This week: Campaigns make final frantic moves as Election Day arrives

Niels Lesniewski, CQ-Roll Call on Nov 2, 2026

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WASHINGTON — It’s Election Week in America.

A lot of the midterm vote has already happened in states where early voting and mail-in voting are common, but there’s still time to get supporters to the polls on Election Day.

President Donald Trump will use the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as the location for his midterm closing argument, though he is expected to hold additional tele-rallies. Trump told reporters Sunday that he wants to show “how beautiful it is.”

Trump held in-person rallies Sunday in Iowa and Kansas. Those states have two of the four Senate Toss-up races, according to Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales.

In Iowa, Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson is trying to win the seat being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Joni Ernst. Hinson is facing Democratic State Rep. Josh Turek, a two-time Paralympic gold medalist.

In Kansas, Republican Sen. Roger Marshall finds himself in a Toss-up race against Democrat Adam Hamilton.

The other two Senate Toss-ups are in Alaska and Maine, which are both Republican-held seats — and in fact there are no Senate races rated a Toss-up or favoring the GOP where the current senator is a Democrat.

Iowa is also among the keys to the House, with several closely watched contests. Two Iowa GOP incumbents, Reps. Zach Nunn and Marinnette Miller-Meeks, made the 2026 cycle’s final list of CQ Roll Call’s most vulnerable House members.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who has continued to argue that the polling favorable to Democrats should not be believed, was traveling with Trump on Sunday.

“I work almost as hard as this guy. I try to keep up with him, he doesn’t sleep at all,” Johnson said of Trump, before briefly pulling out his impression of the president alongside him at a rally in Iowa.

Johnson is scheduled to join Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., for an Election Eve rally in Virginia Beach before heading to Texas to kick off Election Day.

There, he’ll get things started with an early morning event with Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz, along with GOP candidates Eric Flores and Tano Tijerina.

Flores is running in the reconfigured 34th District to unseat Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, while Tijerina is seeking to oust Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar.

Michigan mayhem

The big surprise of the final weekend came out of Michigan, where Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens abruptly announced her support for — and then appeared alongside of — Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers, the GOP Senate candidate.

Stevens, who had competed in the Democratic primary for Senate and had been expected to appear with Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed, made a last-minute pivot to embracing Rogers, a decision which left Democrats flummoxed.

“As you may have seen, our Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, Abdul, said that I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away. And he’s right. And that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers,” Stevens said Sunday in a video posted to social media.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., was among the national Democrats to criticize Stevens, calling her announcement a “despicable betrayal.”

Separately, Schumer convened a call with Senate Democrats on Sunday as part of the effort to prepare for potential efforts by Trump or his allies to undermine midterm results.

“If Trump and his allies attempt to interfere with the will of the voters, Senate Democrats are prepared to fight back immediately and aggressively, on Election Day and for as long as it takes to ensure the results are respected,” a Senate Democratic aide said in a statement.

—Mary Ellen McIntire contributed to this report.