Trump and Democrats make final push before US midterm vote

President Donald Trump and Democratic leaders are making last-ditch appeals to voters ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections, a nationwide vote that will determine how much power Trump wields for the rest of his presidency. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the Senate's 100 seats are being contested, Al Jazeera reported.

About 210 million registered voters are eligible to cast ballots, according to Al Jazeera. Held halfway through a president's four-year term, the midterms decide the makeup of Congress — and with it, the fate of the White House's legislative agenda.

The stakes are bluntly mathematical. Whichever party controls the House and Senate controls the machinery of lawmaking: budgets, taxes, spending and oversight. For markets and households alike, the result will shape the economic argument for the next two years — who pays, who gains, and whether the administration can move its programme or finds itself checked on Capitol Hill.

Both parties are treating the final days as decisive. Trump has thrown himself into the closing stretch of the campaign, while Democrats are mounting their own last-minute effort to turn out supporters. Al Jazeera's coverage frames the vote as a test of how the fallout from the Iran war and other pressures of Trump's term may reshape the political map.

The economic backdrop has already been set. The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady in the run-up to the vote even as inflation ticked higher, a decision covered in our earlier reporting on the Fed's pre-midterm hold. Washington has also signalled to allies that major foreign policy moves could follow the ballot, including possible strikes on Iran after the midterms.

What happens next is simple: polls open on Tuesday. By the time counting is done, the balance of the 435-seat House and the 35 contested Senate seats will show whether Trump keeps a free hand in Congress — or spends the second half of his term bargaining with one.