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Key battleground races are close in the lead up to election day.

Tonight, the final scramble to Tuesday and the races that could upend the balance of power in Washington.

This is Washington Week with The Atlantic.

Corporate funding provided by In 1995, two friends set out to make wireless coverage accessible to all.

With no long-term contracts, nationwide coverage, and 100%US-based customer support.

Major funding has been provided by friends of Washington Week with The Atlantic, including William C. Paley Foundation, George D. Hanley III in memory of Mary Jane Bunny Glick and of his brother Jay Hanley.

Additional funding provided by Sandra and Carl DeLey Magnuson, Charles Hammoui through the Charles Hammoui Fund, Rose Herschel and Andy Shreve, Jay and Sharon Rockefeller, Robert and Susan Rosenbaum, the UN Foundation, Don and Janine Blome, Steve and Marilyn Carmack, Leonard and Norma Klorfine, Maria and Walter B. Witcher, Paul and Shelley White, and these individuals and the following contributors.

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And now from the David M. Rubenstein studio at WETA in Washington, here is Washington Week with The Atlantic.

Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

I'm Vivian Salama in tonight for Jeffrey Goldberg.

Tuesday's midterms will determine how much room Donald Trump has to govern in his final two years in office, and the results are anything but settled.

More than 43 million people have already cast a ballot.

Key races are still razor tight and controversy is swirling in of all places, Alaska.

Meanwhile, President Trump's on, off, and on again red state rallies in these final days highlight a White House on edge.

We have an outstanding panel to make sense of what's next.

Peter Baker is chief White House correspondent for The New York Times.

Amy Walter is managing editor of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter.

Susan Glasser is a staff writer with The New Yorker.

And Asma Khalid co-hosts the Global Story podcast for the BBC.

Uh Carrie, I want to start with you in these final days what we're looking at.

Which races and parties are you Which races are the parties most worried about you think?

Well, I would say Vivian that two races that I'm really looking at because I think it'll tell the story of the Senate battlegrounds overall are Iowa and Kansas.

These are two states that both went for Donald Trump by double digits.

These are both heavily agricultural states.

They kind of look the same in some ways politically just if you look at the numbers.

But I think Republicans feel very good about their candidate in Iowa, Ashley Hinson.

They think if anybody in one of these toss-up toss-up races is going to pull it out, it's going to be her.

And I think Democrats feel really good about their candidate, Adam Hamilton, in Kansas.

Kansas is a more Republican state on paper, but I can imagine a scenario in which the Republican wins in Iowa and loses in Kansas.

And the real difference is that candidate quality.

Roger Marshall in Kansas had not taken this race very seriously to start with.

I think he's been caught napping a little bit with Adam Hamilton being a great candidate for Democrats in a state like that.

And even though there is sort of this similar agricultural focus, Hinson has been addressing it head head head on.

She's been distancing herself a little bit from the president.

Roger Marshall has not been doing that.

And I think it tells the story of how the candidates will matter in these races in a way that maybe the math, if you're just looking at past results on paper, uh may make it look like all of these races are going to go in one direction or the other.

They may be a little bit more idiosyncratic than that.

We're looking at seven Senate toss-up races this year.

I mean, that's pretty extraordinary.

Well, if you had told me that we were going to be looking at a toss-up race in Kansas a year ago, I would have thought I'd been hit on the head by something.

Because what you're seeing is these races coming online; the president's approval rating has just plummeted, even in states that he won by double digits.

And voters, I think, in these places are connecting the dots between high prices to tariffs and to the Iran war, and that has been driving down Donald Trump's approval rating and driving down candidates with him.

In regular midterms, candidates in midterms normally distance themselves from an unpopular president because of the nature of the way that Donald Trump interacts with the members of his party, most of them have felt like they can't do that, and I think they're poised to maybe pay a price.

Peter, midterm races are always a struggle for the president's party.

That is historically been the case, but just based on the electoral map, the way the president has been traveling just in the last month alone, in fact, we have extraordinary a map to show.

27 rallies in mostly red states in just the last 30 days.

So, what are the key issues that President Trump is now stumping for, and how much of this is turning into a referendum just about him?

So, I was in Chillicothe, Ohio this week with the president.

It's his third time in Ohio this fall.

You look at that map you're showing up there.

Basically, every place he's going is a red state except for New York.

Every at least a state he won 2 years ago.

