The Republican president Donald Trump and former Democratic President Barack Obama head to Ohio and Georgia on Wednesday, sites of decisive battles in the midterm elections, which will determine which party will control the United States Congress for the next two years.
The final week of the campaign comes at a moment when Trump’s popularity is near a record low, with Americans increasingly dissatisfied with the high cost of living and the war against Iran, which threatens the narrow Republican majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Trump, who has spent the last weeks campaigning, is expected to appear alongside Ohio Senator Jon Husted, who faces former Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown, in one of the most hotly contested races that will determine whether Republicans maintain their 53-47 edge in the House.
Obama, in turn, is expected to appear alongside Georgia Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff, who faces the challenge of Republican Representative Mike Collins. The state has been so contested in recent federal election cycles that its last three Senate elections went to a runoff, though this time independent analysts consider that the incumbent Democrat is in a solid position to secure his term.
Obama had kept a relatively low public profile until last week, when he returned to campaigning with forceful speeches criticizing his successor.
Americans have been voting for weeks, with more than 36.4 million ballots already cast, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab. A total of 45.9 million Americans voted early in the last midterm elections, held in 2022 during the tenure of then-Democratic President Joe Biden.
Nonpartisan analysts have deemed the Democrats’ chances of winning the majority in the House favorable; the Senate race is seen as probably more tightly contested, since Democrats will need to win seats in states traditionally leaning Republican, such as Ohio, Iowa or Alaska, to reach the 51 seats needed for a majority.
“I think the Republican Party has lost touch with reality. They don’t understand what’s really happening, and it seems they broke the promises made to the people,” said Joshua Brazezicke, 26, a real estate administrator from Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, who recently changed his voter registration from independent to Democrat.
The state is the scene of four highly contested House races, which will play a crucial role in determining control of the House.
In Michigan, where Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed are in a tight race for the Senate seat to be vacated by Democrat Gary Peters, the two campaigns count on high-profile allies to mobilize supporters and boost turnout.
Rogers spent the day campaigning with Texas Senator Ted Cruz on a four-stop bus tour that culminated in Imlay City, a small community northeast of Detroit. El-Sayed, for his part, had planned to join Peters and Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin for a late-evening GOTV rally in Downriver, southwest of Detroit.
LEGAL CAMPAIGN
As part of the campaign in recent weeks, Trump has taken steps aimed at helping to ease energy prices and, separately, promised billions of dollars in direct payments to millions of Americans. He seeks to mobilize MAGA supporters in rural areas of states where he is strong, but that may not turnout in the midterm elections.
Trump — who falsely asserts that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread fraud — has used, since returning to power, the influence of the federal government to advance his claims that a large number of people vote illegally in U.S. elections.
His administration issued more than 100 subpoenas to state and local election authorities in at least a dozen states, demanding records of tens of thousands of voters, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, a judge expressed skepticism regarding the Justice Department’s request to prevent California from counting any mail-in ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters who, according to the government, would not be U.S. citizens.
On the other hand, the Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) electronic filing system has been down for more than 24 hours after the agency deactivated it Monday night to contain a security breach.
The commission said it is working to resolve the problem, which prevented campaign finance officials from filing spending reports with the FEC in a timely manner, leaving voters unaware of who is spending money in campaigns and where.
