Washington — Control of the House and Senate may not be immediately clear on election night, and some of the 2026 midterm election calls will take longer than others. But that's not unusual or an indication of fraud, as some candidates may claim.

Republicans enter the final stretch holding 218 House seats to Democrats’ 214.

The 2020 election in Georgia, which President Donald Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed he won, has cast a long shadow over state politics. But several Republicans who have kept the controversy alive lost their elections Tuesday,

“Google has specifically prevented its AI tool from telling users who won the 2020 presidential election, even though it happily tells us that Trump won in 2016 and 2024,” climatologist Zeke Hausfather wrote in a post on X. “This sort of political intervention into LLM responses is deeply problematic.”

Election night results were delayed until after midnight in Jasper County due to hardware and software issues with one machine counting absentee ballots.

Fox News, MS NOW and CNN will play roles on election night. Which one should you watch? The answer might surprise you.

Another swing district to watch after 7 p.m. is the First District in South Carolina, which is represented by the outgoing Republican Nancy Mace. A Democrat picked up this district in the party’s 2018 midterm wave; Mace won it in 2020 and has held it ever since.

If you wanted to stress the human brain, you'd struggle to beat election night. Uncertainty, dread, and a refresh button keep your nervous system on high alert.

PBS News' live special coverage of the 2026 midterms will begin at 6 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Nov. 3. Watch in the player above. Democrats have been gaining ground with voters on issues such as affordability and the Iran War as Americans weigh how Trump-led policies are affecting their daily lives.

Early unofficial results must be in about an hour after polls close. By the end of the night, outcomes for most races will be known, but some races may be too close to call. Early in-person votes and absentee ballots processed during early voting will be among the first ballots to be counted.