A tumultuous midterm season is coming to a close as voters head to the polls in a critical election that could reshape the balance of power in Washington and determine the fate of Trump’s agenda. The outcome rests largely on an expanded map of Senate battlegrounds.
Democrats hold a commanding lead in the generic ballot, but the battle for the Senate — which confirms the president’s nominees, including Supreme Court justices — remains tight. Control could hinge on just thousands of votes across these states:
Texas: Could Republicans lose their grip on America’s largest red state? That’s the question hanging over Tuesday night as Democrat James Talarico seeks to defeat Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in what is shaping up to be the cycle’s marquee Senate race.
A Texas upset would deal a significant blow to Republican hopes of retaining Senate control and send shockwaves through the party as it looks toward 2028. With 40 Electoral College votes, Texas remains the biggest prize among the reliably Republican states in presidential elections.
Polls have consistently shown Talarico clinging to a narrow lead, but strong turnout on both sides has left the campaigns biting their nails until polls close. The contentious race follows President Trump’s decision to endorse Paxton over incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who was already poised to lose fighting a MAGA insurgency that argued he was a bygone of a past era of Texas politics. Still, the results angered the party’s establishment, who have long warned that Paxton’s personal baggage could hurt the entire GOP ticket.
Michigan: For the red-green alliance between socialists and Islamists, an Abdul El-Sayed victory would prove that their movement can compete and win almost anywhere.
Socialist-aligned El-Sayed, the former public health director for Detroit, narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens, an establishment-backed four-term congresswoman from the Detroit suburbs. The results capped a bruising primary and exposed the Democratic Party’s accelerating ideological and demographic divisions. For her part, Stevens performed the best in areas where most of the state’s black voters live, such as Wayne, Oakland, and Genesee Counties. El-Sayed, meanwhile, outperformed his benchmarks among younger voters and those with college degrees.
Whether El-Sayed makes history as the nation’s first Muslim U.S. senator may hinge on turnout in Detroit, where Republican Mike Rogers has made substantial inroads.
Stevens previously told Politico that Rogers is engaging the community “harder and more successfully” than any Republican she can remember. Despite campaigning for him, she demanded he condemn antisemitic rhetoric and blasted an ad running in Michigan that blames Israel for America’s economic woes.
“This type of fearmongering about Israel is wrong. It is not a winning strategy for any state. It does nothing to help Michigan Democrats win up and down the ballot in eight days,” she said on X.
Stevens threw a major curveball into the race by flipping her endorsement on the eve of the election from El-Sayed to Rogers.
El-Sayed’s parents are both Egyptian immigrants, and his father was a part-time imam, The Daily Wire previously reported. His father-in-law is a founding committee member of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, according to the federal government.
His platform — which includes Medicare for all, abolishing ICE, defunding the police, stacking the U.S. Supreme Court, and raising taxes on billionaires — galvanized the Democratic Party’s far-Left base, including streamer Hasan Piker, who has said that the United States “deserved” the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
El-Sayed’s campaign has long been dogged by his ties to Islamic radicalism, including the 2012 letter El-Sayed signed supporting Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, whose government was backed by the Muslim Brotherhood. His opponent, Republican Mike Rogers, argues that sending El-Sayed to Washington could compromise national security.
Perhaps the comments that generated the strongest backlash, prompting even some Democratic voters to pull their support, came in the aftermath of the attack on Temple Israel. Months earlier, a Muslim man had intentionally driven a truck into the synagogue and opened fire on a security guard in what federal authorities described as a Hezbollah-inspired terrorist attack targeting Jews. In his initial response, El-Sayed condemned the attack but also sought to excuse the bloodshed, saying that “violence is a cycle” and “hurt people hurt people.”
After winning the primary, he tried to walk back those inflammatory comments.
“My comments might have been misconstrued to be justifying something I did not intend to justify,” El-Sayed said. “To anybody who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention.”
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Maine: Republican Sen. Susan Collins is once again looking to defy history and the polls in what is shaping up to be the toughest race of her political career. If she prevails Tuesday night, Democrat Troy Jackson would become the second high-profile Democratic challenger to fall short of unseating her this cycle.
Graham Platner, the scandal-plagued Maine progressive who faced intense scrutiny over a Nazi tattoo and allegations of rape and sexual harassment, suspended his Senate campaign in July after mounting pressure from Democrats to force him out of the race.
“We believe that for the movement to continue, it can’t be me,” Platner said. “And for that reason, we are suspending campaign operations.”
The announcement marked a stunning fall for the Bernie Sanders-backed oyster farmer, who had leveraged a working-class populist message to propel himself onto the national political stage and challenge his party’s establishment wing. Last July, two Sanders-aligned political operatives set out to recruit a Democrat to challenge Collins, ultimately landing on Platner. His rapid ascent dealt a major setback to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who had recruited Janet Mills, Maine’s sitting governor, to enter the race.
Since Platner’s departure, Jackson, a relatively little-known logger and former state lawmaker who championed Mills’ legislative agenda, has struggled to generate the same grassroots enthusiasm among the party’s leftist base. He has also faced scrutiny over reports that he had children with his second cousin and allegations of aggressive behavior, especially toward female staffers.
On election night, political observers will be watching whether Collins can maintain her support among independent women voters and whether Jackson can harness the progressive energy Platner generated.
