What are U.S. midterm elections?

Every four years, halfway through a sitting president’s four-year term, the U.S. holds a nationwide poll known as the midterm elections. Although the White House occupant is not directly up for re-election in this vote, the outcome serves as a de facto referendum on the current administration’s leadership and political agenda. The legislative branch, the U.S. Congress, is entirely at stake, as voters elect representatives to all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, who serve two-year terms. At the same time, 35 of the 100 U.S. Senate seats which carry six-year terms are up for grabs (33 regular elections and two special elections in Florida and Ohio) alongside the state gubernatorial seats that decide chief executives across numerous states. Unlike centralised electoral systems, American voting, ballot printing, and counting are all decentralised, operating independently by local authorities and state governments across thousands of individual counties.