The US midterms are a complicated beast.

But they're a really important one, and will go a long way to determining how the final two years of Donald Trump's first term in office plays out.

If you're after the basics of the election, head over to this piece and we'll break it down for you.

But if you've got the gist of things already, welcome! You're in the right place.

We've been chatting with readers (just like you) over on ABC News on Messenger, and they've been asking us some excellent, but left-of-field questions about the big day.

If you'd like to join them and ask your own, you can click here.

Otherwise, let's dig in and get you some answers.

Jack asks: Did Taylor Swift's plea to vote really cause a surge in registration voting?

ICYMI, Taylor Swift caused a bit of hubbub when she shook off her reputation of not talking about politics to encourage voters in Tennessee to vote for the Democratic candidate in the Senate.

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She then doubled down this week after she went to fill in the blank space on her ballot and vote early.

Vote.org reported voter registrations were up by 65,000 in the 24 hours after Swift's original post.

But this isn't the love story between Swift and voters that you might expect.

Her message landed at a time when lots of Americans were likely to be finalising their registrations anyway.

Even Vote.org acknowledged there were several factors behind the surge (like the deadline for voter registration in many states being October 9).

So did it cause the surge? Maybe, it could just be in our wildest dreams. But it's fair to say that it definitely didn't hurt things.

Across the board though, turnout is up ahead of these midterms.

The Washington Post reports early vote totals in at least 17 states have surpassed turnout at the 2014 midterms at the same point. Voters have really come out of the woods.

And before you ask, I absolutely will not apologise for those Taylor Swift puns.

Voter turnout is normally far lower than in presidential years. ( ABC News: Jarrod Fankhauser )

Ashleigh asks: Why don't they do all the elections every four years rather than every two years?

Because of the US Constitution.

And you don't have to read very far into it to get to the relevant bit either.

Article I, Section 2 states:

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States.

Section 3 says much the same about the Senate, but with the caveat that senators get a six-year term and a third of them face an election every two years.

So why two years?

Basically it was a compromise between having Representatives be accountable to their constituents with frequent elections (so the people could kick you out if you were doing a lousy job) and giving the House a long enough term to actually get stuff done (and not be fighting elections all the time).

According to House of Representatives scholars, there were originally supporters of three-year terms, just like Australia Federal Parliament, but detractors said the longer terms bordered on "tyranny".

Not sure if they'd have been so worried about tyranny if Prince Harry and Meghan had charmed the Founding Fathers like they just did Australians.

Michael asks: Why are predictions for the House and the Senate opposite each other?

Remember the entire House of Representatives is up for election every two years.

Seats are also divided up on the basis of population. That's why California has 53 representatives while Delaware only has one.

So the House is as close a representation of the popular vote as you can get.

Which is why at the moment, the Democrats are favoured to take the House (the polls say Donald Trump is an unpopular president after all.)

But in the Senate, only about a third of the senators are up at any given election.

This year, only 35 Senate seats are up for grabs.

The reason Republicans are favoured in the Senate is because only nine of those 35 seats are on the line for the GOP.

It means Democrats need to play a whole lot of defence in 26 states before they even consider flipping two of those nine Republican-held seats to win a majority in the Senate.

It's not going to be easy.

Ten of those 26 seats Democrats need to defend are in states Donald Trump won in 2016.

It's not an inconceivable outcome that the Democrats could win the House, while Republicans actually *increase* their majority in the Senate.

It's a tough cookie for Democrats, but just the way it's happened to crumble in this midterm election cycle.

Alice asks: Will the recent Brett Kavanaugh hearings have any impact on the midterms?

Certainly at the time of the hearings, it looked like Republican voters were energised by the highly publicised battle to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

But in 2018, the time any one issue stays in the public's attention can be incredibly short.

Doubly so when Donald Trump has used the days leading up to the midterms to ramp up his rhetoric on the issue of immigration.

Which is why it looks like the enthusiasm advantage the Kavanaugh hearings gave Republicans is now gone, except for rural areas and traditionally Republican states, according to NPR.

In fact, if you want to know what *is* motivating voters to get to the polls, here's a story we prepared earlier.

Katie asks: Will it be another weird equation where the College overrides the actual voting numbers?

Nope.

The Electoral College is only used in the US for the election of the president and vice-president.

Things can vary from state to state, but the vast majority of elections use a first-past-the-post system.

That is, the candidate with the most votes wins. And that's how lots of races in these midterms will be decided.

Interestingly though, in 2016, Maine became the first state to adopt instant-runoff voting, which is pretty similar to how we run our preferential voting system here in Australia.

Andrew asks: What's the impeachment process, and how does a Democratic majority increase the likelihood of it?

If you want to get really in the weeds of the process, head over here where we break down the whole thing.

In short, the House votes to impeach the president. Then the Senate votes on whether to convict or acquit.

Two important things though.

Impeachment is just the beginning of the process to remove a president. It's not until they're convicted by a two-thirds majority in the Senate that a president is removed. It's impossible for the Democrats to win that two-thirds majority at this election

Impeachment is just the beginning of the process to remove a president. It's not until they're convicted by a two-thirds majority in the Senate that a president is removed. It's impossible for the Democrats to win that two-thirds majority at this election A US president has never been removed via impeachment before. Ever

With that in mind, a Democratic majority in the House is definitely likely to increase the likelihood of impeachment proceedings beginning.

Real Clear Politics White House correspondent Sally Persons said the question had already come up for Democrats, and their voters will expect a position on it.

"We've heard Democratic leadership, including Nancy Pelosi, say we want to tamp this down, we can't impeach someone just because you don't like him," she said.

"But it is a very real possibility that it is something Democrats, at least will discuss amongst themselves.