There he's not playing in any swing states.

He's he's playing only on comfortable territory or territory they have to have.

I mean, we're talking Mississippi, you know.

Cindy Smith, I don't know if she's going to lose.

I think she's she'll probably be fine, but you know, if you're taking the president in Mississippi, you're not in good shape if you're a Republican, right?

Um Kansas and Iowa being the obvious examples there, but the message I heard on Wednesday from the president is very jumbled because he he brags everything is great.

That's not what people are feeling in their own lives.

And we heard that Well, the last president who tried to convince them that the economy was better than it was, and Joe Biden paid a price for that, too.

They don't want to listen to a politician tell them things are good if they don't feel that they're good.

And the rest of the message I felt on on Wednesday I heard was basically we love America, the other side doesn't.

There wasn't a lot of like here's what we're going to do to make your lives better.

It was I love America, we love America, the other side doesn't.

Um Asma, there's you're really seeing um a lot of pushback in these final days in terms of messaging, what Democrats want the voters to focus on, what Republicans obviously are trying to pitch President Trump out there telling everyone everything's fine.

So, what are the closing arguments of this specific specifically of each party?

And what what's getting through to people?

I will say that is largely President Trump's closing message is that things are fine.

And a portion of his closing message I would also argue is leaning really heavy into anti-Muslim sentiment.

Um you hear this from Republicans who are not And And to be clear, I think it's directed at the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, Abdullah Sayid.

But what I think is um perplexing is that you're hearing this from candidates who are not in Michigan.

You know, in Ohio, you would have thought they were in Michigan.

Every single candidate brought up El-Sayed, absolutely.

And so, I do you think that's President Pence has been has been very fixated on Yes.

And so, that seems to be part of the closing message.

And look, I mean, I will say that um the president believes and maybe this is because of his 2016 run that juicing up his base, part of that is linked to some of this anti-Muslim sentiment.

Um and And we do know that negative partisanship can be um a motivating factor.

So, I do think that's part of the equation that Republicans have is that maybe they can juice their base in some of those key races, Michigan I suppose in particular.

On the Democratic side, I would say that there's a whole lot of messages I've been actually hearing, too.

Um and I would argue that's because they think there's a lot of weaknesses in this Trump administration.

Affordability, affordability, affordability.

But I was also out covering um the race I was out in Georgia this past week.

I was struck by how much of Ossoff's stump speech is also about not just but specifically linking the Iran war to the cost.

You don't generally hear loads about foreign policy in a midterm cycle, but he did.

I mean, he just chronologically laid out statements where the president had declared victory and said, you know, on day four he said this, on day, you know, whatever it was 27 and now here we are at what is it?

Day 200 and however many days we are in the Iran war and that emphasis on trying to connect foreign policy decisions to what is happening here at home, whether it's gas prices or other cost of living frustrations that voters have.

Susan, Asma just mentioned Abdul Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan.

He's had a pretty surprising uphill battle for especially in a race that's largely favoring Democrats.

You wrote about President Obama hitting the trail this week.

You know, how much juice does he still have among voters?

I mean, he's been out of office for what now?

And yet they still really covet him being on the trail.

I mean, just to President Obama, we all know, right?

He is, you know, one of the most effective political communicators of our lifetime and he he seems to relish the fight still with Donald Trump.

I, you know, there's a strong argument to make that his line about Donald Trump this week involving Saddam Hussein and the Cheesecake Factory was sort of an act of, you know, pure genius.

But to Asma's point, what Obama is doing and I think what some of the more successful Democratic candidates are doing right now is making a straight line between this is what Donald Trump cares about.

Donald Trump is literally doing, as Obama put it, arts and crafts in the Oval Office: sticking up gold medallions on the wall, focusing on the reflecting pool, on building an arch, or whatever he's focusing on, as opposed to focusing on the things that Americans care about.

And in a moment when the economy has hit home for so many Americans, there is this direct link between very specific choices that are laid right at the foot of Donald Trump, right?

You know, he started the war in Iran without asking Congress, without really making the case to the American people.

He claimed it would be over, it wasn't.

There's a sort of a promises made, promises broken aspect to the campaign as well, which I think is why we're seeing, to me, the most surprising aspect of this.

Not that Democrats would come out in droves, right?

I mean, they're the motivated party out of power.

This election, though, in many respects is coming down to Republicans.

