2026 midterm elections: When polls close; when results are expected

There are just seven days until the final votes will be cast in the 2026 midterms.

Tens of millions of voters across the country have already cast ballots for Senate, House, governor, state legislature and other critical races that will determine the future of President Trump’s agenda.

In the Senate, Democrats must flip four Republican-held seats to gain control. In the House, Democrats need to pick up just three seats.

One week out, who is winning the race, and when can we expect results in the most anticipated match-ups?

What do the pollsters and forecasters say ?

Public polling has Democrats ahead in more than enough Senate races to take back control, though leads in most states are narrow and within the margin of error.

Nonpartisan election forecaster Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ), a partner of The Hill, gives Democrats a 57 percent chance of Senate control and an 80 percent chance of House control, as of Tuesday afternoon.

For Senate control, Democrats need to win multiple states that Trump carried by double digits in 2024. Their best pickup opportunity in the Senate is North Carolina, per DDHQ, but the party also leads narrowly in Alaska, Maine, Texas and Ohio. They trail by a small margin in Iowa and are tied in Kansas.

Democrats also lead in the states they are defending: Georgia, Michigan and Minnesota. On a really good night for Democrats, the party would also be eyeing “reach” states where their candidates have some chance of an upset: South Carolina, Mississippi and a Democrat-backed independent candidate in Nebraska.

In the House, Democrats need an even smaller net gain than in the Senate, though Republican redistricting efforts mean the GOP is likely to pick up a few redrawn, deep-red seats. Still, Democrats are comfortably ahead in the race for House control, with Republicans halting spending in key races even as party leadership projects confidence.

DDHQ’s average of the generic congressional ballot, which asks voters which party they plan to vote for in their district, has Democrats ahead by 8.1 points.

Several states have gubernatorial contests, including widely watched races in Georgia, Iowa, Nevada and Wisconsin. Democrats have a chance to win a majority of governorships for the first time since 2009.

The first polls in the country close at 6 p.m. ET, and the last polls close at 1 a.m. Some states are split across multiple time zones and will have different poll closing times in different parts of the state.

Polls close at 6 p.m. in parts of Kentucky and Indiana, but the rest of the polls in those states do not close until 7 p.m.

At 7 p.m., polls close in Georgia, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia. Polls close at 7 p.m. in most of Florida and New Hampshire, while the remaining polls close at 8 p.m. At 7:30 p.m., polls close in West Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina.

At 8 p.m., polls close in Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Washington, D.C. Most polls close at 8 p.m. in Texas, Michigan, Kansas, North Dakota and South Dakota, with the rest closing at 9 p.m. Polls close at 8:30 p.m. in Arkansas.

At 9 p.m., polls close in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

At 10 p.m., polls close in Montana and Utah. Most polls in Idaho close at 10 p.m., with some closing at 11 p.m. Some polls close in the Mountain time zone portion of Oregon at 10 p.m., though most close at 11 p.m. At 11 p.m., polls close in California and Washington.

Polls close in all of Hawaii and in most of Alaska at midnight, with some polls there closing at 1 a.m.

Different states have varying election procedures and thus will count votes at vastly different speeds.

In some states with competitive races, including Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and Texas, votes will be counted relatively quickly. Most votes in those states are cast in person early or on Election Day, and late-arriving mail-in ballots have short windows to arrive after the election.

Some battleground states in the Midwest, namely Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, may take longer than Election Day to count votes. If races in those states are close, they may not be called until the next day. In Michigan, for instance, DDHQ did not call the 2024 presidential race until Thursday afternoon — two days after the election.

States out west tend to conduct elections differently, some almost entirely by mail, with longer windows for ballots to arrive after the election. The most prominent among these is California, where votes are sometimes counted for weeks after the election.

The Golden State has been decisive for House control in the past, including in 2022 and 2024, where a close race meant the nation waited on California to help determine which party would take the majority. A new map drawn to favor Democrats has shrunk the number of competitive House races in the state, which may avoid that scenario this year.

The Hill uses DDHQ projections for most races. DDHQ projects a race when it is 99.9999 percent confident in the result, according to its website.

For federal races, newly elected members are sworn in on Jan. 3, 2027, at noon, per the Constitution.

But some congressional elections are technically special elections, meaning the winner will be sworn in sooner.

In Ohio and Florida, both incumbent senators were appointed and are running for their first full term. If Democrats were to win either election, the winner would likely be sworn in before the end of the year, which would immediately reduce the size of the GOP’s majority.

In state and local contests, winners will take office at varying dates depending on state law.