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WASHINGTON —Millions of Americans are voting on Tuesday, with political control of Congress at stake along with the philosophical tone that will shape the Washington political debate during the second half of President Joe Biden's four-year term.
Polls began to close in early evening, first in the midwestern state of Indiana and in neighboring Kentucky, then in the southeastern states of Virginia, Georgia and Florida. But people were still voting in much of the country.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are at stake, and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate. More than 45 million people had already cast ballots in early in-person or mail-in voting before Tuesday's official Election Day. Some analysts suggest the total vote in contests across the country could top the record 115 million tally set in the 2018 midterm elections.
Democrats now narrowly hold control of both chambers, as well as the White House. Typically, parties that control both the executive and legislative branches of government lose seats during midterm elections.
Preelection polling showed Republicans are likely to take hold of the House and possibly the Senate, an outcome that in the past has led to protracted political gridlock when one political party controls Congress, or at least one chamber, and the other party holds the White House.
For the most part, the first hours of the voting appeared to be proceeding without any significant conflicts, although vote counting could be delayed in many communities, with hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots not being counted until after polls close.
Officials in two Republican-controlled states, Missouri and Florida, refused to let federal Justice Department officials inside polling locations to monitor voting for possible voting rights violations. Top election officials for the two states questioned the Justice Department's authority to have observers inside precincts.
Both Republican and Democratic parties monitored polls in many places across the U.S. to watch for any perceived irregularities, although actual fraud in U.S. elections is minuscule. The Justice Department is also monitoring compliance with federal voting rights laws in 24 states other than Missouri and Florida.
As Election Day dawned, one prominent U.S. political polling site, FiveThirtyEight.com, gave Republicans a 59% chance of winning the Senate and an 84% likelihood of overcoming Democratic control in the House.
It projected Republicans could pick up 15 seats in the House to gain a 227-208 edge and one seat in the Senate to hold a 51-49 advantage come January 2023. But polling showed several Senate races so close that the overall outcome is in doubt.
Election officials have said it could take days after Tuesday's voting for final results in some closely contested races, such as for Senate seats in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia.
Economy, abortion on voters' minds
In a recent Pew Research Center poll, more than three-quarters of U.S. voters said the economy was their top concern this election.
"The interest rates, the housing market, the price of gas, you know, you're noticing in the grocery stores food is very, very expensive, and there's items that you can't even find anymore. It's a huge, huge concern," Amanda Douglas, a voter in the southeastern state of Georgia, told VOA.
After the U.S. Supreme Court decision in June ending the federal right to abortion, social issues have also motivated some voters.
"I think everybody should have access to health care [regardless of] what your personal views are on Roe v. Wade or abortion," Georgia voter Theresa Allmend told VOA.
Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia running for reelection in the heavily contested state, stressed the importance of Tuesday's vote.
"Democracy itself is on the ballot," he said.
His Republican challenger, former professional football star Herschel Walker, was equally certain about the significance of the vote.
"If we don't get it right, we won't recognize this country tomorrow," he said.
Walker's supporters expressed frustration with Biden.
"After all that Democrats have done, I just can't sit back and allow the country to just fall behind. The border crisis is out of control ... and [it] doesn't appear that Joe Biden is going to do anything about it," Georgia voter Emmett Shead told VOA.
Another Georgia voter, Cynthia Jones, told The Associated Press she fears Republicans will cut Social Security if they take control of Congress.
"If you're poor, you don't matter," said Jones, who is also motivated to vote by false claims by Trump and other Republicans that the 2020 was stolen, accusations she believes are attacks on Black and other marginalized voters.
'Inflection point'
Predicting a Republican victory in the House, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the odds-on favorite to become House speaker if Republicans hold a majority, has promised to look for spending cuts in government programs favored by Biden.
He told CNN that Republican lawmakers would also more closely scrutinize continued U.S. arms and financial aid for Ukraine to combat Russia's invasion, now in its ninth month.
Since the war started, Biden, with little congressional debate, has sent more than $27 billion in munitions and humanitarian assistance to the Kyiv government. But McCarthy said Republicans are unwilling to fund a continuing "blank check" without more analysis of what Ukraine specifically needs most.
Other Republican lawmakers have promised to launch investigations of the Biden administration's performance during the first two years of his term, especially the ongoing influx of thousands of undocumented migrants across the southern border with Mexico that Biden, like former President Donald Trump, has been unable to halt.
Some Republican legislators are calling for hearings on business activities conducted by the president's son, Hunter Biden, in Ukraine and China. U.S. prosecutors have already been conducting an investigation of the younger Biden's business operations but have not brought any charges.
Meanwhile, Democrats have accused Republicans of planning to cut popular health care and pension benefits for older Americans if they take control of Congress, or subject them to regular five-year funding reviews.
Both Biden and Trump have campaigned respectively in recent weeks for Democratic and Republican candidates. Trump, who was ousted from office in 2020, still falsely claims he was cheated out of reelection by vote count irregularities.
Trump has strongly hinted at rallies that he is about to launch a new 2024 bid for the White House within days of the Tuesday voting, even as the U.S. Department of Justice and a Georgia state prosecutor are conducting wide-ranging criminal investigations of his election-related actions before leaving office and during the aftermath of his presidency.
Biden also said he plans to run for reelection in two years but has made no final decision.
Biden is calling Tuesday's election an "inflection point" in U.S. democracy, attacking Republican "election denier" candidates who, adopting Trump's refrain, have refused to accept the legitimacy of Biden's victory two years ago.
The president has also contended that the economy remains strong, adding that hundreds of thousands of jobs have been added over the last year even as consumer prices have risen at the fastest pace in four decades. He has touted congressional passage of a massive infrastructure construction measure he proposed, although it has not proved to be an issue that voters have cared much about.
Meanwhile, Trump told a rally in Florida on Sunday, "We need a landslide so big the radical left can't steal it."
Katherine Gypson and Masoon Farivar contributed to this report. Some information in this report came from The Associated Press.