Republicans who believed Donald Trump when he said he was the president of no new wars, who believed Donald Trump when he said that the prices were going to come down on day one of his administration.

And so, Even his immigration message has struggled.

Absolutely, because a lot of Republicans, you hear them saying, "I didn't vote for this, you know, I didn't vote for my neighbors to be, you know, taken away.

You know, I voted to close the border.

And, you know, we talked about another race we haven't brought up yet, which is in Texas, the Texas Senate race.

Another remarkable thing, in addition to Kansas, Democrats have not elected a senator from Texas since 1988, Lloyd Bentsen.

If they do so with James Talarico, it will be because of the turnout in South Texas, a largely Hispanic border region of Texas, where many, many of those voters voted for Donald Trump in 2024; and all signs point to them not only abandoning Trump's party this year but actually helping Democrats win something that would have been unthinkable.

The votes are not counted yet, but I think it's an election where we're going to be talking about Republican voters who are no longer comfortable with Trump's version of the Republican Party.

I want to talk a little bit more about that race in Texas, but first, Carrie, let's let's visit revisit Alaska and what's been happening there.

Because really, the Democrats at this point had to just lay low until election day.

And yet, now you have this controversy swirling around Democratic candidate Mary Peltola, her campaign, which is accused of ballot stacking, which is not illegal, but raises all kinds of ethical questions.

She has completely denied any knowledge of of alleged actions.

And so, you know, you have two Dan Sullivans on on the ballot on on Tuesday.

Um and that is launched already DOJ investigations and is causing all kinds of trouble.

So, how much of that is actually going to impact the turnout and the the results in Alaska?

Well, I think it's worth remembering that Alaska could have and maybe would have been an electoral nightmare on an Earth 2 without the two Dan Sullivans and without this accusation against Mary Peltola or at least her campaign, um simply because of the way that Alaska counts its votes.

Because it is such an enormous state, um they allow absentee ballots to be counted until 15 days after they're postmarked on election day.

So, if Alaska, which uses ranked-choice voting, which is also a very confusing process that most Americans are not a lot of journalists are wrapping their heads around it.

Um combine all of that, then combine it with the presence of the two Dan Sullivan and the into the the allegation that there was some chicanery here.

Um put all that together and I think this this accusation just adds to what was already going to be a very very confusing result.

If control of the Senate comes down to Alaska, there's going to be a vacuum of information.

Uh, and these, um, the DOJ allegations here and potential, you know, whatever they want to charge and as you note, it's not a crime, um but I do think that there could be a perfect storm of the allegation and the idea of impropriety, which could bleed into other races that maybe are close, uh, elsewhere in the United States.

So, it's If this story had broken, let's say a month ago, I would have thought that maybe it might have more impact on how voters are reacting.

Keep in mind that this is an electorate of about 30,000 voters and more than 60,000 of them have already voted in this race.

So, there there may be a lot of the decision-making that's already been hardened among voters.

I don't know if this story itself is going to move things, but it could have implications for the legitimacy or the idea of legitimacy around Alaska and around elections elsewhere in the country.

I think that's the really important point to underscore here, right?

Is like Donald Trump already personally ordered the Justice Department to file a lawsuit claiming that they had some kind of a right to block certification in any result before a before Peter's college at the times did this reporting about how the other Dan Sullivan got on the ballot.

But more importantly, let's be clear that you know, it's not up to the Justice Department.

How are they going to go and conduct an investigation?

Are they going to go to people's homes and say like well you you voted for this Dan Sullivan, did you mean to do that?

It's very hard to determine intent of a voter.

And again, certification to me that was the sort of um you know, the whistle that went off when I saw that because Trump and his allies have been preparing for 2 years to undermine the legitimacy of this election.

Remember that Donald Trump has said this election was going to be rigged since before there were any candidates, before there were any votes.

He has mobilized his government to do everything possible to call into question Democratic victors.

He himself has said that he may not accept any outcome other than a Republican victory in both houses of Congress.

And so I think the question is did Democrats through their own, you know, sort of stumbling hand Donald Trump an issue that he will use to more broadly call into question the legitimacy of the the vote.

You know I think that's I think that's the biggest thing.

You're going to hear him talk about this a lot and he's going to say see I was right.

They're trying to rig this election, they're trying to cheat, they're trying to steal.

It doesn't matter whether the DOJ succeeds or not.

It just simply muddies the water elsewhere.

