Sunday 1 November 2026
Trump takes the closing argument to Iowa and Kansas on Sunday as early voting passes 52 million, a midterm record
President Donald Trump returns to the campaign trail on Sunday with rallies in Iowa and Kansas, two Republican leaning farm belt states where his party is fighting to hold Senate seats, two days before elections that will decide control of Congress. More than 52 million Americans had already voted in person or by mail as of November 1, according to the University of Florida Election Lab, a record for a midterm and up from nearly 46 million who voted before Election Day in 2022. Trump spent Saturday at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida after weeks of campaigning. His approval among rural Americans fell to a new low of 45 percent in October, according to Reuters and Ipsos polling.
The last Sunday of the campaign belongs, in part, to two states that do not usually decide a Senate. Trump won Iowa by double digits in 2024, and Kansas is Republican leaning ground, but both have Senate seats the party has to hold if it wants to keep the chamber, and the president is spending the final weekend where the map says the work is. Thirty five Senate seats and all 435 House seats are on the ballot on Tuesday. Republicans hold a 53 to 47 Senate majority and a narrow edge in the House, and a Democratic gain of four seats in each chamber would flip both.
The early vote has already rewritten the shape of the election. More than 52 million ballots were in as of November 1, a midterm record, which means a large share of the result is already cast and sitting in election offices while the rallies go on. The campaigns know it. The weekend work is aimed at the shrinking part of the electorate that still waits for Tuesday, and at the states where the legal fights are running alongside the voting.
Two of those fights sit inside the same Reuters report as the rally schedule. In Alaska, the administration is pressing its criminal investigation in the Senate race there, where a second candidate named Sullivan sits on the ballot next to the Republican incumbent. In California, the administration said on Saturday it would likely take its fight over thousands of mail ballots to the Supreme Court. In Michigan, it was still unclear on Sunday morning whether Representative Haley Stevens would attend a Detroit event billed as a show of Democratic unity with Abdul El-Sayed, the nominee she lost the primary to and has since feuded with in public.
The rural number is the one hanging over the farm belt stops. Reuters and Ipsos put Trump's approval among rural Americans at 45 percent in October, a new low, in the region that has been the base of his coalition and the part of the country feeling fuel prices and farm costs most directly. Tuesday will say whether a Sunday in Iowa and Kansas was enough to hold it.
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