The 5 biggest questions hanging over Election Day

There are no shortages of storylines to watch as the historic 2026 midterms draw to a close.

The GOP is on defense as election forecasters , like Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ), predict Democrats have an 82 percent chance of flipping the House and a 62 percent shot at winning the Senate.

A gloomy economy, President Trump’s tanking approval ratings and opposition to the war in Iran have bogged down Republicans. But the party has sought to reinforce its winning coalition from 2024 as it casts doubt on bleak polling suggesting a pummeling Tuesday.

“The Republicans seem to be getting out their base. The Democrats are supercharged, they’re getting out their group,” said Spencer Kimball, Emerson College Polling’s executive director.

“Now we’re going to see what those independents do, if they make the difference in these races,” he added.

Here are five must-watch storylines on Election Day:

Trump has consistently urged his supporters to “pretend” that he’s on the ballot in an effort to turn out his base. Experts suggest this plea could work but that this alone won’t get Republicans across the finish line.

“I think the Trump base will come out,” Kimball said, adding that “you need the swing vote. You need those independents.”

The president has crisscrossed the country rallying for his picks in recent weeks.

Many of these stops, however, have been in red states like Alabama, Alaska, Mississippi and Kansas, setting off alarm bells for the GOP amid worries that his low approval ratings paired with high fuel and fertilizer prices could bog down the vote from independent or unaffiliated voters who supported the president last cycle.

“I don’t think you’re going to see the bottom totally fall out on Tuesday for the Republicans because Trump still does have that strong base,” Kimball added.

The polling industry has been under a microscope this cycle, and any big misses Tuesday could fan the flames.

Democrats, however, have been riding a high in the lead-up to Election Day, with rosy polling from Emerson College this past week suggesting Democrats have a 10-point lead on the generic congressional ballot.

“The polls are still telling us something — that things are a lot closer, that the environment is Democratic-leaning,” Decision Desk HQ chief election analyst Geoffrey Skelley said. “Then, it’s just a question of is it Democratic leaning enough?”

“And that’s what we won’t know until we get actual votes,” he added.

The revelation that two purported polling firms falsified data this cycle has only increased scrutiny, as Republicans argue polling this cycle is wrong .

Tighter-than-expected results from Democratic primaries this summer — including the Wisconsin gubernatorial and Michigan Senate contests — have also cast doubt on the accuracy of polling. These surveys had suggested clear front-runners in the races.

Primary polling is more difficult to conduct than general elections, but Skelley signaled the industry is on the lookout for misses in states where conducting surveys is particularly challenging.

“I think you have to be concerned about sort of larger errors in some of the same places that we’ve seen polling struggle in the Trump era, and a lot of those are states that are a part of the Senate discussion — so an Ohio or an Iowa or a Kansas potentially,” Skelley explained.

Latino voters propelled Trump’s 2024 victory, but this bloc appears to be moving back to Democrats.

While former President Biden won the bloc by 25 percentage points in 2020, Latinos took a 22-point swing toward Republicans, with the president losing them by just 3 points in 2024, according to a 2025 Pew Research Center analysis .

Now, according to a NBC News/Telemundo survey released in early October , Trump holds a 27 percent approval rating with the bloc. A separate Pew Research Center survey also released in October showed the president with a 24 percent approval rating among the bloc.

“I’m expecting that the Hispanic bloc to look more like 2008, 2012,” Kimball said, adding that he predicts the group will break for Democrats nearly 2-to-1.

Skelley, meanwhile, suggested how well Democrats perform with Latinos could depend on their turnout in a nonpresidential election year too.

Republicans have deep pockets and have dominated the war for the airwaves this cycle, outspending Democrats in the most expensive midterms ever .

The party has the added benefit of MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to bolster candidates. Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s America PAC has also spent heavily to support Republicans up and down the ballot.

Kimball suggested that while money is helpful for campaigns, it remains an open question as to how much it will move the needle, particularly in the days before Election Day.

“While the money’s important and it might make a difference in some of these very close races, at this point it seems like the momentum is with the Democrats,” he added.

Democrats in battleground Senate races, for their part, have consistently posted higher fundraising hauls than their GOP rivals.

Do former swing states veer back to the center?

The president’s low approval rating and voter anger over the economy has put states like Iowa and Ohio — that voted for former President Obama twice and Trump three times — back on the map for Democrats. This sentiment has even extended to red-leaning states like Kansas, Alaska and Texas.

“Those traditional swing states that Trump has been able to carry two or three times seem to be switching back towards the Democrats,” Kimball said, underscoring Ohio.

“Generally speaking, when we grew up, it was ‘As goes Ohio, so goes the nation,'” he continued.

Democrats have largely written off Ohio in recent political memory, but this year’s different. The fiery governor’s race between Democrat Amy Acton and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy leans in Democrats’ favor, per DDHQ.

Meanwhile, control for the Senate could run through the Buckeye State where former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) is seeking a comeback against Sen. Jon Husted (R) after his 2024 loss to GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno.

“If the Democrats are able to make inroads in either of the governor’s race or the Senate or both, that really is an indication of maybe where the country’s going,” Kimball said.