Election Day Is Here: Congress, Florida's Governor and 36 Statehouses Ride on Tuesday's Vote
More than 57 million Americans voted before Tuesday. The rest decide it today — all 435 House seats, 35 Senate contests, governors in 36 states, and in Florida a governor's race headed by a Southwest Florida congressman and an open U.S. Senate seat. Lee County polls open at 7 a.m.
The campaign is over; the counting is next. Election Day in the 2026 midterms arrives Tuesday with control of Congress and the final two years of President Donald Trump's term in the balance: all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 Senate contests are on the ballot, along with governorships in 36 states and a long tail of state and local offices. More than 57 million people had already voted before Tuesday, according to the Associated Press, with early turnout on pace to eclipse the last midterm elections — a campaign the AP describes as shaped by high prices, dissatisfaction with the economy and the Iran war. Republicans enter the day holding both chambers of Congress, including a 53-47 Senate majority.
The machinery of the day is itself contested ground. The Justice Department is mounting its largest-ever effort to monitor Election Day polling places, the AP reported, countered by an even larger effort among Democrats and allied groups. On Monday night, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the administration's push to force California to set aside thousands of ballots as part of its search for noncitizen voters — a ruling this station reported Monday (SQ-20261102-055). The first polling places in the country were scheduled to open at 6 a.m. Eastern in a handful of states; Florida's open an hour later.
For Southwest Florida, the top of the ballot is as national as it gets. Republican Byron Donalds of Naples is running for governor against Democrat David Jolly, and Republican Ashley Moody faces Democrat Angie Nixon for Florida's open U.S. Senate seat. In Lee County, where early voting closed with 227,185 ballots cast, polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and anyone in line by 7 p.m. votes. Election Day voters must vote at their assigned precinct, and a vote-by-mail ballot cannot be dropped at a polling place — it goes to a Supervisor of Elections office, by 7 p.m., or it does not count. The county posts its first preliminary, unofficial local results shortly after 7 p.m. What the early vote says about who wins, nobody knows yet. That is what today is for.
