Midterm home stretch: Trump stumps in Ohio, Obama mocks in Georgia – 39 million have voted

Six days before the 3 November congressional elections, President Donald Trump and his predecessor Barack Obama campaigned on Wednesday in two contested states. Trump spoke at Ohio University's Shoemaker Center in Chillicothe – according to the Scioto Valley Guardian, the first visit by a sitting president to the city in more than two decades. He backed Senator Jon Husted, who faces former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. If Husted wins, he would consider bringing the 'Space Academy' to Ohio, Trump said. He accused opponents of a ballot measure on voter ID of wanting to 'cheat'.

Obama spoke in Morrow near Atlanta alongside Senator Jon Ossoff and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms. He doubled down on his jibe that Trump's additions to the White House look like a 'Cheesecake Factory'. The administration had mobilised a whole-of-government response to a joke, Obama said, according to TheWrap: 'These are not serious people.' They had no solutions to actual problems, he added. Former Vice President Kamala Harris also began a three-day visit to Georgia on Wednesday, Al Jazeera reported, while Vice President JD Vance campaigned in North Carolina.

According to Reuters, more than 39 million Americans have already cast ballots, citing the University of Florida's Election Lab; in 2022, a total of 45.9 million voted early. Republicans hold 53 of the 100 Senate seats. Nonpartisan analysts see Democrats favoured to win the House, while Senate races in states such as Ohio, Michigan and Texas are seen as tight. In the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, cited by Al Jazeera, Trump's approval stands at 32 percent; the cost of living remains the dominant issue.