It’s the most expensive midterm election in American history, but the donors who have ponied up in greater amounts that ever before are likely to get fewer votes for their money. Low-key campaigns combined with voter apathy were expected to result in a low turnout on Tuesday, and Democrats are worried that the lack of interest could cost them control of the Senate.

Candidates are projected to have spent an estimated $3.67bn this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, exceeding the total for congressional races during the 2012 presidential cycle even though the number of individual donors has shrunk.



However, Democrats fear that low turnout may hand control of the Senate to Republicans, who are also sure to retain a majority in the House of Representatives. In many races, Democrats have run predominantly negative campaigns aimed at highlighting extreme Republican policies, tactics that may not have been enough to persuade their supporters to go to the polls in sufficient numbers.



To wrest control of the Senate, Republicans need to capture at least six seats held by incumbent or retiring Democrats. In this cycle, 36 Senate seats are on the ballot, as well as all 435 seats in the House of Representatives. Voters will select governors in 36 states and three US territories. In 42 states, voters were deciding on some 158 ballot measures, ranging from tighter gun control in Washington state to an increase in the minimum wage to $10 in Illinois.

Republicans were careful to pick less outspoken candidates than in previous years for fear of alienating moderate voters, and have focused instead on attacking the track record of Barack Obama, forcing the president to keep a low profile as he enters his final two years in office.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest New Hampshire Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown gives a thumbs up as he calls voters on election day. Photograph: Jim Cole/AP

The combination has led to a low-key campaign on both sides and although there are few consistent ways of tracking turnout in advance of polls closing, there was little evidence on Tuesday morning of a last-minute rush to the polls.

Midterm turnout typically hovers around 40%, but some figures on early voting in key swing states showed a small drop, such as Colorado where advance ballots were 1.6m versus 1.77m in 2010.

Elsewhere, anecdotal reports were slightly more positive. In Des Moines, Iowa, polling stations visited by the Guardian reported a “steady stream” at or above normal midterm levels.



Bill Gardner, New Hampshire’s secretary of state, said on Tuesday that he expected a record turnout.

“It appears the turnout has been quite brisk this morning,” Gardner told the Guardian, after checking in with several polling stations. “I predicted the turnout would exceed 2010 numbers-wise and, we’ll see, but so far it appears that it will.”

Gardner has forecast that about 464,000 people – some 53.7% of registered voters – will cast a ballot. He said he based his figure on factors including the number of absentee ballots filed before election day and a record 1,500 candidates standing for office across the state.

County officials in Franklin County, Kentucky, reportedly told poll workers at their morning training to expect a 55% turnout across the county, which is high for a midterm election.

The Democratic National Committee chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, was also more upbeat about turnout, insisting “we’re going to surprise a lot of pundits” in an interview with the New York Times, while her opposite number, Reince Priebus, boasted to MSNBC that his party aimed not just to capture the Senate but win enough purple states to show it was “becoming a more competent national party”.

The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, facing a re-election battle in Kentucky, told ABC: “We’ve learned a couple lessons over the last two cycles. If you don’t nominate really credible candidates you have a chance of not even taking advantage of a good year, and this could be a good year.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Voters fill in their ballots at a polling place located in Shoaf’s Wagon Wheel in Salisbury, North Carolina. Photograph: Chris Keane/Reuters

One factor that appeared to be having a less pronounced effect than expected in some states such as North Carolina is new voter ID laws that have slashed the number of early voting days by a week and restricted access in several other ways.



Republican state legislators who passed the law – including Thom Tillis, who is vying for a US Senate seat - have been accused of trying to suppress the voice of the overwhelmingly Democratic-supporting black community.

But, if that was the intention it seems not to have worked. When the polling station opened at 6.30am at the Ivy Community in a largely black area of Durham, there was already a line of about 50 voters that stretched back to the road. By 10.30am poll volunteers estimated that about 500 had passed through – a striking number in this district compared to past elections.

“We are already close to passing the number who voted on election day in 2010, and it’s still morning,” said Thelma White, the precinct chair.

Observers of North Carolina politics have been amazed by how the “culture war” theme that was central to the Republican discussion even two years ago has been virtually written out of the script this election cycle.



“Social issues are pretty much dropping off the map,” said Dr Thomas Little, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. “Tillis is making no mention of cultural issues – for him it’s all about tying [Kay] Hagan to Obamacare.”

Elsewhere candidates have focused on the flood of corporate money into the campaigns as a way to attack their opponents.

Colorado senator Mark Udall mocked the “plutocrat” Koch brothers, who bankrolled TV ads for his Republican rival Cory Gardner, and praised “the clipboard army” who were about to begin knocking on doors.

“I know you can do it. We’re surging. Ignore the polls.”

In Kentucky, final speeches by the Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes were also peppered with references to her opponent McConnell’s June speech at a conference hosted by the Koch brothers in which he promised no more votes on raising the minimum wage, extending unemployment or student loan reforms and called the passage of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill the “worst day of my political life”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell casts his ballot while his wife Elaine Chao looks on at a polling station in Louisville, Kentucky. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

But Republicans have consistently turned fire back on the White House rather than local candidates, focusing on issues such as its handling of Ebola, Isis and immigration.

“I think it’s all connected,” said Scott Brown in New Hampshire when asked during a radio interview whether the US should place restrictions on travellers from west Africa. “We have a border that’s so porous that anyone can walk across it. I think it’s naive to think that people aren’t going to be walking through here who have those types of diseases and/or other types of intent – criminal or terrorist.”

Meanwhile Joni Ernst in Iowa vowed to strive to tame big government, putting the Affordable Care Act, the EPA, the Clean Water Act, minimum wage and the department of education, among other things, in her sights.

She has visited Republican donors across the US, building up a war chest to take on Democrat Bruce Braley, and won wide backing from establishment grandees like Mitt Romney; Sarah Palin and Tea Party groups; Rand Paul’s libertarian wing; and the Koch brothers.

Braley borrowed Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign playbook and depicted his opponent as a right-wing extremist who would sacrifice the poor and middle class for billionaire tax breaks.

But negative campaigns by Democrats have also attracted criticism from their own supporters who fear they are overly focused on narrow social issues.

“That’s not the only thing you stand for!” one heckler, Leo Beserra, told Colorado’s Mark Udall during a rally when he launched repeated attacks on his opponent.

Beserra’s grievance – that the senator’s narrow focus on abortion has backfired – is shared by others in the party, but rarely voiced in public and never in the middle of the candidate’s campaign speech.

