US midterm voting under way, all 435 House seats at stake

WASHINGTON: Voting is under way in the United States midterm elections on Tuesday. Polling stations are open in all 50 states, where all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate are being contested.

More than 57 million Americans have already cast early votes. Turnout was highest in closely fought states such as Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.

The Republicans currently hold 53 seats in the Senate, while the Democrats and the independents allied with them have 47. The Republicans also hold a narrow lead of four seats in the House of Representatives.

In their campaign, the Democrats have promised to tackle the Inflation crisis and end President Trump’s war against Iran. They are seeking a historic win in both chambers, which could change the direction of the last two years of the president’s term.

President Trump’s popularity is close to a record low, and historically the party of a sitting president has lost ground in midterm elections. Even so, conservative candidates are trying to block the Democrats’ expected win, relying on their loyal voters and on distrust of progressive Politics.

In Michigan, Haley Stevens, who lost the Democratic Senate primary in August, announced on Sunday that she would back Republican Mike Rogers instead of her party’s candidate, Abdul El-Sayed.

After voting began, the Department of Justice announced that it was deploying about 1,000 monitors to oversee polling. This is the first time monitors have been sent to all 50 states. Harmeet K Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, described it as the largest monitoring operation in the department’s history.