Georgia Democrats rallied with former President Barack Obama Wednesday night, at the same time President Donald Trump was in Ohio attempting to energize his base, as both parties began crystallizing their closing messages ahead of next week's midterm elections.

Operatives aligned with Mary Peltola, the Democratic nominee for Senate, spent months recruiting candidates to peel votes from Senator Dan Sullivan, the Republican.

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Senator Darline Graham, the South Carolina Republican, is struggling to replicate her late brother’s success. Republicans lead in the Florida Senate race and Democrats are up in Minnesota.

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The American people have a chance to allow the nation to glimpse the end of the Trump era and the start of something brighter.

© Illustration by The New York Times

Republican candidates in marquee Senate races have welcomed Thune's help as he's traveled around the country in the weeks before the midterm elections, scrambling to save his majority.

The left says its populist message can attract moderates and conservatives in addition to liberals. That theory will be put to the test in a series of competitive races on Election Day.

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Democrats are targeting G.O.P. strongholds that could set them up for new majorities. But if they don’t win those races now, it could be a long time before they have another chance.

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Democrats in the midterms are finally backing Medicare for All as a campaign issue amid a rising tide of US support

Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic US Senate candidate, starts this day on the campaign trail in Escanaba, Michigan, where nearby Wisconsin dairy country spills into dense forests and the sandy shores of Green Bay.

This is the upper peninsula – the “UP” – a rural slash of land north of Michigan’s mitt. Electorally, it’s crimson. Donald Trump won some districts near Escanaba by more than 41%. But at the county fairgrounds, past sheds labeled “Beef” and “Swine”, hundreds of locals on the political left have gathered in the hangar-size 4H Club meeting hall to hear El-Sayed speak.

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© Photograph: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images

The left says its populist message can attract moderates and conservatives in addition to liberals. That theory will be put to the test in a series of competitive races on Election Day.

© The New York Times

The president contended that Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim, would “invite hordes of jihadis to our shores” as he sought to bolster the G.O.P. candidate in a tight Senate race.

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A lawsuit by the Justice Department challenging a potential narrow loss by the GOP Senate incumbent in Alaska reflects a new tactic by the president to try to shape the election results.

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“There is no legal excuse” for the failure of 18 polling sites to open for early voting, a state lawmaker said.

© Kerry Tasker/Reuters

The 44th president sharply criticized Mr. Trump, who hit back later in the day. Mr. Obama also assailed Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio.

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With moves in Alaska and California, the department has stepped up interventions in the midterm elections as the president’s instrument of unmediated executive power.

© Doug Mills/The New York Times

Republican candidates are in a sorry state.

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Hope, dread and the final stretch to Election Day.

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President Trump told the Justice Department to intervene in the race, where polling shows Republicans at risk of losing a seat.

© Kerry Tasker/Reuters

No obvious legal authority supports a pre-emptive effort to block the certification of Alaska’s Senate election if the Republican incumbent narrowly loses.

© Kerry Tasker for The New York Times

The department, in a highly unusual lawsuit, argued that confusion over candidates with similar names could taint the election result.

© Doug Mills/The New York Times

The move was announced by Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who faces a tough re-election fight amid rising prices.

© Kenny Holston/The New York Times