The U.S. Congress is in play — here are the midterm races to watch

Tight races between Republicans and Democrats continue to heat up ahead of the U.S. midterm elections next Tuesday, with control of Congress up for grabs.

The stakes are sky-high for both parties. For the Republicans, it’s their narrow majority in Congress and what remains of President Donald Trump’s governing agenda.

For Democrats, it’s an opportunity to restrain Trump’s unprecedented use of presidential powers over the remainder of his term.

Polling shows Democrats are close to taking the House, where a net gain of three seats would give them a narrow majority.

Midterm election results in the U.S. tend to swing against the party of the sitting president — and Trump’s deeply unpopular policies, rising inflation and the war with Iran are putting many Republicans in peril.

“When we look at the polling, the feelings about Trump and the Trump administration are soured. In every poll, the trend has been down over the last two years,” said Marc Trussler, director of data science for the University of Pennsylvania’s program on opinion research and election studies.

Trussler said, at this point, it would be “a big surprise that the Democrats weren’t able to gain control of the House.”

But the fate of congressional pushback against Trump ultimately could be decided by a handful of hotly contested Senate races — some of them in places where the president’s trade war with Canada is a top ballot box issue.

Democrats need a net gain of four seats to win the Senate majority. They need to hold seats like Michigan while also gaining others in states like Maine.

“Both of those races are ones in which things are very tight, within the margin of error,” said Trussler, who is Canadian. “And both are going to have very explicitly involved Canada.”

Trump’s attacks on Canada have become a polarizing election issue — nowhere more than in the state of Michigan.

Michigan’s economy is deeply integrated with that of Canada. The president’s decision to hold up the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge has been a high-profile issue in the campaign — along with the drop in Canadian visitors driven by Trump’s anti-Canada rhetoric.

The blowback over the trade war has been bad enough to convince Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers to put some distance between himself and Trump. In a campaign ad released earlier this month, Rogers is seen drinking a Labatt’s beer and telling voters “Canada is not our enemy.”

Christopher Sands, director of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Canadian Studies, said Rogers has been walking on eggshells, trying not to alienate Trump while telling voters he would stand up for Michigan.

If the Democrats can’t hold Michigan, their path to flipping the Senate will be much more difficult. Democrat candidate Abdul El-Sayed — who has said the trade war with Canada makes no sense — doesn’t have a clear lead in the state’s race.

El-Sayed has been a constant target of Trump and Republicans. Opponents have brought up previous controversial comments and have suggested the Democrat has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

“If El-Sayed loses, it won’t be because of his position on Canada,” Sands said. “It’ll be because some of the more controversial things he has said.”

In Maine, longtime Republican Senator Susan Collins’s fate could also hinge on Trump’s trade war. The Trump administration recently changed its 50 per cent tariffs on Canada to lessen the impact on Maine in a bid to help Collins ahead of the election.

Collins, who has held the seat for 30 years, has sold herself as an independent-minded Republican who can work with the Trump administration to the benefit of her state. She has long opposed the president’s tariffs on Canada.

While Maine voters are unhappy with Trump policies that have pushed up energy prices and caused Canadian tourism to plummet, Democrats have struggled to get their message across since the party’s initial candidate, Graham Platner, dropped out over allegations of sexual assault.

Platner’s replacement Troy Jackson has made the tariffs on Canada a key issue in his campaign since stepping into the role in July. He has accused Collins of enabling Trump’s chaos and points out that she voted to confirm the people driving the president’s unpopular policies.

Canada might not be top of mind for voters in other tight races but the economic impacts of Trump’s policies are major motivators, Trussler said.

The most likely way for Democrats to take control of the Senate is to also flip seats in Alaska, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas — all states with significant trade relationships with Canada.

In Ohio, Republican Sen. Jon Husted is facing former Democrat candidate Sherrod Brown.

Husted was appointed to the seat in 2025 that was previously held by Vice-President JD Vance. Lately, he’s been known for Trump’s repeated comments about his body during campaign events.

While Trump carried the state in the last three presidential elections, Brown, who lost a race for Ohio’s other Senate seat in 2024, has consistently outperformed Democrat presidential candidates in Ohio.

Another closely watched race is the one in Texas between scandal-plagued Republican candidate Ken Paxton and the Democrat nominee, state Rep. James Talarico.

Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide since 1994 but the party is hoping that Paxton’s unpopularity, even among Republicans, will allow Talarico to pull off a win in the Lonestar State.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 29, 2026.

— With files from The Associated Press

Kelly Geraldine Malone, The Canadian Press