It's Election Day, and there are a number of key races all across the U.S. That includes in Minnesota where voters will pick a new governor, U.S. Senator, Attorney General, all eight Congressional seats, plus who controls the state House and Senate.
There are also key elections in neighboring states, including Wisconsin and Iowa where both states will choose a new governor and more.
Here's what is happening in each state:
Wisconsin
Voters will decide Tuesday whether to elect Wisconsin's first Black governor or give the battleground state's top job to a Republican for the first time in eight years.
The winner will replace retiring Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and serve during the next presidential election in a state where five of the past seven White House campaigns have been decided by less than a percentage point.
Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany is looking to flip control of the governor's office in a year when his close allegiance to President Donald Trump could hurt his chances because of the president's unpopularity.
Democrat David Crowley, Milwaukee County's top elected official, is trying to keep the governor's office under Democratic control. If he wins, it would be the first time the party has held the post for more than eight years in a row.
Tiffany ran on the promise to return the state's roughly $3 billion surplus to taxpayers and tried to portray Crowley as weak on crime and as a data center advocate. Crowley hammered Tiffany's close allegiance to Trump, including his attempts to overturn Trump's 2020 loss in Wisconsin, and said Tiffany hasn't done enough to lower prices for the middle class.
Democrats are hoping for a trifecta this year — winning the governor's office and flipping control of both legislative chambers. They haven't had full control of Wisconsin's state government since 2010.
Crowley became his party's nominee after a tumultuous primary. He initially dropped out of the race, then rejoined at Evers' urging and defeated a democratic socialist to clinch the nomination.
Tiffany, who survived a small plane crash while campaigning, largely relied on three billionaire megadonors to outspend Crowley. He is seeking to become the first sitting member of Congress elected governor of Wisconsin.
First open Wisconsin governor's race in some time
It's the state's first open governor's race in 16 years, as Evers decided that two terms was enough. The last happened in 2010, when Democratic incumbent Jim Doyle opted not to seek a third term.
Republican Scott Walker won that year, and over the next eight years enacted a wide array of Republican priorities that included drastically scaling back union rights, slashing taxes and requiring voters to show identification at the polls.
Evers got behind Crowley in an effort to blunt the rising campaign of democratic socialist Francesca Hong. Crowley won by less than half a percentage point.
Close races are the norm in Wisconsin.
In 2018, Evers defeated Walker, the incumbent, by 1.1 percentage points. Evers won reelection by 3.4 points in 2022, a landslide by Wisconsin standards.
Tiffany cast Crowley as pro-data center; Crowley ran on affordability
Tiffany tried to portray Crowley as an advocate for building data centers in Wisconsin, referring to him as “Data Center David Crowley.” Tiffany ran an ad that included a clip of Crowley saying Wisconsin could become the “AI and data hub not only for the entire country, but for the entire globe.”
Crowley changed his position on data centers late in the campaign, coming out in favor of a moratorium in October. Tiffany, who also said positive things about data centers in the past, did not call for a moratorium on construction.
Tiffany also tried to cast Crowley as weak on crime and said that Crowley would increase taxes as governor to pay for his agenda, which includes expanding healthcare and fully funding public schools.
Crowley hammered Tiffany on economic issues, saying his loyalty to Trump and support of the war in Iran was to blame for the high gas prices that were hurting Wisconsin residents, particularly farmers.
Tiffany, 68, was elected to Congress in 2020 in a mostly rural district after he served nine years in the Legislature.
Tiffany voted against accepting the Electoral College votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania as part of an effort to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s win. He also supported efforts to overturn Trump's 2020 loss in Wisconsin — Trump won the state in 2016 and 2024. All three elections were decided by less than a point.
If elected, Tiffany promised to freeze property taxes, lower income taxes, improve schools, bolster job creation, overhaul the state Department of Natural Resources and protect farmland from foreign ownership.
Crowley, 40, was elected as Milwaukee County executive in 2020 after serving just over three years in the state Assembly. Crowley ran in support of expanding Medicaid coverage and increasing funding for public school and child care. He supports overturning the 15-year-old state law known as Act 10, which effectively ended collective bargaining rights for most public workers. Tiffany voted for that law when he was in the Legislature.
