WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on Election Day (all times local):
11 p.m.
Dems win half seats they need
Democrats have won half the seats they need to reclaim the House majority, while Republicans were picking up key Senate contests.
Democrats picked up at least 12 Republican-held House seats in early returns but fell short in a closely watched race in Kentucky as they fought to wrest control of the chamber after eight years of GOP rule.
Democrats needed a net gain of 23 seats to control the House and gain a check on President Donald Trump.
Democratic gains included several suburban districts eyed for turnover because they were won by Hillary Clinton, including seats outside Washington, Philadelphia, Miami and Denver.
Meanwhile, Republicans Mike Braun and Kevin Cramer won Democratic-held Senate seats in Indiana and North Dakota, ousting incumbents Joe Donnelly and Heidi Heitkamp.
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10:50 p.m.
GOP keeps Senate
Republicans have retained Senate control for two more years, shattering Democrats' dreams of an anti-Trump wave sweeping them into the majority.
The result was all but assured when Republican Kevin Cramer ousted North Dakota Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp and when Republican businessman Mike Braun ousted Sen. Joe Donnelly in Indiana.
Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz fended off a spirited challenge from Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke and Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn triumphed in Tennessee.
The GOP's gains come even as the results in Nevada and Arizona have yet to be determined.
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10:30 p.m.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz fended off rising-star Democrat Beto O'Rourke to win re-election in a much-watched Texas race that began as a cakewalk but needed a visit from President Donald Trump to help push the incumbent over the top.
Cruz finished a surprising second in the 2016 Republican presidential primary and began the Senate race as a prohibitive favorite.
But O'Rourke visited fiercely conservative parts of the state that his party had long since given up on, while shattering fundraising records despite shunning donations from outside political groups and pollster advice.
Cruz argued that his opponent's support for gun control and universal health care were too liberal for Texas.
Trump and Cruz were bitter 2016 rivals, but the president visited Houston late last month to solidify the senator's win.
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10:15 p.m.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has turned back a challenge by Republican Patrick Morrisey to win his second full-term in a state carried by President Donald Trump.
Manchin survived the most difficult re-election campaign of his career against the comparative newcomer Morrisey. Manchin is a former governor who has held elected office in West Virginia for the better part of three decades.
Manchin heavily outspent Morrisey and portrayed himself as loyal to his home state rather than party ideology. Manchin was the only Senate Democrat to vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Manchin was critical of Morrisey's New Jersey roots and his past lobbying ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
Morrisey is a two-term state attorney general and a staunch Trump supporter.
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10 p.m.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin has won a second term, fending off a challenge from a Republican who ran as a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump.
Baldwin led Leah Vukmir in fundraising and polls throughout the race.
Baldwin is one of the most liberal members of Congress. The differences between her and Vukmir were stark. They disagreed on almost every issue.
Baldwin made the campaign largely about health care and Vukmir's opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Baldwin argued for keeping the law and its guarantee of insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.
The race was Wisconsin's first for Senate where both major party candidates were women.
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9:00 p.m.
GOP Rep. Barr in Ky. wins closely watched race
Republican Rep. Andy Barr of Kentucky won a close-fought race that Democrats had targeted in a bid to shift the House to Democratic control.
Barr turned back a strong challenge from Democrat Amy McGrath in a district that supported President Donald Trump two years ago.
McGrath, a retired fighter pilot, gave Barr his toughest test yet as he sought a fourth term. Barr urged voters to re-elect him for his "access and influence with this administration," while McGrath countered with a message of "country over party."
Barr won by 22 points in 2016, but McGrath waged an aggressive challenge, including TV ads showing her in front of fighter jets and with her young children.
The district includes Lexington and capital Frankfort. The seat has switched parties five times since 1978.
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9:10 p.m.
Wolf wins second term
Democrat Tom Wolf has won a second term as Pennsylvania governor, beating brash Republican challenger Scott Wagner.
Wolf's victory in Tuesday's election sends him back to Harrisburg to share power with a Republican-controlled Legislature that fought him in two extended budget battles.
Wolf has said he'll continue advancing his first-term priorities, among them trying to fix funding inequities in public schools. Joining him as lieutenant governor will be John Fetterman, who drew national attention for his efforts to improve the impoverished town of Braddock over 13 years as mayor.
Wagner, a former state senator and waste-hauling millionaire, mostly self-financed his campaign.
