Obama: Election poses Democrats’ toughest challenge in decades

President Barack Obama said the political landscape for Tuesday’s midterm elections tilts against Senate Democrats and compared the challenge facing Democratic candidates to what Republicans confronted in the middle of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s second term, when the GOP suffered major losses in the 1958 elections.

"This is probably the worst possible group of states for Democrats since Dwight Eisenhower,” Obama said. “There are a lot of states that are being contested where they just tend to tilt Republican.”

One-third of Senate seats are up for election every two years, and in the 1958 midterms, the Republican Party lost 13 Senate seats to the Democrats. Obama made the comments while calling in to WNPR, Connecticut's National Public Radio affiliate.

Obama's remarks came as Americans streamed to the polls at the end of a race in which many leading Democratic Party candidates have kept the president at arm’s length on the campaign trail.

Millions of Americans began voting in elections in which turnout is expected to have a major impact on results — and on which campaign donors are estimated to have spent some $4 billion to change the balance of power on Capitol Hill and in the states. 

As polls opened, voters struggled to cast ballots at several polling places in Connecticut and Chicago. Despite isolated problems, voting was reportedly proceeding smoothly in many parts of the country.

“Multiple” polling stations in Connecticut’s capital, Hartford, did not receive printed voter lists in time for the 6 a.m. start of voting, said Av Harris, spokesman for the secretary of the state's office. He said “more than just a few” voting stations were affected. Other polling places in the state had no election monitors, NBC Connecticut reported. Some of the issues have since been resolved, the station said.

Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy asked a state judge on Tuesday to extend voting hours in Hartford. Malloy, who was among those who faced delays voting in Hartford, is facing a challenge from Republican Tom Foley in what was expected to be a close contest reminiscent of their previous matchup in 2010, when Malloy narrowly won in an election that had vote-counting problems in the city of Bridgeport. 

Voters also reported having problems at polling stations in Chicago, with electronic voting machines not functioning properly at some locations, according to NBC Chicago. CBS Chicago reported that there was a shortage of election workers around the city, forcing the deployment of a number of standby election judges at various voting sites.

Election Day began more smoothly elsewhere around the United States, as public campaigning gave way to the privacy of the voting booth in deciding 36 governorships as well as all 435 seats in the House of Representatives. The main prize in Tuesday's elections is control of the Senate, where 36 seats are being contested.

If the Democratic Party loses its Senate majority, that would profoundly shape the remainder of President Barack Obama's time in office and change the legislative calculus in a gridlocked Congress. The large number of competitive races, combined with the possibility of runoffs in Louisiana and Georgia, raise the possibility that neither party may be able to claim victory by the day after Election Day.

Democrats enter the elections with a 53-45 Senate majority, and they usually have the support of two independents. Republicans need to gain six seats to win back the Senate majority they lost in 2007. Pollsters give the GOP a strong chance of success, but it’s not a slam-dunk.

Polls and pundits have forecast up to 10 Democratic seats going to the GOP, but as many as three seats could go the other way.

In Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia, retirement of long-serving Democratic Party senators has given the GOP its best pickup opportunities. Rep. Shelly Moore Capito hoped to become the first Republican to win a Senate seat in West Virginia in more than half a century. 

Another Democratic retirement produced a highly competitive race in Iowa, between Republican Joni Ernst and Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley. 

A Republican retirement in Georgia led to one of the country's most closely watched races, between Democrat Michelle Nunn and Republican businessman David Perdue. 

Democratic incumbents in states that Obama lost in 2012 — including Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina — faced strong challenges. 

The same was true in Colorado and New Hampshire, states the president won two years ago. The wildest wild card of all was Kansas, where 78-year-old Republican Sen. Pat Roberts is in a competitive race with independent Greg Orman.

Republicans expressed optimism about their chances of wining control of the Senate, while Democrats countered that a costly get-out-the-vote program to encourage millions of African-Americans, young people and women to vote could save their majority.

The spreading popularity of early voting produced the equivalent of elections within elections. There were more than 18 million early ballots cast in 32 states, and both parties seized on that number as evidence of their own strength.

Meanwhile, there was little suspense about House races beyond the extent of the Republican majority. A gain of 13 seats would give the GOP its largest representation since its 246 seats in 1946.

All 435 House seats are up for election every two years. Democrats concentrated on protecting their incumbents — a strategy that meant tacitly conceding races in Utah, New York and North Carolina, where retirements created opportunities for Republicans to pad their majority.

“Not one of our incumbents is down or out,” said New York Rep. Steve Israel, who heads the House Democrats’ campaign organization. 

There are also 36 gubernatorial contests, and an unusual number of incumbents appeared to be struggling heading into the elections.

The GOP is defending 22 governor’s seats, while Democrats are trying to hold on to 14. Many of the incumbents are vulnerable. A half-dozen Republican governors who swept into office in 2010 — some with tea party support — are struggling to hang on.

GOP Govs. Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania, Rick Scott in Florida, Paul LePage in Maine and Rick Snyder in Michigan won with tea party backing in 2010 and are standing for re-election for the first time.

Obama raised millions of dollars for Democratic candidates over the past two years, but candidates in state after state decided not to be photographed by his side. Obama was in eight states in the campaigns’ final days, hoping to help gubernatorial candidates in Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.

There are also nearly 150 ballot measures being decided Tuesday, including legalization of recreational marijuana use in Alaska, Oregon and Washington, D.C. Anti-abortion measures in Colorado, North Dakota and Tennessee and labeling requirements for certain genetically modified foods in Colorado and Oregon will also be decided. 

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press