Many of the US midterm election races have become all about Donald Trump, even though he isn’t on the ballot.
Trump is spending the last days before Americans vote on Nov. 6 criss-crossing the east and midwest to hold rallies for Republicans who are vulnerable in House, Senate, and gubernatorial races.
The elections could be crucial to the future of Trump’s presidency—Democrats are promising to open investigations into what they believe is widespread corruption and wrongdoing in his administration. Some go as far as saying they will start impeachment proceedings if they gain control of Congress. Democrats also plan to delve into the legality and cost of some of recent presidential orders, including the plan to send thousands of active-duty soldiers to the US border with Mexico to stave off the caravan of asylum seekers traveling on foot.
Democrats may be widely predicted to win control of the House, but election forecasters were so spectacularly wrong about the outcome of the 2016 election that politicians in both parties are throwing everything they can into the final days.
The White House said late this summer that its midterm strategy was to get out the “Trump voters” —particularly the estimated 20 million who voted for Trump and hadn’t regularly voted for Republicans before. To energize this base, Trump has leaned on increasingly angry, race-tinged speeches, designed to stoke fear of immigrants, Democrats, and minorities. ”We’re going to keep these people out of our country,” Trump said last night (Nov. 1) about immigrants in Missouri, then called senator Claire McCaskill, a moderate Democrat, “crazy” and “far left.” The crowd responded with chants of “lock her up.”
Here is a look at where Trump has been and where he is going, and why:
It is not yet known if Trump will return to Washington after each day of campaigning. We assume that he does in these maps because that has been his practice.