, and cited $40bn of investment and 30,000 jobs. The broadcaster said it was unclear whether the plant would be the single largest investment in US auto industry history. ITV reported that Trump usually votes by post but had criticised the system, so chose to vote in person before the Georgia rally.

Former president Barack Obama campaigned for Democrats in Ohio and Michigan. BBC News reported that at a Detroit rally he said the administration's actions were directly responsible for rising costs and that Trump had started an unnecessary war. ITV and BBC Two both carried Obama's mockery of Trump's White House redecorating, including his line that it looked like 'Saddam Hussein opened a cheesecake factory'. BBC Two reported that the White House response did not dispute Obama's claims about prices, tariffs or corruption, but focused on the cheesecake joke instead.

BBC News also reported that Ben Solis, a senior reporter for Michigan Advance, said Obama's main mission in Detroit was to shore up Democratic unity after a divisive primary between Abdul El-Sayed and Representative Haley Stevens. Solis said the race was as close as possible and would go down to the wire.

Cost of living, inflation and the war with Iran ran through most of the coverage. BBC One reported from North Carolina and Maine. Its North America editor, Sarah Smith, said most tight races featured Republican incumbents facing strong Democratic challenges, and that voters were angry about prices and blamed Trump's decision to go to war with Iran, though not all planned to switch their votes. BBC One also visited a drive-in food bank in North Carolina run by Pastor Daisy Brooks, where cars queued for miles. Kathy told the programme she had voted Republican last time but voted Democrat this year because of gas and grocery prices, while Sherry, a Republican and former Trump supporter, said she would stay at home.

BBC One also reported on Pastor Cameron McGill, a local politician and pastor at the Lake Church in North Carolina, who warned that evangelical Republicans might stay at home. George Barber, who runs a vineyard in the region, was shown taking the pastor's words to heart. Daisy Brooks said the worst poverty she had seen included elderly people eating cat food or dog food, and that politics should be about people 'no matter their church'.

Sky News reported that Trump was addressing a rally in Iowa as Republicans fought to hold a critical Senate seat and the governor's office. Its US correspondent, Martha Kelner, said the economy and affordability were the main issues in Texas, alongside immigration. She said some voters in the Rio Grande Valley who backed Trump in 2024 might flip back to the Democrats to punish him over ICE raids that had rounded up friends, neighbours and family. Sky News also highlighted the Texas Senate race between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton, with Paxton warning that if Democrats took Texas, Republicans would lose America.

Sky News reported that Trump had struck a diesel deal with Russia to bring down diesel prices and had offered a $5,000 cheque to each American if Republicans won, but that neither appeared to have changed the race. Its studio panel said Trump was unlikely to become a timid constitutionalist if he lost Congress, and that he could still rule through executive orders.