Democrats took an early lead in the first results from Tuesday’s US midterm elections, winning 67 seats in the House of Representatives to the Republicans’ 29 as counting began. The early figures came from the first polling places to close, in Indiana and Kentucky; voting was due to end later in Alaska.

All 435 House seats are being contested, along with 35 of the Senate’s 100 seats. Democrats need to gain at least three seats in the House and four in the Senate to secure majorities in both chambers. While Democrats are favored in polling for the House, a series of close Senate races is expected to determine which party controls that chamber.

The Senate path is especially challenging for Democrats. They must defend every seat they currently hold and win at least two states that backed Trump by wide margins in 2024, including Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas.

In Texas, Democrat James Talarico, 37, has renewed his party’s hopes of winning a state where it has suffered decades of defeats. His opponent is Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, 63, who has received hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from business magnate Elon Musk.

The election could shift the balance of legislative power for the rest of Trump’s presidency. Historical trends have favored Democrats: since World War II, the president’s party has lost ground in Congress in all but two midterm elections. Trump’s approval is near its lowest levels, as voters express dissatisfaction with the war against Iran, rising fuel prices and the cost of living.

The president’s popularity has been central to the campaign. On Tuesday, Trump said he intended to halt the annual $3.8 billion in US funding to Israel, apparently seeking to appeal to voters unhappy with US support for the country. It was not clear how he would do so, given that a 2020 law sets the funding amount.

The US-Israel alliance is a major issue in Michigan, where Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, 42, is running on strong criticism of Israel. If elected, he would become the first Muslim senator in US history. Trump and other Republicans have portrayed El-Sayed and fellow Democratic candidates as radical, anti-American and even communist; the candidates reject those descriptions as exaggerations.

Trump has sought to rally his supporters with more than two dozen campaign rallies since early October, most of them in states he won easily in 2024. Opinion polls show the cost of living is voters’ leading concern, an issue on which the president receives negative ratings. Tariffs on imported goods—many later overturned by courts—and the decision to attack Iran in February contributed to higher consumer prices, according to the report.

Problems with ballot-reading machines were reported in parts of Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi and New York, delaying voting and the count. Election experts say equipment failures are not unusual and that backup systems and other safeguards mean they rarely affect results.

The Justice Department said it had deployed 1,000 election monitors and observers across all 50 states, describing the effort as the largest single-day election monitoring operation in the country’s history. Democrats criticized the deployment, saying it could intimidate voters. A Reuters analysis found that voters in about two-thirds of the jurisdictions listed by the department had supported Kamala Harris over Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

Trump, who has repeatedly and falsely claimed that US elections are rigged, could challenge the results if Republicans lose.

Sources: Folha Mundo.