Polls Open in Midterms With Democrats Favored for the House, Senate Still Hinging on 11 States

Since Trump closed his campaign Monday at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the midterm vote has moved from speeches to ballots. Polls opened in Vermont at 5 a.m. ET today, Nov. 3, and an hour later across much of the East Coast, including New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Maine and Kentucky.

The first polls close at 7 p.m. ET. No results exist yet.

What the forecasts say

The MS NOW forecast model, built with FiftyPlusOne, gives Democrats a 99% chance of winning the House, with a median of 240 seats. It rests on a generic-ballot average of Democrats +8.7 and a Trump approval rating of 35.6%.

That model also tests a polling miss. If polls overstate Democrats by 3.9 points, the average error in 2016, 2020 and 2024, Democrats still project to 226 seats with an 82% chance of a majority. A 5-point miss, the size of 2020's, leaves them at 71%.

The model's authors say their confidence does not carry to the Senate, where the polls are much closer. Republicans hold a 53-47 edge. The New York Times lists the battlegrounds as Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas. Democrats would have to flip four Republican-held seats and hold all of their own.

The BBC notes that polls have not always been reliable and that this year could produce surprises in either direction.

Turnout and money

The New York Times reports early voting broke recent midterm records, with tens of millions of ballots already cast. Early turnout beat the last midterm cycle in each major Senate battleground, and in several key states the Democratic share of the early vote rose.

Advertising spending reached a record $3.8 billion by Oct. 12, according to Reuters data cited by the South China Morning Post. The New York Times, citing AdImpact, calls this the most expensive midterm in political advertising since at least 2018. It also reports that Elon Musk contributed $474 million to Republican candidates and allies, more than any donor has spent in a single cycle.

Trump's pitch and the Republican defense

Trump has urged supporters to act as if he is on the ballot and has insisted Republicans win if their base turns out. In Monday's speech he said, "The Democrat Party has nominated the most extreme and dangerous slate of candidates in American history."

Democratic campaigns argue the opposite: that Trump and his signature policies are behind the struggles of families trying to make ends meet. The BBC points to a war with Iran that has pushed up consumer costs, aggressive immigration enforcement and support for data center construction as drags on the president.

History is against the president's party. It has lost House seats in 18 of the past 20 midterms, a 90% rate going back to 1946, according to the Guardian's tally.

Monitors, courts and Michigan

The Justice Department is sending a record number of election monitors to polling places in all 50 states. Harmeet Dhillon, head of the department's Civil Rights Division, has said the monitors will also look to ensure that citizens are voting and that their votes are not canceled out by someone who "shouldn't be voting."

Many election officials and Democrats say they fear Trump's attacks on election integrity could lead to tension at polling places and to baseless challenges to the results. No verified evidence of the fraud Trump alleges has been presented in the material supporting those claims, but the concern behind the monitors, that every legal vote counts and illegal ones do not, is a mainstream one.

A federal judge declined a request from Democratic lawmakers and party organizations to bar the Trump administration from pressuring states over screening incoming ballots. In Alaska, a judge dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit over the fact that two candidates named Dan Sullivan appear on the ballot. The BBC notes a close Senate result there could have drawn a legal challenge from Republicans.

In Michigan, Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers is campaigning on an endorsement from Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens. Stevens lost the primary to Abdul El-Sayed and endorsed Rogers on Sunday after a falling out over his views on Israel.

Rogers told Fox & Friends that El-Sayed's rhetoric "is causing angst amongst the Jewish community here in Michigan." El-Sayed has declined in interviews and debate to say whether he sees Israel or Iran as the greater threat to the United States. He says Republicans are diverting attention from the economy and cost of living. Democrats accuse Republicans of racism and Islamophobia in their attacks.

What to watch tonight

CBS News points to Pennsylvania as a possible early bellwether. Four Republican-held districts in the Philadelphia suburbs, the Lehigh Valley and central Pennsylvania are competitive, and flipping all four would put Democrats within striking distance of the House. Another test is New York's 17th District, where Republican Rep. Mike Lawler faces Democrat Cait Conley in a seat Kamala Harris carried in 2024. Lawler has won it by less than 30,000 votes in each of the last two cycles.

The pace of the count is a separate question. In 2024, California's closest House races took three weeks to call. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, is hearing a Colorado case today on whether Catholic entities can be exempted from state antidiscrimination rules to join a taxpayer-funded preschool program.

The House could be called quickly if the polls hold. Control of the Senate may not be known until the slowest counts, in places like Alaska and Maine, are finished.