He didn't help himself with a penchant for eyebrow-raising off-the-cuff comments. He told Wolf to put on a catcher's mask because, he said, he was "going to stomp all over" the incumbent's face with golf spikes.
9:07 p.m.
AP: Casey beats Barletta
Democrat Bob Casey has won a third U.S. Senate term from Pennsylvania, beating Republican Rep. and Donald Trump supporter Lou Barletta in a state the president won two years ago.
Casey's victory in Tuesday's election gives him another six-year term in office and ensures that Trump will have another swing state opponent in the closely divided Senate.
The 58-year-old son of the late former governor has now won six statewide elections, including wins in races for state treasurer and auditor general.
The race was a far cry from Pennsylvania's record-breaking $170 million race in 2016, coming at under $40 million while control for the Senate was waged in perhaps a dozen other states.
The candidates were on opposite sides of Trump.
Barletta, 62, is one of Trump's biggest allies on Capitol Hill and drew two presidential visits to Pennsylvania to help rally support for his candidacy.
But Barletta never gained traction against Casey, and was heavily outspent while getting virtually no outside help from GOP groups to overcome Casey's heavy fundraising advantage and built-in recognition as a household name in Pennsylvania politics.
8:30 p.m.
Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia was the first congressional incumbent to lose as voters in her Northern Virginia district expressed their continued dislike of President Donald Trump.
Democratic state Sen. Jennifer Wexton won an easy victory in the wealthy suburban district outside Washington, which Hillary Clinton won by 10 percentage points.
Comstock tried hard to emphasize her independence from Trump, but Wexton, a former prosecutor, portrayed the two-term incumbent as a Trump ally out of touch with the diverse, well-educated district.
Comstock easily beat a Democrat in 2016 when her district went for Clinton.
The national focus on the race helped Comstock and Wexton raise more than $5 million in all, while outside groups spent more than $10 million.
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8:15 p.m.
A judge has extended voting hours at more polling locations in Georgia, where some voters have complained of waiting for hours in long lines.
An order issued Tuesday in Fulton County Superior Court says one polling place in the county, home to much of Atlanta, must allow voters to keep casting ballots until 9 p.m., a full two hours after polls closed statewide. Two additional polling locations must remain open even longer, until 10 p.m.
A court in neighboring Gwinnett County also extended hours Tuesday at three polling places.
Some Georgia voters have reported waiting as long as three hours to vote Tuesday because of a shortage of voting machines and other problems at poll locations.
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8:10 p.m.
Polls have closed across the East Coast, but the results in some of the most closely watched races remain too close to call.
Polls across six states closed at 7 p.m. EST, including battlegrounds Georgia, Indiana and Kentucky. Polls in other key states including Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey closed at 8 p.m. EST.
At least two lower-profile elections with presidential implications were decided after the first major wave of polls closed in the East.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders easily won his third term as he considers another bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. And Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, another potential 2020 contender, also won her race.
Health care and immigration were high on voters' minds as they cast ballots in the midterm elections, per a wide-ranging survey by The Associated Press.
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8:01 p.m.
Election watchers say some voters are reporting being directed to wrong polling places by third-party election help websites such as TurboVote.
Sophia Hall, an attorney who was working at an election protection command center in Boston on Tuesday, says they received several such reports in Massachusetts and are aware of reports in other states.
She says they've also received reports of people being told they are not registered when they arrive at the polls even though they thought their registration had been confirmed by a third-party site.
TurboVote is a tool created by Democracy Works that helps people register and sends voters email and text reminders about registration deadlines, upcoming elections and where to vote.
Brandon Naylor, a spokesman for Democracy Works, says TurboVote gets its polling location information directly from the states, but sometimes the locations change at the last minute. He also says people will also get wrong polling location information if they move and forget to update their address.
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7:55 p.m.
Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine has dispatched a die-hard supporter of President Donald Trump to win re-election to the U.S. Senate.
Kaine defeated Republican Corey Stewart on Tuesday.
The victory was widely expected as Kaine enjoyed large leads in most public polls and had a huge cash advantage.
Kaine is a former governor who was first elected to the Senate in 2012. He was Hillary Clinton's running mate in 2016.
Stewart is a conservative provocateur best known for his outspoken support of Confederate imagery and hard-line views on immigration. He struggled to raise money and was ignored by national GOP groups.
7:15 p.m.
