Election day in America: the House looks within Democrats' reach, the Senate remains a steep climb

Americans today elect an entirely new House of Representatives, 35 of the 100 senators and governors in 36 states in the midterm elections, Al Jazeera reports. Republicans currently hold a majority in both chambers, with 219 House seats and 53 in the Senate according to RTBF. Democrats need a net gain of three seats in the House and four in the Senate. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report expects Democrats to win at least 222 House seats, RTBF writes, also pointing to an approval rating of around 37 percent for President Donald Trump. More than 52 million voters have already cast their ballots by mail.

The first polling stations open at 11 a.m. Belgian time in Vermont, and the last close around 7 a.m. on Wednesday in Alaska. Because mail and provisional ballots are often counted later, results in close races may take hours or days, Al Jazeera warns. In the Senate, attention is focused on Georgia, Maine, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Texas and Michigan, among others. In Michigan, Democratic Congresswoman Haley Stevens came out in support of Republican Mike Rogers and against her own party's candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, VRT NWS reports. El-Sayed narrowly won the Democratic primary; Stevens criticises his positions on Israel.

On the eve of the vote, the US Supreme Court rejected without dissent a request from the administration to set aside about 20,000 California mail ballots until voters' citizenship had been checked, VRT NWS reports. Lower courts had already turned the request down. Trump said on a New York Post podcast that he would if necessary pre-emptively pardon Elon Musk and White House staff should a Democratic House majority open investigations into them, USA Today writes. An analyst speaking to RTBF expects an unusually tense relationship between the White House and Congress after the election.