Republicans spent hundreds of millions on advertising in traditionally safe contests
BBC News reported that final polls taken before Tuesday’s midterm elections put President Donald Trump’s approval rating around 38%, while the same polls, including a national NBC poll released on Sunday, indicated that only 29% of voters viewed the Democratic Party positively. BBC North America editor Sarah Smith said it was a mistake to assume that weak Trump approval ratings would translate into rising popularity for Democrats: many Republican voters were angry with the president, she reported, but not so angry that they would vote for a Democrat. The BBC described Tuesday’s midterms, which will decide control of Congress, as potentially pivotal for a president with two years remaining in office, and said they came at a difficult moment for his Republican Party. Millions of Americans had already voted early, and millions more were expected to head to the polls throughout Tuesday.
The BBC said it was too simplistic to think a backdrop of war, tariffs and soaring prices would usher in a thumping Democratic victory in the House, Senate and governors’ races. In Iowa, a state Trump won in 2024 that has been hit by soaring fuel and fertiliser costs, Smith asked voters whether the president would make people more or less likely to back Republicans. Paul Ross, a Republican, told her outside a busy college football game: “With the current climate, I would think possibly less, believe it or not.” He added: “As a Republican myself, I would think it might be detrimental.” Zach Shimp said: “I think it definitely puts voters off, there’s no doubt about that, and I do think it probably raises the Democratic side to a level that isn’t always there, just because it’s Donald Trump.” Rose Heming said: “He’s got us in the war.” She added: “Prices and groceries [are] high - sky high - gas is sky high.” The BBC reported that many voters, including in solidly Republican states, were hurting financially, and that polls suggested they might want to make that known at the ballot box on Tuesday.
Frustration with the president did not always translate into a vote for the other party. Tim McKinnon, a Republican in Iowa who voted for Trump in 2024, told Smith last month: “We like to stay out of people’s business.” He added: “And so [Trump’s] world stage interventions time after time after time - we don’t love it.” His wife, Michelle, said: “We didn’t expect him to necessarily be a perfect choir boy obviously.” She added: “We voted for the underbelly of what he was standing for.” Tim McKinnon said: “One dollar more on gas is not going to change what we believe in.” The BBC reported that the Democratic Party cannot rely on voters like the McKinnons, who are frustrated with elements of Trump’s recent agenda and do not think Democrats will ever reflect their Christian, conservative values. If Democrats do win a large swathe of seats on Tuesday night, the BBC said, it will not necessarily be because voters love them — they might simply hate them a little less.
BBC News reported that Republican efforts, including Trump’s own messaging about the party, had not landed with every voter. In Detroit, Michigan, Nicole Williams, who owns her own hairdressing salon, said: “Anything is better than what we have now.” She added: “Socialist? Socialised? It don’t matter to me. Lower my cost of living.” Michigan voter Gwen Jackson, referring to Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, whom Trump had repeatedly attacked, said: “People are just tired of the disrespect to Americans, because he is an American.” Jackson added: “People are just tired,” and: “They’re ready to see a change.”
The BBC reported that voters overwhelmingly named the cost of living as their leading concern and that food and fuel prices had soared in part because of Trump’s global tariffs and the unpopular war with Iran. The price of a gallon of diesel, which stood at $3.75 before the war started in February, hit a record high of $6.52 in September. Inflation ticked up from 3% when Trump took office to 3.7% on Election Day, and economists estimated it would have been lower without the administration’s global tariffs. With the war with Iran dragging on and hitting many Americans in the pocket, Trump’s approval ratings have sunk to record lows in recent months. One Iowa voter told Smith: “I literally just had my son drive across the country, and he called me in every state and told me the price of gas.” The voter added: “And I was like - ‘oh my gosh, this is horrible’.”
BBC News reported concern among Republicans that the economic picture had left them vulnerable in typically safe races, including in Texas, Ohio and Kansas. Stephen Hawkins, the global director of research at the pollster More in Common, said: “The southern states, the midwestern states, the American heartland - that is where Republicans tend to thrive.” He added: “But that is where the Senate races that are so interesting are playing out right now.” Hawkins said: “Places where President Trump won by 10, 12, 15 points just two years ago in the presidential race are now states where Democrats have a very viable chance of taking a Senate seat.”