And it the Democrats have completely played into his hands by doing this.

And they didn't necessarily need to.

I mean the August open primary which anybody can vote for any candidate.

would have thought this was great idea.

Voters top concern after affordability is corruption.

And I'm not saying that you can debate whether or not you think this is corrupt, right?

But it feeds into the idea that this is not above board.

But in August Mary Peltola beat both Dan Sullivans combined, right?

She didn't need a second Dan Sullivan on the ballot to win and August.

And now she might because then there was the problem is now if her margin if she wins if her margin of victory is less than the second Dan Sullivan got, which probably won't happen because the ballot is actually very clear about which is the real Dan Sullivan.

I mean, the senator says incumbent senator Republican.

Anyway, I just think that it adds to to Trump's ammunition.

Um and and you know, this is not the only race that's been subject to some mudslinging last night.

You have the Ohio race where gubernatorial ad by Trump ally Vivek Ramaswamy against his opponent using the strange mother who he had she hadn't seen.

I mean, you know, this is now been going on for several weeks.

That has been, you know, the focus of a lot of that was even condemned by Republican lawmakers.

It's It's had bipartisan condemnation.

And Ramaswamy has since pulled the ad, but after intense condemnation, like you say, bipartisan.

You even have in Texas, you know, Susan was just talking about Texas controversy surrounding Senate candidate Republican candidate Ken Paxton.

What are we seeing here in terms of the way that these races are being fought and the intense scrutiny of these candidates and the intense kind of use of some of these um unconventional, let's say, approaches.

I mean, that that's a good way of putting it, unconventional.

I mean, look, I I can see it for the Ohio one, cuz I thought that one really when I when it came out, I think a lot of people questioned it.

Just for folks who may not have known that known that story entirely.

You know, my understanding is that yes, the gubernatorial candidate on the Democratic side has been estranged from her mother for years after allegations of a rape committed by her stepfather.

Um and so, I mean, these were really a horrendous allegation, right?

Although President Trump seemed okay with it.

You know, he's he openly spoke about the fact that, you know, it's just a mother saying that her daughter is a liar.

Every other Republican speaking at that rally on Wednesday didn't say a word.

No other Republican mentioned it except for Trump who doubles down.

And so, everything goes, basically.

Both of them have explicitly endorsed this.

So, I, you know, to give the impression that Republican officeholders condemned it, well, no, the you know, the most important leaders of the party actually endorsed this.

But it's not bad Republicans, local Republicans.

I think that speaks more to me of what the Ohio electric is thinking, right?

Cuz I do think there is this I don't know, maybe I feel this way a bit Midwest, even though some would debate Ohio's not always Midwest, is that there is a sort of like sensibility of what people want from their politics.

And I think seeing someone like Mike DeWine come out and say that this was not, you know accept, I mean that he is not on board with this but I get, I think this speaks to the fact that I don't understand people's campaign tactics in this moment.

It just felt like a extraordinarily bad judgment call that didn't need to be made, that wasn't necessarily likely to win you a lot of voters I, and could hurt the very competitive Senate race.

It could have hurt John Houston, and I would argue there may even be some bleeding over to other GOP candidates.

You saw Ashley Hinson that, the Republican candidate in Iowa, come out a very strongly against this ad and say, and and even imply, that JD Vance's embrace of the ad was not what people were looking for from an empathetic leader.

And I, you know, she's also in a very tough race, and I think if you react reacting to that ad was something that maybe she felt like she had to do.

It's so interesting how nationalized these races are, right?

These are all individual states, individual contests, and candidates, and yet Tallarico's name is used in a lot of different places, right?

Else name is used in a lot of different places now because of Trump's admiration for his posterior.

John Houston's name is used in a lot of places that wouldn't otherwise know who he was, and it's fascinating that we're nationalizing these races.

I mean, it's sort of, sort of the, the the superpower behind some of these candidates who become these national figures.

I was at an event in in Providence, Rhode Island; they were talking about Tallarico.

You know, the other factor here is, of course, the incredible amounts of money.

I mean, if you think about, so what is?

This is 2026 We don't know the results yet, but we do know certain ways in which it's going to go down in history, and I think the most important one is it's going, already looking to be the most expensive election in American history, and that includes presidential elections.

A lot of it powered by a single man, the wealthiest man in the world, is spending more than a quarter of a billion dollars from what, what's just disclosed, much of it on a single Senate race in the effort to get Ken Paxton elected in Texas.

