Donald Trump makes final pitch to restive voters in US midterms campaign

Republican Party is defending its control of Congress against signs of a backlash to the president

Donald Trump will make his final campaign pitch to voters in the heart of America's Great Plains on Sunday with just days to go until midterm elections that threaten to end Republican control of Congress in a bruising rebuke to the president.

After making almost daily trips to battleground states over the past month to bolster vulnerable Republicans, Trump will hold his final rallies in Iowa and Kansas on Sunday before hunkering down at the White House ahead of Tuesday's vote.

Throughout the final stages of the campaign, Trump has been trying to shore up his preferred candidates in deeply conservative areas, including in the rural Midwest where even some of his supporters are angry at high energy costs.

While Republicans are widely expected to lose control of the House of Representatives, Trump is desperately trying to preserve his party's majority in the US Senate. The upper chamber seemed locked in earlier this year but is now at risk as the president's popularity has continued to fall across the country.

"I feel very good. I mean, I feel like we're doing well," Trump told reporters in Florida on Saturday ahead of his final day on the campaign trail. "The country has never done better," he added.

Trump has struggled to boost Republican prospects at a series of meandering rallies that have failed to focus squarely on the cost of living concerns that have preoccupied voters in recent months.

But the White House and its allies on Capitol Hill are hoping to limit the damage on Tuesday by depicting the Democratic alternative as risky and beholden to the socialist left, while exploiting some of the divisions that have roiled Democrats during the campaign.

Republicans are hoping to gain a Senate seat in Michigan, where progressive Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed has been embroiled in a bitter stand-off with his moderate former primary opponent Haley Stevens, threatening party unity in the vital rust-belt state.

In almost every other key Senate race, however, Republicans are on the defensive, putting Democrats in reach of making the net gain of four seats they need to win back the majority.

Roy Cooper, the former Democratic governor of North Carolina, is likely to win his race in the southern state. Meanwhile, Democratic candidates are within striking distance of prevailing in Maine, Ohio and Alaska -- states at present held by Republicans -- in addition to the farm country states Trump is visiting on Sunday.

A huge prize in this year's midterms is the Senate seat in Texas, where Ken Paxton, a Trump ally, is trying to save the Republican stronghold from a very competitive challenge mounted by Democrat James Talarico.

Democrats are hoping that they can reverse some of the gains Trump made during his winning 2024 presidential campaign with younger voters as well as Black and Hispanic voters -- while benefiting from depressed turnout among the traditional Republican base.