By Nathan Layne, Joseph Ax and Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff
DETROIT, Nov 3 (Reuters) - The first polls closed on Tuesday evening after millions of Americans voted in midterm elections that could strip President Donald Trump's Republicans of control of Congress, with Democrats favored in opinion polls to capture the House and a handful of Senate races set to determine whether they can seize both chambers.
The battle for the Senate is unfolding across nearly 10 closely contested statewide races, most in Republican strongholds.
Polling stations began to close in Indiana and Kentucky at 6 p.m. ET (2300 GMT) and will close in another half-dozen states at 7 p.m., but remain open for hours yet in most states.
History is against Trump's Republicans: The sitting president's party has lost ground in Congress in all but two midterms since World War Two. Trump's approval rating is hovering near his career lows, with voters frustrated by war with Iran, higher fuel prices and wider affordability concerns.
There is little doubt this year's election is all about Trump, nearly halfway through his second four-year term. Trump himself has told his supporters to "pretend I'm on the ballot," a message Democratic leaders have happily echoed.
In televised remarks on Tuesday that appeared aimed at swaying voters unhappy with US support for Israel, Trump said that he intended to stop $3.8 billion in promised annual funding to Israel after the end of this year, but it was unclear how he would do so, given a 2020 law mandating the funding levels.
The close US-Israel alliance has been a particular focus in Michigan, where progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, who would become the first Muslim US senator if elected, has faced millions of dollars in opposition spending from Israel-linked groups over his criticisms of the US ally.
El-Sayed, 42, posed for photos with voters in sunglasses and a signature tight black T-shirt at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on Tuesday. Led by Trump, Republicans have portrayed El-Sayed and other Democratic candidates as radical, un-American and even communist, labels that Democrats dismiss as typical Trump hyperbole.
The president has sought to energize his base with more than two dozen campaign rallies since the start of October, most in states he easily won in 2024.
Opinion polls show voters are most concerned about affordability and disapprove of Trump's handling of the issue. His tariffs on imports, many of which were thrown out by the courts, and his decision to attack Iran in February raised prices for consumers.
At a voting center in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Detroit, Natalia Towns, 34, said she did not find efforts by Mike Rogers, 63, the Republican Senate candidate, to court Black voters sincere. Towns felt El-Sayed would do more to bring down costs.
"I do feel like health matters, gas prices are high, food is too high," she said.
At a polling station in the predominantly white suburb of Warren, to Detroit's north, Paul Stockyj said he voted for Rogers, describing El-Sayed as too progressive.
"I would not like to see somebody be that ambitious to tackle all the problems," Stockyj said. "Who's going to pay for all the stuff that he wants to do? People that are going to pay for it are you and me."
Problems with machines that scan paper ballots were reported in various parts of the country, including counties in Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi and New York, slowing down voting and ballot-counting.
Isolated voting machine malfunctions are not unusual for US elections, but election experts say that backup systems and other safeguards mean these rarely affect results.
TRUMP DEPLOYS ELECTION MONITORS
Legal observers and Democrats have warned that Trump, who has long falsely claimed that US elections are rigged, may attempt to challenge Tuesday's results if Republicans lose.
The US Justice Department said it had deployed 1,000 election monitors and observers to all 50 states in what it called the largest Election Day monitoring effort in history.
Democrats criticized the plan as potential voter intimidation. In roughly two-thirds of the jurisdictions the department listed, voters supported Democrat Kamala Harris over Trump in the 2024 presidential election, a Reuters analysis found.
All 435 seats in the US House of Representatives are up for election, along with 35 of the Senate's 100 seats, though most contests are not considered competitive. Democrats must flip at least three House seats and four Senate seats to win a majority in each chamber.
Democrats have little margin for error in the Senate. The party must defend all of its current seats while winning at least two states that voted for Trump by a double-digit margin two years ago: Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas.
Opinion polls show Democrats either narrowly leading or within striking distance in all of those states.
ELECTION INTRIGUE IN ALASKA, TEXAS
The Alaska Senate race has been thrown into turmoil after the New York Times reported that the campaign of Democratic candidate Mary Peltola, 53, helped recruit a third candidate to run as an independent who shares the first and last name of her Republican opponent, Dan Sullivan, 61.
Peltola has denied involvement. Trump's Justice Department has launched a criminal probe into the allegations and filed a lawsuit to block certification of the election results, though a judge dismissed the latter effort.
The Justice Department is notifying more than 20 people they are subjects of the criminal probe, according to a person familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about the investigation.
Since the Times story, Trump has repeatedly complained that many Americans do not know what 'incumbent' means. But supporters of the incumbent Sullivan told Reuters they were familiar with the word, and they were not confused by the two Dan Sullivans on their ballot.
"They make it pretty obvious: it says 'incumbent' after his name," said Jake Wesley, 27, who grew up in Anchorage and is now stationed there in the US Air Force.
In Texas, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, 37, has his party once again dreaming of winning the Republican-favoring state after decades of heartbreak. His scandal-plagued opponent, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, 63, has benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars donated on his behalf by Elon Musk.
There are 47 US House races widely seen as competitive, according to a Reuters analysis of the leading election forecasters. If the other contests all proceed as predicted, Democrats would need to win only 13 of those races to secure a majority.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Detroit, Joseph Ax and Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff in Washington; Additional reporting by Dan Catchpole, Ashraf Fahim, Arafat Barbakh, David Morgan, Mike Spector, Bianca Flowers, Pete Eisler, Doina Chiacu and Humeyra Pamuk; Writing by Joseph Ax and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Don Durfee, Paul Thomasch, Alistair Bell and Cynthia Osterman)
