US voters to head to polls in crunch midterm elections seen as referendum on Trump
Donald Trump: The US president has sought to rally Republican support. Picture: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Millions of US voters head to the polls on Tuesday in midterm elections which will decide control of Congress for the rest of Donald Trump’s term in the White House.
The parties have been making their final pitches on the eve of the hotly contested November 3 races, which are being seen as a referendum on the controversial president’s record.
Many people have already cast their ballot in the midterms, which are the most expensive in US history.
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While the Democrats have been tipped to retake the House of Representatives from the Republicans, the fight for the Senate remains on a knife edge.
The challengers are expected to benefit from voter unhappiness over the cost of living and high energy prices fuelled by the Iran war, which Trump launched with Israel earlier this year.
The president has held rallies in traditional Republican strongholds in a bid to shore up support and boost turnout, and promised every adult US citizen 5,000 dollars if his party kept control of both the House and Senate.
But the Democrats have faced their own challenges during the campaign with internal divisions, underlined by a fallout in the Michigan Senate race, and the president has sought to portray them as hard-left extremists who pose a threat to the country.
If the party was to gain one or both chambers, it would be able to block legislation and launch investigations into the conduct of Trump’s White House.
However, the president would still have executive authority in key areas and the power of veto, which could frustrate his opponents’ efforts on Capitol Hill.
Trump devoted his final public remarks before Tuesday's midterm elections to touting renovations of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
In his only public remarks scheduled for Monday, Trump, a former real-estate developer, spent more than 20 minutes discussing pipes, joints, caulking, granite resurfacing, algae, and leaks at the belated reopening of the Washington reflecting pool.
"Does somebody have those pictures for me?" the president asked his aides before sharing illustrations of the "miles of joints" that had been replaced.
"So we have a lot of great things planned for Washington, and I could get into the nation, but for that you don't have enough time," Trump said, also mentioning the grass at the White House, his new Marine One helipad, a golf course, and a triumphal arch that faces a court challenge.
He made brief reference to the election, saying: "When you vote, remember: a party that hates America cannot be allowed to rule over the people who built our country."
Over the weekend, US Representative Haley Stevens, who lost the Michigan Democratic Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed in a bitter contest, switched to backing Republican Mike Rogers and appeared with him at a Detroit church.
The race is critical to Democrats' hopes of ending the 53-47 Senate majority of Trump's Republicans in Tuesday's vote.
After Stevens' endorsement of Rogers, El-Sayed's campaign said it raised $2.4m on Sunday, its largest single-day fundraising haul, fuelled by small-dollar donations averaging $36.74 from more than 65,000 donors.
El-Sayed, an Egyptian American Muslim born in Michigan, has been targeted by Trump and other Republicans who have repeatedly questioned his loyalty to the US and baselessly called him a terrorist sympathiser whose election would invite attacks on Americans.
El-Sayed has called questions about his loyalty to the US "shameful".
The verbal attacks fit a broader pattern of inflammatory rhetoric from some Republicans targeting Arab Americans, Muslims, and transgender people and portraying Democrats as communists and dangerous radicals ahead of the midterms.
Democratic voter Pamela Johnson, 72, criticised Stevens after casting her ballot for El-Sayed in Warren, a Detroit suburb: "Haley Stevens is a traitor."
Stevens' mother, Maria Marcotte, said her daughter decided to endorse Rogers because of what she described as dangerous political rhetoric from El-Sayed, pointing in part to his past appearances with Hasan Piker, a left-wing streamer who has been criticised for his comments about Israel and American Jews.
"She's really reached a point where she felt like her constituents, the people that she cares about, and the people she knows and loves are scared and frightened by some rhetoric that's coming out," Marcotte said in an interview with Reuters from the porch of her home in Birmingham, a northern Detroit suburb.
Also in Michigan, William Byrne, a 74-year-old retired plumber, said he voted for El-Sayed.
"I think the Democrats need to take control, and he was one of the Democrats that I think will take control of Trump," said Byrne, who has voted Republican in the past but has more recently leaned Democratic.
In Alaska, the Justice Department argued voters may be confused by the presence of a challenger named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. on the same ballot.
The issue has roiled the campaign over the last several days after the reported that Democrat Mary Peltola's campaign was involved in recruiting the latter Sullivan into the race as a spoiler.
The senator said on Sunday he would accept the results of Tuesday's election even as the Trump administration presses a criminal investigation into the issue.
Peltola has denied involvement, and Sullivan Jr has denied co-ordinating with Peltola's campaign.
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