Trump has been campaigning hard, headlining dozens of rallies across the country. The BBC said high prices were a concern for voters on all sides and noted that Trump had been appearing in previously safe Republican territory, including Iowa and Kansas, during a final weekend blitz. Trump held a rally in Kansas on Sunday as polls suggested the Senate race there might be in play for Democrats. The Republican Party spent hundreds of millions of dollars on campaign advertising in traditionally safe contests. Carrie Dann, the managing editor of the Cook Political Report, which analyses campaigns and elections, told the BBC: “When they start spending hard American dollars on political advertising in a state that they should be winning, that’s how you know that they think they’re in trouble.” She added: “The spending [in Kansas] is going to be far more than Republicans ever anticipated.” The BBC said the spending indicated that the party was approaching the elections on the defensive.
At many of his rallies, Trump has asked voters to support Republican candidates as though he were on the ballot. “In this election, I’m asking you to pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot,” he said last month. “Just pretend.” Trump is not on the ballot, and the BBC reported that he made the appeal again in Iowa on Sunday. The BBC said the appeal raised a central question for the party: whether Trump remained an electoral asset for the Republican Party, a question it said no longer had a simple answer. The BBC said Trump returned to the White House after his 2024 election win with approval ratings it described as healthy. During the previous midterm elections in 2022, his endorsement was courted by Republicans who saw it as vital to success.
Even when a sitting president is more popular than Trump, his party usually loses seats in the midterms. Combined with the latest polling, the BBC said that pattern gives Democrats confidence they will at least win the House of Representatives. If Democrats do win the House, the party could try to block legislation Trump wants to pass. The BBC noted that Trump has already tried to bypass Congress as much as possible by signing executive orders from the Oval Office, and identified the investigations Democrats could launch with control of the chamber as another possibility. The BBC said Democrats might also try to impeach cabinet members, with Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth seen as a likely candidate because of the war with Iran. Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh said of the key issues: “It’s the cost of living, it’s the undeclared war.” She added: “Every Republican who did not stand up to Donald Trump is about to realise the consequences of believing he was invincible.”
The BBC said winning the Senate on Tuesday was likely to be a much harder task for Democrats. Thirty-five seats were up for election, and Democrats needed a net gain of four to win control. If they lost Michigan, a battleground seat they already held, they would need a net gain of five. Most of the battleground races were close, and several sat within the margin of error for pollsters. The key Senate races were in Michigan, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Maine, Alaska and North Carolina.
The BBC attached an important caveat to the polls: they had historically overestimated the Democratic Party and underestimated President Trump, who appeared convinced that he could once again defy them. The BBC said that if the polls were close to correct about the suggested surge in support for Democrats, Trump could be looking at defeats in states that had been reliable Republican strongholds for decades. How Trump may respond to any losses was an open question. He had repeatedly questioned the integrity and security of American elections, and the BBC said the possibility that he would do so again while votes were being counted or after results were declared was very real.
The Democratic Party was already looking ahead to the 2028 presidential election, in which it would have to unite behind a single candidate. The BBC said clear fractures within the party had surfaced publicly during the current election cycle, including in Michigan over the weekend. Democrats would watch the results for lessons ahead of 2028: whether they could win in Texas, attract rural voters in deep Republican strongholds, and whether rising candidates such as Georgia’s Jon Ossoff and Texas’s James Talarico met expectations. If the answers to some of those questions were negative, the BBC said, the party would have much to consider over the next year. Hawkins said: “This represents an opportunity, really, for Democrats to expand a lot of their influence, not just in terms of numbers, but in terms of perception of where they can compete.”
For both parties, the BBC said these elections were the final electoral test before the 2028 presidential election and an opportunity for voters to judge how Trump and his party were performing. Many Americans wanted to see real change over the two years before the next presidential election. With two years left in office, the BBC asked whether a change in control of Congress, which Trump had largely bypassed, would curb his presidency.