Donald Trump’s historic unpopularity is a dead weight dragging Republican candidates towards a disastrous defeat in the US midterm elections on Tuesday, polling experts believe.
Recent surveys show a shift towards the Democrats that would give them a strong chance of claiming both the House and the Senate with a sweep of key battleground races. That would leave Trump facing an awkward end to his presidency, with a hostile Congress able to thwart parts of his agenda and launch investigations into his conduct.
Pope Leo becomes first pontiff to vote in US election
Pope Leo XIV has become the first pontiff to vote in a US election, the Vatican confirmed on Friday.
Pope Leo, who was born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, Illinois, submitted a mail-in ballot in his home state ahead of the midterm elections on 3 November.
The Pope, who has lived in Vatican City since his election last May, “expresses his belief in the right and the duty of citizens to participate in democratic processes”, a statement from the Vatican said.
Influence from abroad
The Pope “has exercised his right to vote as a US citizen…whenever he was eligible to do so”.
Dedicated voter
He also voted while living in Peru as a missionary priest and bishop for over 20 years.
Pope’s hometown
The pontiff is yet to return to the US since his election but is registered to an address in New Lenox, a south-west Chicago suburb.
What’s on the ballot
- Pope Leo had requested a mail-in voting ballot from the Will County Clerk’s office this month.
- Illinois voters are deciding whether to elect Illinois Governor JB Pritzker to his third term.
- They are also filling an open US Senate seat after longtime Catholic Democrat Dick Durbin’s retirement.
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Voting history
He did not vote in the Illinois primary in March.
American citizens who are based overseas can vote in US elections by mail if they choose to as per the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.
Clashes with Trump
The upcoming midterms are seen as something of a referendum on the increasingly unpopular Donald Trump, and come after clashes between the US President and the Pope on issues such as conflicts in the Middle East and immigration.
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The small town in Ohio that shows why Trump is in trouble
Director of the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting
Welcome to Ohio, where the dirtiest campaign of the midterm elections is unfolding. I’ve come to this state because its mix of farmland and factories has made it a bellwether for the nation.
Could you be eligible for the new Your First Home scheme?
Further details of the support being made available for aspiring first-time buyers were outlined in the Budget this week.
What to know
70,000
The new £4.7bn scheme aims to help around 70,000 households in England to take their first step on to the property ladder.
20% equity
The scheme will provide 20 per cent equity loans to first-time buyers, accessible with a five-year interest-free period.
The deposit requirement will be 2.5 per cent, with a maximum deposit of 15 per cent.
Cost caps
Income caps for the scheme will be set at £110,000 per household outside London and £140,000 inside London.
Budget documents said price caps for properties will be set based on local authority median prices to ensure support is targeted at those who need it, with inner and outer London caps of £650,000 and £500,000, respectively.
When does it start?
The scheme will open for pre-registration by the end of December 2026 and full applications from February 2027, with the first loans issued from April 2027.
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How to lower your council tax band – and the deadline for £100 energy payment
The Government has seen a surge in council tax enquiries following Chancellor John Healey’s maiden Budget. Here’s why.
What to know
On Wednesday, the Chancellor revealed that the more than 20 million households in council tax bands A-D in England will get a £100 payment sent straight to their bank accounts, to give people “breathing space” to offset rising energy bills. The Welsh Government confirmed it will deliver the same £100 payment, and funding has been allocated to Scotland and Northern Ireland to set up equivalent schemes.
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Checking your council tax band
How it works
Each residential property in England, Scotland and Wales is assigned a council tax band, from A to H.
Who pays what?
Tax is cheapest for those in Band A, with each band after that more expensive.
Check online
There is a government website for people to check what band they are in based on their home address.
Could your band be wrong?
However, many people may be sitting in the wrong council tax bands because of incorrect valuations that were made in 1991, as time-pressured assessors often drove through streets and looked at houses from the outside to determine their value.
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What to do before challenging
The Valuation Office Agency (VOA) experienced “high demand” for council tax services after the Budget, including challenges to bands. Before going down that road, though, you should check a few things:
- You can’t ask for your band to be lowered, only revalued, meaning you or your neighbour’s bands could also go up.
- So, check if you are in a different band to your neighbours in similar or identical properties.
- You also need to know your property’s worth in 1991, so enter the price and date of sale into a free website like Zoopla.
- Then, find a house that is similar to yours on your street that sold recently and note down the price and date.
- Input this information into a home valuation calculator and compare it to the council tax band you are in today.
How to challenge
- One way to challenge your banding is to make a proposal if you’ve been paying council tax on your property for less than six months or changed your band in the past six months. The VOA must review your band by law.
- If you think you are in the wrong band and you have been paying council tax for more than six months, you can request a band review. However, the onus is on you to provide strong evidence that you are in the wrong band after reviewing your “property attributable data”, which the VOA can provide online or over the phone.
Cut off date
- There will be a cut-off date when people will need to have their council tax band reviewed by to be eligible for the £100 payment.
- This date, which is yet to be announced, will be part of guidance to local authorities with details on eligibility criteria for the payment.