As polls begin to close, the White House is stressing the effort President Donald Trump put into a political ground game aimed at putting Republicans in the win column for Tuesday's midterm elections.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says in a written statement that Trump has headlined 50 political rallies, 30 in the past two months. He's campaigned for dozens of candidates at all levels of government.
Sanders says the Republican National Committee raised more than $250 million under Trump to defy what she calls "midterm history," which tends to favor the party that does not control the White House.
Sanders says the president and first lady Melania Trump are looking forward to watching election results Tuesday night with friends and family in the White House residence.
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4 p.m.
President Donald Trump is spending Election Day calling allies, tweeting endorsements and following news coverage, after concluding a six-day rally blitz in Missouri late Monday.
Trump packed his closing argument with hardline immigration rhetoric and harsh attacks on Democrats as he stared down the prospect of Republican losses that could shadow his presidency.
Faced with the possibility of keeping the Senate but losing the House, aides have begun laying out the political reality to Trump, who could face an onslaught of Democratic-run investigations and paralysis of his policy agenda.
Trump has already been trying out defensive arguments, noting that midterm losses are typical for the party in the White House, pointing out a high number of GOP retirements and stressing that he has kept his focus on the Senate.
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11:45 a.m.
Long lines and malfunctioning machines marred the first hours of voting in some precincts across the U.S.
Some of the biggest problems Tuesday were in Georgia, a state with a hotly contested gubernatorial election. Voters reported waiting up to three hours to vote.
At a polling place in Snellville, Georgia, more than 100 people took turns sitting in children's chairs and on the floor as they waited in line for hours.
Voter Ontaria Woods said about two dozen people who had come to vote left because of the lines.
At a poll site in Atlanta, voters waited in the rain in long lines that stretched around the building.
Hannah Ackermann said officials at the polling site offered various explanations for the delay, including blaming workers who didn't show up and overloaded machines.
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10:50 a.m.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi says the midterm elections are basically a referendum on Republican efforts to scrap Obamacare.
The California Democrat says at a Tuesday morning press conference that the election is "about health care."
Pelosi credits Democratic politicians and activists across the country with helping to fend off attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act following 2016 election results that left Republicans in control of Congress and the White House.
Pelosi says that after 2016 Democrats "didn't agonize, we organized."
She forecasts Democratic victories across the country, but with a small overall margin of victory. Pelosi says that as few as 25,000 votes nationwide could swing the results.
Pelosi has remained noncommittal amid speculation that she would step aside to make way for new leadership, regardless of the election results.
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10:25 a.m.
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says he hopes the outcome of the U.S. midterm election will ease domestic tensions in the United States and enable Washington to focus on global issues.
Speaking to reporters in Madrid on Tuesday, Lavrov lamented that Russian-American ties have become "hostage to internal political squabbles in America."
Lavrov said he is hopeful that the election will help stabilize domestic politics in the U.S. "so that Washington could concentrate on some positive steps on the international arena."
Lavrov also reiterated Moscow's position that it is not meddling in U.S. elections.
He said, "All the accusations that we will be meddling in today's elections turned out to be empty statements."
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9 a.m.
Severe weather in several Southern states could affect voter turnout on Election Day.
A line of storms moved through the Deep South overnight and early Tuesday morning, knocking down trees and power lines from Louisiana to South Carolina. There were no serious injuries but an estimated 11,000 residents were left without electricity.
A separate storm front in central Tennessee overnight killed one person, injured two others and also left thousands without power.
The National Weather Service warned of a possibility of high winds, severe thunderstorms and possible tornadoes Tuesday around Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and the Mid-Atlantic region.
Dry weather was forecast for the West and Southwest, but significant snow accumulations were expected across the northern Rockies.
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1 a.m.
A turbulent election season that has tested President Donald Trump's slash-and-burn political style against the strength of the Democratic resistance comes to a close as Americans cast ballots in the first national election of the Trump era.
As voters head to the polls Tuesday, nothing was certain.
Anxious Republicans have privately expressed confidence in their narrow Senate majority but fear the House is slipping away.
Democrats' very relevance in the Trump era depends on winning at least one chamber of Congress. They remain laser-focused on health care as they predict a nationwide "awakening" that will break up the GOP's monopoly in Washington and state governments.
The first polls close at 6 p.m. EST.
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For AP's complete coverage of the U.S. midterm elections: http://apne.ws/APPolitics
