{"id":904623,"date":"2026-11-03T17:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T17:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/904623\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T17:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T17:06:09","slug":"2026-midterm-elections-live-updates-voters-head-to-the-polls-to-decide-control-of-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/904623\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 Midterm Elections Live Updates: Voters Head to the Polls to Decide Control of Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"

The war in Iran is deeply unpopular with Americans. Recent polls<\/a> indicate as many as two-thirds of voters disapprove of President Trump\u2019s handling of the eight-month conflict, which has driven up prices and depleted U.S. ammunition stockpiles.<\/p>\n

Yet in the final days of the campaign, Mr. Trump kept talking about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still have to take care of, I would say, one or two sites, but we can do that in 10 minutes,\u201d he told reporters on Saturday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only reason we\u2019re not finished with Iran is, I want to be nice, I want to try and save all those lives if I can,\u201d he said at a campaign rally<\/a> on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a war with Iran,\u201d he added Monday. \u201cWe won.\u201d Hours later, officials confirmed that the U.S. military had struck Iran\u2019s Qeshm Island<\/a> in what they described as a defensive measure that was not expected to escalate.<\/p>\n

Here are three reasons why Mr. Trump kept bringing up Iran, according to analysts.<\/p>\n

To push Iran toward a deal<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump, who prides himself on his deal-making, could be trying to restart talks.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy threatening strikes, he wants to send the Iranians a message: \u2018Come to the table now or else,\u2019\u201d said Arta Moeini, managing director of the nonpartisan Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, which advocates for military restraint.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s foreign ministry on Monday said<\/a> it was prepared to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in two days if the United States agreed to several demands, including lifting U.S. economic sanctions against Iran and releasing billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration is unlikely to accept either condition. For now, Mr. Trump \u201cis going to use the promise of diplomacy again, as he has done before,\u201d Mr. Moeini said. \u201cHe can announce that, and maybe get better results for the election, but still later say, \u2018They didn\u2019t do what they promised to do, and so we can attack.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

A family having dinner at home in Tehran on Sunday as television news reports on negotiations between the United States and Iran.Credit…Arash Khamooshi\/Polaris for The New York Times\u2018Tough guy\u2019 rhetoric has worked before<\/p>\n

Threatening rhetoric is part of Mr. Trump\u2019s brand and has helped him build a loyal following.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a very real strand of American public opinion, the Jacksonian tradition, that likes a leader who projects toughness and who is prepared to whack the bad guys,\u201d said Andrew Payne, a research director at Chatham House, a policy institute in London.<\/p>\n

But Mr. Payne called that approach to Iran a \u201cmisguided\u201d political strategy. \u201cYou\u2019ve seen the polling,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He sees Iran as a legacy issue<\/p>\n

Yet polling will matter less for Mr. Trump going forward. Regardless of the outcome of Tuesday\u2019s elections, he will be entering his final two years in office, a period when presidents often take policy risks to secure their legacies.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has staked his legacy in foreign policy, to some degree, on Iran,\u201d Mr. Payne said. \u201cIt\u2019s more important for him to try and get some favorable resolution to that in the long term than worrying about the short-term impact at the polls.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration is already moving<\/a> three aircraft carriers, thousands of Marines, fighter jets and Special Operations forces to the Persian Gulf region, to be ready to strike within days.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do believe that he will escalate no matter what,\u201d Mr. Moeini said. \u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s cheap talk.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The war in Iran is deeply unpopular with Americans. Recent polls indicate as many as two-thirds of voters…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":904624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,14299,5648,5649,228953,3,25249,720,3479,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-904623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-democratic-party","tag-donald-j","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-midterm-elections-2026","tag-news","tag-republican-party","tag-senate","tag-trump","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}