President Donald Trump closed the final weekend before the 2026 midterm elections with a sharply personal attack on the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, calling him a "jihadist" and claiming he wanted to introduce Sharia law in Michigan, as Trump headed to back-to-back rallies in Iowa and Kansas on Sunday.
Trump made the remarks at a Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, according to reports of the event, repeating allegations linking El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood. He had made similar remarks days earlier at a campaign rally in Michigan in support of Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, questioning El-Sayed's suitability for the Senate and saying, "He would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector before he's allowed to go into the Senate."
El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Michigan's open Senate seat, has faced an increased wave of Islamophobic attacks during the campaign, Al Jazeera noted in its midterm coverage. In the polls, he leads Rogers by 3.5 percentage points, according to RealClearPolitics' average cited by USA Today, a margin within the range of many surveys' error.
A final push with historically low approval
Trump's final in-person schedule — Iowa first, then Kansas second — caps a flurry of campaign events ahead of Tuesday, November 3, when all 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats are on the ballot. Republicans currently hold narrow majorities: 218-214 in the House and 53-47 in the Senate. Trump, who is not on the ballot, has invited voters at rallies to pretend he is.
He heads into the election with historically low approval ratings. The New York Times' poll tracker put him at 36% approval, with 61% disapproving — the lowest pre-midterm favorability for any president in 80 years, according to the Times' chief political analyst Nate Cohn. An Emerson College poll released Friday put his approval at 37%, its lowest figure for him, with Democrats leading Republicans by 10 points in the generic congressional ballot, 52% to 42%.
A state-by-state Civiqs tracker showed Trump with negative net approval in 42 states, including all six states with closely contested Senate races that could decide control of the chamber: Alaska (-25%), Michigan (-26%), Maine (-29%), North Carolina (-18%), Ohio (-18%) and Texas (-20%). He retained positive net approval in only eight states: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming, with Wyoming his strongest at +14%.
The battlegrounds to watch on Tuesday
Democrats lead Republicans by 51.5% to 43.1% in the RealClearPolling national average, and a national THP/MM survey conducted October 28-29 put Democrats ahead 54% to 41%. In Texas, Democratic State Representative James Talarico leads state Attorney General Ken Paxton by 1.4 points. In Kansas, a Washington Post-Schar School poll released Friday suggested Democrat Adam Hamilton was leading Republican Senator Roger Marshall by 52% to 43% — one of the races Trump is campaigning to defend on Sunday.
More than 53 million people had already cast ballots through early in-person voting and mail-in voting by Sunday, according to USA Today, a pace higher than in the last midterm in 2022. The campaign could be the most expensive ever, at a projected $11.6 billion, compared with $11.2 billion in the 2024 presidential cycle, according to AdImpact.
Sources: USA Today, The National, Al Jazeera, The Daily Jagran and Times Now, November 1, 2026.