Americans on Tuesday started to vote in the critical midterm elections, with Donald Trump's presidency facing its first major voter test two years after he was elected. The midterm election sees the control of the US Congress at stake, with the opposition Democrats tipped to win the House of Representatives while the Republicans are likely to retain the Senate.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the US Congress, are at stake, while 35 seats in the 100-member Senate are also up for grabs. 36 governor's posts and seats in state legislatures across the country will also be decided in the vote.
Incidents of violence in the weeks leading up to the midterm polls may play a key role in the election. The campaign's final weeks were marred by the worst anti-Semitic attack in modern US history, which left 11 dead in a Pittsburgh synagogue. Days earlier, a fanatical Trump supporter was arrested after a frantic manhunt on charges of mailing pipe bombs to prominent opponents of Donald Trump, including former US President Barack Obama and Donald Trump's main rival in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Trump. The #MeToo movement will also play a role in voter sentiment, with Trump having repeatedly defended Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault.
Immigration and health care are other key factors for the midterm elections.
Here are the live updates of the US midterm election:
Arthur Jones, who called the Holocaust "the biggest, blackest lie in history" and described himself as a former leader of the American Nazi Party, lost by a 50-point margin to incumbent Democrat Dan Lipinski. Jones still managed to get more than 40,000 votes, according to official figures.
Christine Hallquist, a former energy CEO, lost her bid Tuesday to make history as America's first transgender governor with Vermont voters re-electing the Republican incumbent, television networks reported. The 62-year-old Democrat was projected to have lost to Phil Scott, a comparatively popular and moderate Republican who has only been the bucolic northeastern state's top executive for two years, by Fox and ABC News.
Tremendous success tonight. Thank you to all!
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2018
VOTE, VOTE, VOTE! pic.twitter.com/QnvGSTJzfn
- Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) November 6, 2018
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2018
- Wall Street stocks rose as investors awaited returns in the US midterm elections that are seen as a referendum on Donald Trump
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 0.7 percent to end the session at 25,637.25.
- The broad-based S&P 500 climbed 0.6 percent to close at 2,755.52, and the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index also won 0.6 percent to 7,375.96.
- The Central American migrants trekking toward the United States in a caravan have unwittingly become key players in Tuesday's US midterms, though many are not even aware the elections are happening.
- Seeking to maintain the Republican party's control of Congress and mobilize his base with hardline anti-immigration rhetoric, Trump has repeatedly attacked the caravan in the run-up to election day.
- He called it a "national emergency," warned it had been infiltrated by violent criminals and "unknown Middle Easterners" and deployed some 5,000 active-duty troops to secure the US-Mexican border.