Live: US prepares for voting as polls predict close midterm races

Choose what information you see below by using filters

Democrats need to flip at least four seats in the US Senate to gain control of the chamber.

A takeover looked unlikely at the start of this year, but Democrats are now competitive in several states Trump won comfortably in 2024.

The party is hoping to capture Republican-held seats in Alaska, Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, Ohio and Texas, to name a few. Meanwhile, the GOP is trying to flip Georgia, Michigan and New Hampshire.

Tracking the states Donald Trump has been campaigning in provides clues as to where his Republican Party believes its biggest concerns are.

The president has made 28 trips to various states to campaign since October 1.

His itinerary is revealing. Many analysts believe the Democrats will seize control of the House in these midterm elections, but polls suggest the Senate contests are more competitive.

This map shows where Trump has been over the past few weeks, and who controls the Senate seats up for grabs in the states he has visited.

In some states that Trump used to be able to count on for solid support, polls suggest some of the Senate contests are now a toss-up, or at least closer than the Republicans would like.

For example, the president has been to Texas multiple times to stump for GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton.

The Democrats have not won a Senate seat in the state for 33 years, but many polls suggest the party has a narrow lead in the contest.

Kansas is a really interesting case. The state has not elected a Democratic senator for almost a century, but the Senate race there is on a knife edge, according to multiple predictions.

"He's visiting red states that he won by double figures only two years ago, so that's an indication of the concern that's gripping the White House at this point," James D Boys, a long-time political academic and the author of multiple books on US presidents, told the ABC.

All 435 seats in the House and 35 of the seats in the Senate.

Donald Trump's Republican Party currently controls both chambers of Congress.

The Democrats are hoping to flip enough seats to win a majority. If they win control of at least one chamber, they will gain power to bring their own laws to the floor.

Later this afternoon, the ABC's chief elections and data analyst Casey Briggs will be joining this live blog to answer some of your questions about the midterms.

Send your questions in at the top of this page, under "submit a comment or question".

Americans vote on who their next president is every four years.

But they have the chance to decide which political party controls Congress (the US House of Representatives and the Senate) more often.

When a president is being voted in, seats in both chambers are up for election as well.

And then halfway through the president's term, voters can head back to the polls to shake Congress up again.

The United States has conducted strikes on some Iranian targets in the Strait of Hormuz, a US official has told the Associated Press.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the US targeted "Iranians using surface-to-air missiles against US assets".

These strikes, of course, come on the eve of the crucial US midterm elections that we are covering from today.

Iran said on Monday it had a two-day plan to reopen the strait and resume nuclear talks with the United States.

Iranian state television reported that explosions were heard on Qeshm Island.

It is the eve of the midterm elections, and earlier today we saw reports that the US has struck Iranian targets in the Strait of Hormuz.

We will keep you up to date on that and any other developments as Americans begin to head to the polls in what US President Donald Trump has described as the "most important in our lifetime".

That being said, we've still got a little while to go before the action begins — the first lots of polls will start opening about 10pm AEST on the east coast of the US.

If you'd like to find out more about how the midterms work, we've got an explainer covering all the basics.