Election Day coverage of the 2022 midterms

Officials from Arizona’s most populous county, which will help to decide some of the most closely watched midterm election races in the country on Tuesday, aimed to dispel heightened concerns about misinformation and Election Day security.

The county now has the country’s eyes on it as it faces increased threats to election workers, voter intimidation at drop boxes and heightened concerns about misleading information surrounding the midterms. Maricopa will help to decide control of the U.S. Senate, as Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly tries to defend his seat against Republican challenger Blake Masters in the chamber split evenly by party.

The nation has also watched Arizona’s race for governor, where Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs faces Republican Kari Lake, a leading proponent of Trump’s false election fraud claims.

— Rocio Fabbro

On a day that will have massive repercussions for President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda and his presidency, the president, for now, is going to be laying low.

An initial White House schedule shows that Biden will not make any public appearances on Tuesday. There is nothing on his calendar except a daily national security briefing at 9:30 a.m. ET.

Presidents typically do not hold events on Election Day, so as not to draw attention or crowds away from candidates.

But on the day of former President Barack Obama’s first midterm election on Nov. 2, 2010, the president’s public schedule included four radio interviews and a meeting with the secretary of Defense at the White House, in addition to his daily economic and national security briefings.

The White House said Monday that Biden would likely wait until Wednesday to comment on any results from the election. Democrats are expected to lose the House majority, while the race for Senate control is a toss-up, based on the latest polling.

— Christina Wilkie

Americans are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the U.S. economy at levels not seen ahead of a midterm election since 2010, according to a new NBC News poll released over the weekend.

The latest survey found that 81% of respondents were either somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the state of the economy, while only 19% were satisfied.

The gloomy economic outlook could have big repercussions for Democrats on Election Day. The last time Americans were this unhappy with the economy ahead of an election was 2010, when 84% of voters told pollsters they were dissatisfied with the U.S. economy.

That year, Republicans picked up 63 seats in the House, the biggest single party flip since the late 1940s.

Going into Election Day, the nonpartisan Cook Political report has rated 36 House seats as toss ups, 26 of them held by Democrats and only 10 by Republicans. Another 15 seats held by Democrats in the House are rated as competitive, but leaning towards the Democrat.

— Christina Wilkie

Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican who is not up for reelection this year, was pegged with a can of beer while participating in a World Series victory parade for the Houston Astros, police said.

An alleged video of the incident shows Cruz, standing in the truck bed of a military vehicle, raise his arm and attempt to duck out of the way as a can sails toward him from off screen. The can appears to bounce off the senator’s body, at which point another man in the truck appears to point law enforcement in the direction from which the can was thrown.

Before the incident, videos show Cruz being loudly booed by crowds lining the street for the Astros’ victory parade — an echo from weeks earlier, when Cruz was heckled and booed by baseball fans at Yankee Stadium.

Houston Police said Monday afternoon that they arrested a 33-year-old male who “threw a beer can at U.S. Senator Ted Cruz as the Senator was on a float in the 2400 block of Smith St.”

“The beer can struck the Senator in the chest/neck area. The Senator did not require medical attention,” the police said on Twitter.

The alleged can-thrower was taken to jail and is charged with assault, according to the department’s tweets.

— Kevin Breuninger

Oregon voters will determine Tuesday whether to pass stricter gun laws — the only ballot measure nationwide that addresses gun violence. 

The gun-control initiative, which critics say is the nation’s “most extreme,” requires people to obtain permits and complete safety training to acquire a firearm. It also bans high-capacity magazines and calls for State Police to create and maintain a searchable database of gun ownership.

Supporters, including shooting survivors in the state and across the country, say Oregon Measure 114 is necessary to reduce gun injuries and deaths.

Read more from NBC News.

— NBC News

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi learned that her husband Paul Pelosi had been brutally attacked last week when Capitol Police officers banged on her door at 5 a.m., she revealed in a new interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

“I look up, I see it’s 5, they must be at the wrong apartment,” Pelosi recalled thinking. But the knocks continued, “bang, bang, bang, bang, bang on the door,” she said.

“So I run to the door, and I’m very scared. I see the Capitol Police and they say, ‘We have to come in to talk to you,'” Pelosi recounted.

“And I’m thinking my children, my grandchildren. I never thought it would be Paul because, you know, I knew he wouldn’t be out and about, shall we say. And so they came in. At that time, we didn’t even know where he was,” she said.

Paul Pelosi was attacked on Oct. 28 by an intruder wielding a hammer who had broken into the couple’s San Francisco home. Police arrived at 2:31 a.m., and Paul Pelosi was transported to a hospital and underwent emergency surgery to repair a skull fracture.

U.S. Capitol Police first learned of the attack when they noticed squad cars and sirens on a live feed of Pelosi’s house on monitors in their Washington headquarters.

— Christina Wilkie

Some of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s top donors are privately panicking about Republican challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin’s recent surge in the polls ahead of Tuesday’s midterms, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Republican, endorsed by former President Donald Trump, has trailed Hochul by only single digits in some recent polls — prompting the governor’s corporate backers to push her to change tactics, according to these people.

At the start of October, Hochul led Zeldin by an average of 14 percentage points, according to data from FiveThirtyEight, which aggregates data from several polls. RealClearPolitics, which looked at several polls taken during the second half of October, showed Zeldin closing in on Hochul, who was up by an average of 6 percentage points. A Quinnipiac poll from mid-October showed an even smaller lead for Hochul, who was ahead of Zeldin by just 4 percentage points at the time.

Business leaders have encouraged Hochul in private meetings, including one with top real estate executives in late October in New York City, to pivot away from focusing on the effects of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and other social…