00:02After months of campaigning, Americans are heading to the polls to decide who controls
00:07Congress and the direction of the country for the next two years.
00:10The final arguments have been made, President Trump has delivered his closing pitch, and
00:15now the decision belongs to the voters.
00:17More than 57 million Americans had already voted before Election Day, according to the
00:22University of Florida's Election Lab.
00:24That's nearly as many as the entire early vote in the 2022 midterms, with millions more
00:30ballots still to come.
00:31And Monday night, President Trump made his final appeal from Washington's Lincoln Memorial
00:35Reflecting Pool.
00:36He urged the voters who put him back in the White House in 2024 to turn out again, this
00:42time to keep Republicans in control of Congress.
00:44But he also acknowledged the history working against his party.
00:48Because if the people that voted for me and voted in the last election where we had such
00:54a great victory, if they go out and vote just a good portion of them, we will win in a
01:00landslide.
01:01Now, that doesn't happen because usually whoever the sitting president is, Republican or Democrat,
01:08good or bad, good president, great president, bad.
01:11But for some reason, the sitting president doesn't win the midterms, but we gave this a very strong
01:19shot.
01:20Vice President J.D. Vance spent his final day campaigning in Ohio, calling this the
01:25most important midterm election of his lifetime.
01:28He said he's confident Republicans will hold Congress, but acknowledged the outcome is no
01:33longer in their hands.
01:34I feel good about tomorrow, but obviously it's in the hands of voters.
01:37So, all I'd say is to remind the voters, particularly in Ohio, that Sherrod Brown is a career politician
01:43who spent 50 years in Washington delivering for Chuck Schumer.
01:46John Huston has delivered for the people of Ohio.
01:49I think they're going to re-elect him, but it's up to the voters now.
01:52And across the country, some of the most consequential Senate races are coming down to their final hours.
01:58In Michigan, Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed closed their campaigns with appeals
02:04to a deeply divided electorate.
02:06The race has also exposed divisions within the Democratic Party after Congresswoman Haley
02:11Stevens endorsed Rogers over her party's own nominee.
02:14It's really about the heart and soul of the country and who we want to be and what country
02:21we want to give to our kids.
02:24And you think about that, what happened is doors started opening for us.
02:28People knew something was wrong.
02:32Mean, angry, divisiveness could not be the way in the future for our great state.
02:37And I believe that we have the opportunity to breach those divides.
02:41Divides of geography, of race, of sexual orientation, gender identity, of faith, to build together
02:48what we only can have together.
02:50That's what this campaign has been about from the very beginning.
02:54And while they think that somehow their intimidation tactics and their division is going to pull us apart, they don't
03:02know us like we know us.
03:04The Royal Oak, when they come for us, we won't back down.
03:06In Texas, a state Republicans have dominated for decades, the Senate race has become a major test for both parties.
03:14Democrat James Tallarico says the Republican effort to defeat him shows just how competitive the race has become.
03:21Republican Ken Paxton is warning his supporters that the party's grip on Texas is at risk.
03:26In the final days of this election, they are coming at us with everything they've got.
03:31The billionaire mega donors, the super PACs, they are spending more than $300 million to try to stop us.
03:40That is the most of any Senate race in American history.
03:44And more is on the way.
03:46They are scared.
03:47They are terrified.
03:49They see what we see, that we're about to win this election tomorrow night.
03:56Texas has never been this close to slipping away.
03:59We have never been this close to losing everything that we hold dear, our jobs, our livelihoods, our way of
04:06life in Texas.
04:08If Texas falls, we don't have another Texas to move to.
04:13Every poll shows this is going to come down to the wire.
04:16In Alaska, the final days of the Senate race have been dominated by a controversy over two candidates with nearly
04:23identical names.
04:24A New York Times report links people working with Democratic candidate Mary Peltola's campaign and National Democrats to an effort
04:32to recruit another Dan Sullivan, the same name as the Republican incumbent.
04:36The senator is accusing his opponent of trying to mislead voters.
04:40My opponent has literally been caught in the biggest election cheating scandal in Alaska history.
04:49And she is bleeding support.
04:51People are pulling Peltola signs out of their yards.
04:59They are saying, hey, wait a minute, I did not sign up for corruption.
05:04Peltola denies knowing about the effort and says she has no interest in tricking voters.
05:10And in Maine, Democrat Troy Jackson is trying to unseat longtime Republican Senator Susan Collins.
05:16His closing message focused on turnout and what he says voters can change in Washington.
05:20You know, up and down the state, people are showing up like I've never seen before, and that's how we're
05:27going to change this government.
05:28You know, together, we can make so much of a difference.
05:30We can make so much of a difference here in the state.
05:32We can make so much of a difference in D.C.
05:34The first polls close at 6 p.m. Eastern in parts of Indiana and Kentucky.
05:39From there, results will be coming in across the country with the final polls in Alaska coming in at 1
05:44a.m. Eastern Wednesday.
05:45And in some of these races, it could take longer to know who won, so buckle up, folks.
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