Millions of Americans queued at polling stations on Tuesday in midterm elections that will decide who controls Congress for the final two years of President Donald Trump's term, with the first polls closing at 2am Kenyan time on Wednesday and final results expected to take days.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 35 of the 100 Senate seats and 36 state governorships are on the ballot. Republicans go into the night holding the Senate 53-47 and the House 219-214, meaning Democrats need a net gain of four Senate seats and three House seats to take control of both chambers, according to NBC News.

Voting began in Vermont before dawn and spread across the country through the day. Al Jazeera reported that polls begin closing at 23:00 GMT (2am EAT), starting with Indiana and Kentucky, with the big battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Texas closing an hour later and California and Washington state not closing until 7am Kenyan time.

Heavy early vote and a record monitoring operation

An early-vote tracker cited by US outlets put the number of ballots already cast before election day at more than 55 million across 47 reporting states, split between 26.9 million mail ballots and 28.6 million cast in person. In states that publish party data, registered Democrats accounted for about 40 per cent of early ballots and Republicans 33 per cent, though analysts caution that early voters do not predict the final result.

The Department of Justice said on Tuesday it was deploying about 1,000 election monitors to all 50 states, the largest such operation in its history. Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the department's Civil Rights Division, called it "the largest monitoring effort in DOJ history". Democrats have questioned the decision to send federal monitors into heavily Democratic areas, and several lawsuits over state election administration were still pending as voting took place.

The day was not free of hitches. In Westchester County, New York, voting machines at polling sites across the county were reported to be rejecting paper ballots, forcing election officials to store ballots in sealed emergency bags for counting later. The glitch could delay results in the closely watched contest between Republican Representative Mike Lawler and Democrat Cait Conley.

Guam gives Democrats an early boost

Because of the time difference, the US territory of Guam delivered the first unofficial results of the night. Democrat Alicia Limtiaco was reported to have beaten Republican delegate James Moylan by about 2.2 percentage points, the first Democratic flip of the midterms, while Republican Tony Ada won the island's governorship. Trump congratulated Ada on Truth Social, writing: "Wow, hopefully that's an indication for things to come!"

Economy, Iran and Israel dominate

Voters told pollsters that the cost of living was their biggest concern. Inflation has accelerated again, with consumer prices up 3.7 per cent in September, while petrol was at a record election-day high of $4.12 a gallon. NBC News polling put Trump's approval rating 22 points underwater.

The Senate map is unusually wide. Toss-up races include Texas, where Democrat James Talarico is trying to become the first Democrat to win statewide since 1994 against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, as well as Michigan, Iowa, Maine, Ohio and Alaska. Maine's veteran Republican Senator Susan Collins faces Democrat Troy Jackson.

For Kenya, the outcome matters beyond the headlines: Congress controls the budget lines that fund PEPFAR, the AGOA trade programme and US security assistance in the Horn of Africa, and a Democratic House would bring tougher oversight of the Trump administration's Africa policy.

Photos: AFP via Al Jazeera (voters in New York, 3 Nov 2026); Martin Falbisoner via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). Thumbnail design: HAMASTA MEDIA.