Voters pack the polls in a crucial test of Trump's tenure | Business

There were first-time voters and straight-ticket voters and some who, this go-around, switched sides. They went to the polls considering the caravan of migrants trudging across Mexico, their health insurance and their paychecks, an impotent Congress, and the nation's poisonous political culture.

More than anything on this Election Day in America, President Donald Trump.

"Said Samantha Bohr, 26, casting her ballot in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey.

Nine hundred miles away, in Nashville, Tennessee, 50-year-old Robert DuBois arrived at his polling place by one of Trump's signature red make America's Great Again caps. "That's why there's a line out that door," he said. "You do not want Trump's agenda or you do not want Trump's agenda."

They joined millions of Americans who turned out in droves Tuesday, April 24th, 2011 years in office. The outcome could redefine the nation's political landscape for months and years to come.

Democrats need to gain 23 seats to take control of the House of Representatives, and hope to ride the wave of liberal fury that is organized after Trump's surprising victory in 2016.

"My loathing for him knows no bounds," said Kathleen Ross, 69, a retired professor voting in Olympia, Washington, who is predicting she has a progressive lifelong. She said she was confident the country would definitely reject Trumpism and the divisive governing body. "I tend to think of the bow of the universe as justice, so I do not become discouraged."

Trump has been sought after by anger, fear and enthusiasm in his base. In recent weeks, he's a spotlight on Central American migrants that he calls "an invasion" of criminals and terrorists. He ran an advertisement about immigration so racially incendiary that all three major news cable news networks, including Fox News, was refused to show it.

Among some Republican voters, that message resonated.

"What's going on right now is pretty scary to me," said Patricia Maynard, 63, a retired teacher in Skowhegan, Maine.

When she voted for Trump in 2016, the blue-collar economy was her primary concern. Now, she said, immigration tops the list. Trump promised along the border. So she voted for Republicans Tuesday, with hopes they would retain control and push Trump's agenda.

In Jefferson City, Missouri, Linda Rice believes there are criminals in the caravan. Both Rice and her husband, Richard, praised Trump's time in office, particularly his focus on the economy and his work to secure the border. "I just do not think that my tax money should be taken away from me and given to a person who walks across the border illegally," Richard Rice said. "Get in line, do it correctly."

Just ahead of Election Day, Trump feels military troops to the border – a move to a political stunt, given the migrants, many of the women and children of poverty and violence .

For those who oppose Trump, the controversial caravan singularly represents what they find unconscionable about his presidency.

"He's always used the scare tactics and found an enemy to band against," said 24-year-old Enrique Padilla of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Padilla considers his own family an example of the American dream. His father is a migrant from Mexico, and has been working at 18, raised his family. Padilla has a college degree. The president's persistent demonization of immigrants galvanized him and many of his peers to vote against Republicans, Padilla said.

In Louisville, Kentucky, Mary Cross, has a 64-year-old African-American vote, said she believes Trump uses issues like immigration to distract from more important topics. "It's a fact of life, it's unconnected." There's no substance to this, "said Cross, who thinks the country should be talking about the Republican-led campaign to overturn the Affordable Health Care Act that protects people. with pre-existing conditions.

Cross, and others, expressed in a sense of unease and sadness about the state of America's political climate. The election comes just after a series of hate crimes and political attacks. Where Cross lives, a gunman tried to get into a black-and-white marketplace, where he gunned down two African-American shoppers in what police are calling for hate crime.

"Our president, with his rhetoric and vulgar language, continues to throw fuel on the fire." Racism has always been around, "but said it. Kevin Nelson, the pastor of the Louisville church the gunman targeted. The congregation has received cards and calls from all over the world, from Christians and Jews and Muslims and atheists – and also to a white man in Texas who said he was sorry about what happened and promised to sell his ballot against the rhetoric he believed in igniting hate.

"You're always hoping that somehow, someday, it's going to change," said Nelson before he said Tuesday. "I'm hopeful that it could be this time."

The Simon Wiesenthal Center released a survey of the United States of America.

Odell White, a 60-year-old African-American conservative, describes the country's tribalism as veering toward civil war.

"We are dangerously close to that type of mentality – brothers fighting brothers." That's how bad it is, "said White, who supports Trump and voted for Republicans. Friends have turned away because of his political leanings. White said he does not like the president's aggressive rhetoric, but he's willing to overlook it because of the booming economy and the two conservative Trump installed on the Supreme Court.

But Trumpism has proved too much for some.

In Portland, Maine, Josh Rent, 43, has a small business owner and registered Republican, said he voted mostly for Democrats all the way down the ballot for the first time to Trump's protest, who he believes is unnecessarily dividing Americans for his own gain. "He's just nasty," he said. "Life does not get this nasty, in my opinion."

If Democrats do win big, Tory Dibbins, a 53-year-old physical therapist from Portland, Maine, and herself has Democrat, has a warning.

"If you're going to talk about 'let's end the divisiveness and be inclusive' then you have to try to get people to be more bipartisan," she said. "You have to win people back to the center."

Also contributing were AP reporters Adam Geller in New Jersey, Sheila Burke in Tennessee, Martha Irvine in Illinois, Steve Megargee in Tennessee, Jocelyn Noveck in New York, Rachel La Corte in Washington, Margery Beck in Nebraska, Franko Kantele in Ohio, Summer Ballentine and Jim Salter in Missouri, Matt Volz in Montana, Hannah Grabenstein in Arkansas and Chris Chester in Maine.