I mean, do you think that's that's relevant specifically to this election or do you think we're starting a new trend in a Well, it's not a new trend.

You know, it goes back to the Supreme Court's decision predating Donald Trump in Citizens United.

That's really unleashed the floodgates of spending in a way that I mean, this doesn't happen in any other country in the world.

I think that's really important for people to understand.

This vast amount of money, the billionaires themselves in some ways who are spending the money are now becoming campaign issues, but at at the same time, it means that some of these campaign missteps or whatever can be amplified.

Part of the reason that we're so familiar with these candidates is because of the extraordinary sums that are being spent by interests we may not even really have a clear sense of why it is that they're spending so much money to get these folks elected.

Um uh Carrie, we talked about early voting a little bit, you know, with specific races, but I want you to take us um more nationally, the national picture.

Um how what what do we know so far from early voting?

You know, what can you assess based on that where we might be by next week?

And also, how much has President Trump's rhetoric against early voting sort of fed into some of the patterns you're seeing?

I'm a little bit skeptical of taking too much extrapolating too much from early vote.

Because for one, you can maybe say, "Okay, turn out in a very Republican area is up.

Do we know that there was persuasion?

Do we know who those people voted for?

Do we know you know, if if the do we know if they voted in every single race?

There are going to be maybe Republicans who skip some of these races in some cases or Democrats.

But I also think that it's important to note that the way that President Trump has talked about, particularly mail voting and early voting, and cast sort of a doubt about whether people's votes are going to be counted, may be changing voter behavior, which makes me a little bit skeptical of comparing early vote now to previous years.

Democrats there I've seen polling where Democrats are as many as 10 points more likely to say, "Oh, I want to vote in person or I want to vote on Election Day.

"cuz they're concerned that their mail vote may not be counted.

Republicans are less likely to because of the president's rhetoric, I think want to vote by mail because he has condemned the idea of voting by mail and said it's illegitimate.

Republicans used to love mail-in voting because the people who are who are most likely to mail in their votes are the older people and veterans.

Those are two very Republican groups.

And I a lot of Republican operatives that you talk to will roll their eyes, saying,"The president is actually hurting us and is shooting us in the foot by condemning the idea of mail-in voting, cuz that's the way a lot of our voters vote, including, by the way, the president twice."

Peter, take us for about 30 seconds, take us beyond Tuesday.

If Democrats win the House or Senate or both, what changes immediately for Trump and also for the way Congress operates in terms of investigations and otherwise?

The the big question is how big a wave it is if there's a wave, right?

It won't change something because the president hasn't been using Congress to govern.

He's been using executive power or assertions of executive power to govern.

So, it won't change that much in terms of legislation.

And the Democrats aren't going to be able to pass things over his veto.

They will be able to use oversight.

They will be able to use the gavel to investigate, subpoena power.

They will be able to use the spending bills to get some changes on policy.

The bigger question to me is what kind of message is this election sending and how is it perceived?

The expectations game is now so important, right?

If Democrats put the expectations really high and they win but not quite as much as they have said, it may not be seen as a repudiation of Trump that they want.

This is what happened 4 years ago the Republicans.

They were going to have a big blue a big red wave, they didn't get it.

They won the House but not by much and therefore everybody said,"Well, you really lost even though you won.

"So, the point is expectations, perceptions, is it seen as a repudiation of Trump or does he have the argument to say,"We didn't do as bad as everybody thought we were going to do."

Asma, briefly, this time next week, do we know who controls Congress?

I mean, I will definitely we'll know who controls the House, I think, very quickly.

The Senate feels really uncertain to me because I think, as Carrie said, a number of races feel like they are are toss-ups and I think anybody who is providing additional certainty is just sort of talking off the cuff.

I mean, look, the thing I think in addition to, you know, one thing to watch real quick will be the version of the Democratic Party that comes out of this.

And that to me is something really interesting cuz we all know presidential primary begins what?

Whoever thought that it would all hinge on maybe Alaska, right?

We're going to have to leave it there.

Thanks to my guest for joining me and thank you at home for watching.

Be sure to tune in to PBS Tuesday night starting at 7:00 p.m.

Eastern for special coverage election for special election night coverage.

Corporate funding for Washington Week with The Atlantic is provided by Consumer Cellular.

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