{"id":951045,"date":"2026-11-03T12:12:12","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T12:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/951045\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T12:12:12","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T12:12:12","slug":"us-midterm-elections-2026-live-updates-us-votes-as-polls-predict-close-midterm-races","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/951045\/","title":{"rendered":"US midterm elections 2026 live updates: US votes as polls predict close midterm races"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m in Detroit, Michigan, the home of America’s car manufacturing industry, nicknamed the “Motor City”.<\/p>\n

It’s a sprawling network of highways and overpasses, so owning a car here is a necessity.<\/p>\n

That means the soaring cost of fuel prices has hit Detroit residents particularly hard.<\/p>\n

Some petrol stations we’ve passed have prices pushing $US5 a gallon (that’s about $1.90 a litre).<\/p>\n

That may sound on the cheaper side to Australians, and there are several reasons for that.<\/p>\n

\"AA mechanic gets to work in Michigan. (ABC News: Bradley McLennan)<\/p>\n

Australia’s fuel excise is more than double the average total US fuel tax per litre. The US also produces a lot of its own fuel, while Australia imports it.<\/p>\n

It’s also relative; the median household income in Detroit is roughly half the national US average, so people are especially feeling the financial squeeze.<\/p>\n

Michigan is home to a critical Senate battle at the midterm elections, and the cost of living is a major issue for voters.<\/p>\n

The race is considered close, and while polls show the Democrat’s vote increasing in many parts of the US, the Republicans are rated a chance to flip this seat.<\/p>\n

We visited an auto repair shop in the city’s north-east to hear how car owners were faring on the eve of the midterm elections.<\/p>\n

\"AEricka Hampton is feeling the pinch. (ABC News: Bradley McLennan)<\/p>\n

Our visit coincided with new reporting from the Financial Times that petrol prices across the US are set to hit a record high of any administration one day before the midterms.<\/p>\n

“It’s astronomical,” Ericka Hampton said, a tattoo artist who dropped in with her mum to get her car serviced.<\/p>\n

“It’s actually more expensive here than it even is in Texas. So it’s crazy how we’re the Motor City, but we’re like getting slammed the hardest. It’s crazy.”<\/p>\n

But it’s not just the cost of filling up. Prices have crept up across the board, largely driven by inflation linked to the protracted war in Iran.<\/p>\n

On top of that, Michigan is a border state, with Canada just a 15-minute drive from Detroit.<\/p>\n

\"A\u00a0Jay Salaytah says people in Michigan are struggling. (ABC News: Bradley McLennan)<\/p>\n

That means the effects of Donald Trump’s expensive trade war and tariff policies have been particularly acute here.<\/p>\n

“Everything’s going up, and it’s not going up month to month, it’s going sometimes up day to day,” Jay Salaytah said, owner of Jay’s Auto Repairs shop.<\/p>\n

“I can give a customer a price at four in the afternoon, they call me at 8am the next morning to authorise a repair, I go to order the parts, and all of a sudden the cost of these parts jumped up $30, $40.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’m in Detroit, Michigan, the home of America’s car manufacturing industry, nicknamed the “Motor City”. It’s a sprawling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":951046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9338,57097,2490,4268,43,10651,154611,44,9339,11790,41,39,42,40,3281,3780],"class_list":["post-951045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-congress","tag-democrats","tag-donald-trump","tag-election","tag-headlines","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-midterms","tag-news","tag-republicans","tag-senate","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trump","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=951045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/951046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}