US midterm voting begins; full results may take days
Americans vote on Tuesday in midterm elections seen as a referendum on President Donald Trump. First results are expected after polls start closing at 23:00 GMT, but close races may take days.
- All 435 House seats and 35 of 100 Senate seats are up for election.
- Democrats hope to win control of both chambers from Trump's Republican Party.
- First polls close at 6pm EST (23:00 GMT); some results may not be known until Wednesday or later.
Voters across the United States are casting ballots in midterm elections that the BBC and The Guardian describe as a test of President Donald Trump's time in office. Al Jazeera describes them as the most closely contested midterms in recent years.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate are on the ballot. Democrats hope to take control of both chambers from Trump's Republican Party.
The first polls to close are in parts of Indiana and Kentucky at 6pm EST (23:00 GMT). Most of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia and New Hampshire follow at 7pm EST, and North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia at 7:30pm EST.
Polls in states including Pennsylvania, Illinois, Tennessee and parts of Texas close at 8pm EST, and in New York, Arizona, Colorado and Wisconsin at 9pm EST. Montana, Nevada and Utah close at 10pm EST, California and Washington at 11pm EST, and Hawaii and most of Alaska at midnight EST.
Al Jazeera notes that early reported results do not mean a winner has been declared. News organisations such as The Associated Press analyse vote counts before calling a race, and a tight contest can take hours or even days. It may not be clear for days whether Republicans keep Congress or Democrats win a majority in one or both chambers.
Several states could be slow. California votes mainly by mail, and close House races there can take days or weeks. In some Arizona counties, mail-in ballots dropped off on Election Day need signature checks, which can delay close results by several days.
Nevada mails ballots to all registered voters, and ballots postmarked by Election Day can arrive up to four days later. Voters there have six days to fix signature problems, so results could slip into the following week.
Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, so extra counting rounds are needed if no candidate gets more than 50 percent. Mail-in results come in over the following days; in 2024 about 75 percent of votes were counted by the morning after the election.
Why it matters
The result shapes US policy on Iran and the wider region, which affects Pakistan's diplomacy and the news it follows.
