The Surprise Tossups

Good morning. Israelis are voting today in a national election that many see as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Follow our live coverage here.

There's more below. We also have six takeaways from a new memoir by the Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward. But first, let's take a look at next week's midterm elections in the United States.

The final stretch

Polling suggests Republicans may have a tough Tuesday next week as Americans vote in the midterm elections. That's in part what brought President Trump to Mississippi, a state he won by about 23 points in 2024, to campaign last night for the incumbent G.O.P. senator.

It also fueled Vice President JD Vance's travels yesterday, first to ruby-red Montana to help a House candidate and then to the reliable Republican stronghold of Kansas to stump for Senator Roger Marshall.

What's going to happen next Tuesday? "This is as good a political environment as Democrats could ever wish," the editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report told The Times, "and as bad as Republicans could ever imagine."

But a so-called blue wave is by no measure assured. Some competitive Senate races could swing toward the Republicans as they rally their most loyal voters to the polls. Democrats could eke out wins in red states but fail to do so in bluer ones.

Everyone's on edge. We'll get the outcome the people who fill out the ballots provide. Polling ain't voting.

Map quest

In some ways, it's surprising to see so many races rated as tossups. Congressional districts are already often configured to make incumbents safe. At Trump's insistence, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana again redrew their maps to help Republicans in recent years. That effort -- countered by a gerrymander in California to help Democrats -- was meant to prevent the heavy midterm losses that a sitting president's party historically experiences.

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