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The Thunderbirds-inspired house that has sold for £375,000
A house in Berkshire inspired by , featuring an extensive network of tunnels, rooms and a railway – all more than 50 feet underground – has sold at auction for £375,000.
Age-old inspiration
Located on Long Lane in the village of Tilehurst, on the outskirts of Reading, the property was inspired by Tracy Island, the secret headquarters featured in popular 1960s TV series .
The site boasts a swimming pool and garden with a model space rocket measuring around 23 feet tall, as well as a 2,500 square foot workshop and a hand-built underground railway, with the subterranean network spanning four levels.
Future plans
The tunnels were the passion-project of civil engineer Tony Deane, the late owner of the property, who started on them over two decades ago. Now, there are plans to convert the spacious workshop – which spans three floors – into a three-bedroom house.
Other features
- Deane, the previous owner, first built underground changing rooms for the property’s swimming pool in the 1960s.
- The entrance was behind the existing model rocket.
- Construction on the tunnels took place in the 80s and 90s, carried out by Deane and his family.
It represents a really unique opportunity for somebody to either develop it or to live there and enjoy it. To say it’s a workshop is doing it down a little bit, it’s constructed better than 95% of houses, to be honest.
Richard Worrall, auctioneer and consultant at BTG Eddisons Property Auctions
The data modelling site Race to the White House (RWH) gives Democrats a 94 per cent chance of taking the House of Representatives and a 76 per cent chance of winning the Senate. Other forecasters are even more pessimistic about Republican prospects.
The picture is bleak at ground level too. RWH projects Democrats to win at least six Senate seats currently held by Republicans, with four required to take control of the upper chamber of Congress.
Midterm elections are often difficult for the party that holds the US presidency, but Republicans face an even tougher battle due to Trump and his catastrophic ratings, according to Tim Malloy, a polling analyst at the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
“We have a very unpopular president – in our polling he’s at 32 per cent approval, which is really abysmal,” he said, reeling off a list of Trump’s areas of weakness in public opinion. “[Fuel] prices, what it costs to feed your family, the tariffs, the war [with Iran], [Jeffrey] Epstein, you name it. There are any number of things that people are troubled by.”
“Generally, the midterms at this point in a second term are not good for any president. But I think this could go down as the worst midterms for any president ever,” he said. “There is a trickle-down effect…you are on the coat-tails of the president – that has been proven over many election cycles.
“When the president is not popular, that hurts everybody [in the party] from local judges to Congress to senators.”
Malloy cautions that while the House could be a “blowout” for the Democrats, many of the party’s leads in key Senate races are small enough to be within the margin of error for polls.
But the numbers are becoming more concerning for Republicans as election day nears, expanding the map of potential target seats for the Democrats.
Dr Louis Bromfield, a political researcher at Swansea University and founder of the Horse Race Politics forecasting website, points to states such as South Carolina, where a solid Republican polling lead for a seat the party has held since the 1950s has evaporated.
“With each passing day, it seems increasingly likely that seats previously not considered to be in play, suddenly are,” he said, noting that some predictions of “blue wave” for the Democrats are being revised upwards to a “blue tsunami”.
Bromfields points to the war in Iran and its effect on prices in the US as the Republicans’ greatest weakness heading into the midterms – made worse by Trump’s U-turn after campaigning on a promise to end involvement in Middle East wars. This is even eroding the President’s previously rock-solid support among Republicans.
“The war in Iran is horrifically unpopular among not just Democrats and independents, but it is actually starting to eat away at Trump’s own base numbers as well, which is really troubling for him,” said Bromfield.
Some Republican candidates in close races have sought to distance themselves from their leader. Susan Collins, running for the Senate in Maine, has noted her opposition to tariffs on neighbouring Canada.
Analysts suggest this is unlikely to spare them from the wrath of voters, but acknowledge that some races have unique local characteristics.
An election for governor of Ohio has become dominated by Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s controversial ad that features his opponent’s estranged mother. A bitter Senate race in Michigan has increasingly revolved around Democrat Abdul el-Sayed’s views on Israel and unfounded allegations of sympathy for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood – with Trump himself launching Islamophobic attacks on Sayed. The Democrat has completely rejected those claims.
Republican messaging has sought to portray left-wing Democrats as dangerous subversives and terrorist sympathisers, says Bromfield, but he sees little sign that this line of attack is “cutting through” to voters.
Malloy compares this Republican strategy to “throwing spaghetti at the wall” Only about 4 per cent of voters are still undecided at this point, he adds. .
Pollsters are wary of understating Trump and Republican support after the President overperformed his numbers in two election victories. There remain doubts that Republican strongholds such as Texas could be about to turn blue.
“It would be foolish to write them off,” said Bromfield. “The main story of Trump’s electoral success has been everyone writing him off. But in none of those previous [campaigns] has he had the track record of this administration.”
Both of Trump’s victories came from running as an insurgent against Democrat establishment figures, he suggests, while this time he will be judged on a chequered record in office.
“When it comes to making people’s lives economically harder, voters are very good at pointing the finger at the right person,” said Bromfield. “And if you are in the same party as the guy who’s making people’s lives worse, you will get punished as well.”