Trump and Democrats make final pitch before US midterms

Campaigning in the US midterm elections ended on Monday with President Donald Trump rallying supporters at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington and Democratic candidates holding get-out-the-vote events in the states that will decide the Senate, a day before polls open.

Every seat in the House of Representatives and a third of the 100-seat Senate are on the ballot on Tuesday. CNA reported that opinion polls point to Democrats winning the House majority and give them a real chance of taking the Senate too, which would end two years of Republican control of both chambers.

Losing the House would cost Trump control of the federal budget and hand Democratic committee chairs the power to investigate his administration, including over the Epstein files, CNA reported. A Democratic Senate would block lifetime judicial appointments, including to the Supreme Court.

The closing Democratic events included rallies for James Talarico in Texas and Adam Hamilton in Kansas, two Senate candidates whose challenges CNA described as surprisingly strong in heavily Republican states.

Trump's own closing event was a speech in Washington. CNA described the Reflecting Pool as a landmark tied to the 80-year-old president's drive to redevelop the capital. Speaking in Iowa on Sunday, Trump called Democrats "extreme and dangerous radicals" who would "steal your wealth", and said migrants would "ransack, rape and plunder". CNA reported that Republican campaigning also described Democrats as communists and called Abdul El-Sayed, who is Muslim, a terrorist.

An NBC News poll released on Sunday found 60 percent disapproved of Trump's performance, with high prices the leading complaint. CNA attributed the cost pressure in part to the war with Iran, now eight months old.

The final New York Times/Siena poll, published on Sunday evening, put Democratic candidates ahead in all seven of the most competitive Senate races, though five of those leads were inside the margin of error.

Democrats have also fought among themselves. Haley Stevens, a Democratic congresswoman from Michigan who lost an August primary to the progressive El-Sayed, endorsed the Republican Mike Rogers in her state's Senate race on Sunday. Trump praised her "bravery" on his Truth Social platform. Stevens told CNN: "It's just where I was at the end of the night and earlier this morning."

Senator Raphael Warnock described the party's mood to CNN as "nauseously optimistic".

More than 54 million people had already voted early, a record, and about $11 billion had been spent on advertising, CNA reported. Elon Musk, a Trump ally who led the DOGE effort to dismantle government departments, had given nearly half a billion dollars to help elect Republicans.