If he wins, Crowley would be the first Black governor in Wisconsin. Heading into Tuesday, only three Black governors had been elected in the nation's history.
Iowa
Iowa voters will choose their next governor in Tuesday's midterm elections, deciding between Democrat Rob Sand and Republican Zach Lahn in a race that could end conservative dominance across state government.
Sand and Lahn both campaigned on criticisms of the state’s status quo, including a deepening budget deficit, an increasing cost of living, dwindling health care access, high cancer rates and water pollution. But they offered voters starkly different visions for replacing Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, who decided not to run again.
Sand is the face of his party's hopes for restoring Democratic leadership, despite his efforts to keep his distance from partisan politics. He's built his candidacy around his anti-corruption agenda as state auditor and his small-town upbringing. He won his last election by a razor-thin margin — fewer than 3,000 votes — but he has outperformed other Democrats in previous races, especially in rural areas.
Lahn is a newcomer to Iowa politics who generated buzz from grassroots activists and supporters of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “ Make America Healthy Again ” movement. He won the Republican primary over a congressman endorsed by President Donald Trump.
The open race — in a midterm when Republicans face national headwinds — revived Iowa's status as battleground territory even though Democrats are outnumbered among party-affiliated registered voters.
In a sign of the campaign's competitiveness, many of Iowa’s prominent industry groups in agriculture and business declined to weigh in on the contest, endorsing in other contests but not the governor’s race.
Sand emphasized his moderate nature and roots
Sand, 44, often laments the way the country's political system forces people to pick sides, even as he has only run for office as a Democrat and has donated substantially to the party. He acknowledged he’d likely have to work with Republican majorities in the state House and Senate, saying divided government would be good for solving problems.
Throughout his campaign, he criticized Republicans for ignoring a worsening budget deficit that’s emerged from their tax cuts and investment in education savings accounts, which provide students with public dollars to pay for private school tuition.
He said he’d also be a check on Republican efforts to push culture war bills from the Statehouse, such as further limits on abortion or restrictions on how teachers discuss certain topics.
Sand has worked for years to build a visible — and likable — public profile in the state by holding annual county town halls, publicizing his findings as a former state prosecutor and as auditor and being active on social media. That included posting about what he’s eating around the state, nodding at his northeast Iowa roots and sharing his bowhunting escapades.
Lahn was charting a new path for Iowa GOP
A first-time candidate who was little-known when he began running for governor, Lahn’s general election campaign was scaled up quickly after his surprise victory in the June primary.
Lahn, 40, won the primary by less than a percentage point over U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra, who had Trump's backing. Still, in a five-way race, he prevailed with only about a third of Republican primary voters supporting him.
Before launching his campaign for governor last November, Lahn had worked on launching innovative schools, including one in Wichita, Kansas, funded by Chase Koch, the son of Koch chairman and co-CEO Charles Koch. Lahn also previously worked in Montana for the Koch-based conservative political organization Americans for Prosperity.
In Iowa, Lahn owns an investment company and has revived the eastern Iowa farm that had been in his family for a century.
Lahn was still relatively unknown to even members of his own party when he won the primary, and some were hesitant to get behind him. He was not shy about pushing back on traditional Iowa GOP positions and said he had already been successful in changing the narrative within the Republican Party.
He campaigned on bringing antitrust lawsuits against agricultural conglomerates, questioning the health and safety of products used by farmers and reducing incentives for out-of-state companies buying farmland.
Still, toe-to-toe with Sand in debates, Lahn leaned on traditional party positions in contrasting himself with Sand, saying Sand would be a liberal governor who would raise taxes, increase regulations and push a political agenda in public education.
Both candidates’ attacks got personal
Lahn criticized Sand for the millions of dollars that his wife and in-laws have contributed to his campaign. Contrasting Sand with himself as a first-time candidate, Lahn called Sand a career politician. Sand was a prosecutor under a Democratic state attorney general before running for auditor in 2018.
Sand played up Lahn's background as a conservative political operative. Sand also hit Lahn for only recently returning to live in Iowa, registering to vote two years ago just before the deadline to run as a candidate in this election and traveling regularly out of the state.
Lahn has explained his frequent flights to Kansas as a result of his blended family, which he says won't affect his ability to govern. Lahn and his wife, Annie, both have children from previous marriages who do not live full-time in Iowa.
