Republicans hope to claw back control from Democrats in polls that will also decide key local and state officials.
Voters in the United States are casting their ballots in key midterm elections, which will determine the makeup of the next Congress and set the tone for the remainder of President Joe Biden’s term in the White House.
The vote on Tuesday comes as Americans grapple with sky-high inflation and living costs, and the economy has emerged as the top concern among supporters of both the Democratic and Republican parties.
Democrats currently retain a slim majority in Congress, and they have focused much of the campaign on defending reproductive rights and strengthening democratic institutions, which they argue are under threat in the country.
But as the party in power, Democrats are expected to lose ground to Republicans, who have seized on immigration and economic issues in a bid to garner support at the ballot box.
“There are some countervailing pressures on the economy: unemployment remains relatively low at 3.5 percent, consumer confidence is still fairly high,” Thomas Gift, the director of the Centre on US Politics at University College London, told Al Jazeera, “but inflation hits everyone, and the majority [party] – fair or not – is going to get scapegoated.”
Polls are OPEN in Pennsylvania! The first voters in Feasterville, Bucks County are lining up as a new PA Senator will be elected, one of the most expensive races in the country — $133 Million spent by Oz and Fetterman @NBCPhiladelphia #PASen #ElectionDay #vote pic.twitter.com/ZoQecO1js5
— Randy Gyllenhaal (@RandyGyllenhaal) November 8, 2022
All 435 seats in the US House of Representatives are up for grabs, along with 34 in the Senate. Governorships, state legislatures, local councils and school boards are also being contested.
Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett said that President Joe Biden acknowledged hours before polls opened that it was going to be “tough” for Democrats to hold the House.
“This is really a referendum on the last two years of his presidency. His legacy is at stake and right now his approval rating is hovering in the low 40 percent [range] – his disapproval rating is above 50 percent,” she said.
“And historically, when a president has an approval rating of above 50 percent, their party does not really hang onto the House in midterm congressional elections.”
More than 41 million Americans have already cast their votes across the country, either through mail-in ballots or early in-person polls, according to a tally by the US Elections Project at the University of Florida.
Polling firm Gallup said earlier this month that 41 percent of eligible US voters intended to cast their ballots early, up from 34 percent in 2018. Fifty-four percent of Democrats said they would vote ahead of Tuesday, compared with 32 percent of Republicans, the same poll found.
Vermont was the first US state to open polls on Tuesday at 5am ET (10:00 GMT). Voting sites were set to be open in all US states by 1pm ET (18:00 GMT).
Among the east coast states to first open for in-person voting early on Tuesday were Georgia, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Florida, home to closely-watched Senate races that could decide which party controls the Senate.
“It’s Election Day! Go vote,” tweeted Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock as polls opened in Georgia. Warnock is facing Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a race projected to be one of the country’s closest.
While turnout is typically lower for midterms than for presidential elections in the US, the last midterm contest in 2018 saw the “highest midterm turnout in four decades” at 53 percent, according to the US Census Bureau.
In addition to immigration, reproductive rights and the economy, US voters have said public safety, gun control and the climate crisis are among the top issues on their minds as they cast their ballots.
Source: Aljazeera.com