Alaska: Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan faces an unusual challenge: a Democratic-led effort to recruit a spoiler candidate with the same name to confuse voters and siphon support from the GOP incumbent. A bombshell 11th-hour New York Times report alleging that Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign sought to recruit the decoy candidate has rocked the race. The Justice Department has issued grand jury subpoenas to Peltola’s campaign and the second Dan Sullivan’s campaign, The Daily Wire reported. Prosecutors are examining whether the effort could violate federal conspiracy statutes, and the DOJ has filed a lawsuit seeking to block certification if Peltola secures a narrow victory. Meanwhile, the race remains highly competitive in a state where polling is difficult, and Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system adds another layer of uncertainty, potentially delaying a definitive result beyond Election Night.
Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy has also ordered a state investigation into the recruitment operation.
“If we conclude that there are things that should not have happened, that are illegal, we will act on that, and that may in fact impact whether somebody is seated in the U.S. Senate,” Dunleavy said in an interview with NewsNation when asked if he would certify the election if Peltola wins. “We are ready to do whatever we need to do to ensure that our elections are deemed credible.”
“We’re going to ensure that we aren’t going to send a scam to Washington,” he added.
Minnesota: Former NBC Sports broadcaster Michele Tafoya is emerging as a star GOP recruit in a reliably blue state riddled with scandals and unpopular Democratic leadership. Polls show her within striking distance of defeating Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, a far-left transgender advocate who has faced scrutiny over her record in the Tim Walz administration after a sprawling Medicaid fraud scandal rocked the state.
Winning Minnesota in a Democratic year remains a steep hill to climb, but a narrow victory for Flanagan could trouble the state’s Democratic Party as feds zero in on the immigration status of Ilhan Omar, whose real name is “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi,” according to the Department of Justice.
Ohio: Democrats are increasingly optimistic about flipping a state that has shifted right during the Trump era. A flip would deal a blow to Vice President JD Vance, who once held the Senate seat. Some politicos believe gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s explosive, controversial ad featuring his opponent’s estranged mother could damage the entire GOP ticket. That includes Sen. Jon Husted, who trails well-known former Sen. Sherrod Brown in most polls. The race has barely budged despite repeated visits from the White House. President Trump has repeatedly praised Husted’s physique, including what he has called his “great ass,” as part of an effort to promote Husted’s all-American image and overcome concerns that Ohio voters still don’t know who he is.
“Ohio loves strong football players,” Trump told supporters.
Kansas: Republican Sen. Roger Marshall is in the fight for his political life in a race he never saw coming. Liberal Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton, the Democrat nominee, has mounted a stunning polling lead in a state Republicans haven’t lost since 1932. The Daily Wire recently uncovered a 2018 video of Hamilton, a liberal Methodist pastor, urging his mostly white congregation to declare “black lives matter” and saying it’s difficult to preach against racism in rural America.
Still, Marshall appears flat-footed for a contest that’s breaking late in the Democrats’ direction.
“Months ago, the RNC was warned that Marshall was not taking the race seriously,” Ryan Girdusky, a conservative political consultant, said. “They basically ignored all warnings, Marshall told them don’t invest in Kansas, he was fine. He never hired a professional campaign team for the re-elect.”
To save the state, Trump rallied again there Sunday. On the stump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz described the race as “tied” at best.
Iowa: The race between Democrat Josh Turek and Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson is effectively tied. High fuel prices, tariffs, and healthcare anxiety have battered the race, injecting fresh Democratic optimism of flipping another farm-belt state. Over the summer, polls painted a bleak picture for Hinson, who many argued was the party’s most skilled nominee this cycle. She made deliberate steps to distance herself from some of the administration’s most unpopular moves, including the economic fallout from war with Iran.
“Iowans are being squeezed and shouldn’t have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran. We need to use every option at our disposal to provide some relief from high prices,” Hinson said in September.
Critics, however, point out that Hinson repeatedly voted against resolutions invoking the War Powers Resolution to direct the removal of U.S. forces from hostilities with Iran. She voted against such measures in March, April, May, and July, as well as a September resolution that passed the House 220-204.
Meanwhile, Trump’s signature Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda was also in the spotlight – and for good reason. Iowa has the second-highest cancer rate in the United States and is one of only three states where cancer rates are actively rising while national rates decline.
Turek, who branded himself a “common-sense prairie populist,” campaigned on his record of winning in Republican territory. But his opposition to an Iowa law restricting lab-grown meat products gave Republicans an opening to attack his record, The Daily Wire reported.
North Carolina: Former Gov. Roy Cooper leads former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley by nearly 11 points in the RealClearPolitics average. It’s the seat most likely to flip blue on Election Day. Republicans pulled back resources despite Trump’s repeated visits. The president himself has appeared to concede the race is all but lost for the GOP.
“He’s going to become your senator, and it’s crazy,” Trump said of Cooper.
Georgia: It’s a similar story in the Peach State, where Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff leads Republican Rep. Mike Collins by 8 points.
Collins has been dogged by his lack of bipartisan appeal in the state’s sprawling, blue-leaning Atlanta suburbs. He also had to answer for troubling reports about his campaign, including a former staffer who reportedly shared social media images of a swastika and one that depicted the 24-year-old in Ku Klux Klan robes, according to the Washington Post. Others were accused of having ties to white nationalist groups or making antisemitic comments.
The governor’s race, however, is much tighter, with GOP billionaire Rick Jackson narrowly ahead of former Democratic Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Reports of strong black turnout and weaker GOP get-out-the-vote efforts in rural areas point to possible historic ticket-splitting. An Ossoff win could also give the senator a launchpad for a potential White House run.
For these crucial races, polls begin to close at 8 p.m. ET. Stay with The Daily Wire for live results and analysis.
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