53% of Americans disapprove of President Trump's job performance

Only one place to start today, and that's the 2018 midterm elections in the U.S.
Normally these midterms, which come halfway through a president's four-year term, are not as big as the presidential election, but some pundits say,... *this election is attracting so much interest because it's considered a referendum on U.S. President Donald Trump.
Now in some states... people are still casting their ballots... while some polls have closed.
And our Cha Sang-mi joins us in the studio today to tell us more about the midterm elections.
Hi Sang-mi.

Good to be here.

So what do we know so far?

Ji-yoon, after watching all the midterm election polls, we are starting to see some results
Polls are closed in most of the states now, with the first that closed at 6 p.m. local time, that's just about four hours ago... in Indiana and Kentucky.

And just around now, we are standing by for the polls closing in the rest of the country, mainly along the west coast, including California and Washington.

In preliminary results so far, from the national exit poll provided by the RCP we know that nearly 44 percent of voters approve of President Trump's job performance, while 54 percent disapprove.

As the votes are being counted across half the country, we know some of the winners of some key red-state Senate races in Montana, Indiana, West Virginia and North Dakota.
In Ohio, the Red-state Democratic Senators Sherrod Brown and Bob Casey in Pennsylvania are likely to get re-elected.
In the key battleground state of Indiana... where Trump won by 20 percentage points back in 2016,... Republican businessman Mike Braun is ahead against the Democratic incumbent Joe Donnelly.
The races are important in these states as losing any of these seats would make it difficult for Democrats to take back the Senate.
Democratic Senator Tim Kaine will win the Senate seat in Virginia, while Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont easily won re-election.