US mid- term elections today, to be a verdict on Trump’s America

Donald Trump’s whirlwind campaign hits three states Monday in the final effort to stop Democrats from breaking his Republicans’ stranglehold on Congress in mid- terms elections seen as a referendum on the most divisive US president in decades.

Cleveland, Ohio; Fort Wayne, Indiana; then Cape Girardeau, Missouri: it will be well after midnight before the real estate billionaire and populist showman gets back to the White House -- and only a few hours more before polls open Tuesday across the world’s largest economy.

“Don’t fall for the Suppression Game. Go out & VOTE. Remember, we now have perhaps the greatest Economy ( JOBS) in the history of our Country!” he tweeted on Monday before setting off for the furious final round of campaigning.

Trump is not on the ballot in the midterms, which see the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate up for grabs.

But in a hard- driving series of rallies around the country Trump has put himself at the center of every issue.

With a characteristic mix of folksiness, bombast and sometimes cruel humor, he says voters must choose between his stewardship of a booming economy and strong focus on security and what he claims would be the Democrats’ hard- left policies.

The bid to make it all about Trump is a gamble, as is his shift from touting economic successes to a bitter -- critics say racist -narrative claiming that the country is under attack from illegal immigration.

In the run- up to Tuesday’s vote Trump has sent thousands of soldiers to the Mexican border, suggested that illegal immigrants who throw stones could be shot, and tried to persuade Americans that the Democrats would turn the country into a crime-and-drugs black hole.

“They want to impose socialism on our country. And they want to erase America’s borders,” Trump told a raucous rally in Chattanooga, Tennessee late Sunday.

That worked for Trump in his own shock 2016 election victory but has turned off swaths of Americans, giving Democrats confidence that they could capture at least the lower house of Congress.

According to polls, the Republicans are comfortably on track to retain the Senate. But with polls often too close for comfort and turnout being the crucial unknown factor, both parties are braced for potential surprises.

In traditionally Republican Texas, popular Democrat Beto O’Rourke is trying to dethrone Senator Ted Cruz, while Republican Pete Stauber might flip a House Democratic stronghold in Minnesota.

In Florida and Georgia, Democrats are aiming to become the states’ first African American governors.