By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The path to power in the House runs through a few dozen districts in Tuesday's election , with Republicans defending their majority and Democrats looking to gain 23 seats they would need to win control.

 

After the first polls close in the Eastern United States, the tallies will start revealing clues to where Americans stand in 2018 on immigration, health care, gender equality in the #MeToo era — and who they want representing them in Washington during the next two years of Donald Trump's presidency.

 

Some races to watch for those keeping score, listed in order of poll-closing times:
___
KENTUCKY
The ruby-red state known for the Derby and sweet bourbon is hosting one of the most competitive and expensive races in the country. The Lexington-area battle pits third-term Republican Rep. Andy Barr against Democrat Amy McGrath, a retired Marine fighter pilot. Trump won the 6th District by more than 15 percentage points in 2016. But with the help of carefully shaped campaign ads that went viral, McGrath holds the edge on campaign fundraising.
Polls close at 7 p.m. EST
__
VIRGINIA
Rep. Dave Brat won his seat after upsetting House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the 2014 Republican primary. Now, it's Brat's turn to fight for re-election to the Richmond-area district against Democrat Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer who is one of a record number of women running for Congress this year.
Polls close at 7 p.m. EST
___
NORTH CAROLINA
North Carolina's 9th District became a key election bellwether when the Rev. Mark Harris narrowly ousted three-term Rep. Robert Pittenger in the GOP primary, giving Democrats a wider opening in solidly red territory. Democrats answered with Dan McCready, an Iraq War veteran, solar energy company founder and Harvard Business School graduate. Trump won the district by 12 points and a Democrat hasn't been elected to represent it since John F. Kennedy was president.
Polls close at  7:30 p.m. EST
___
OHIO
It's a rematch in central Ohio's 12th District between Republican Troy Balderson and Democrat Danny O'Connor. Balderson won short-term control of the seat in August during a special election after Republican Pat Tiberi retired. Republicans in the district appear divided over the president, making the seat vulnerable to a Democrat who, like O'Connor, has supported some Republican ideas. He's engaged to a Republican who calls herself a "Dannycrat."
Polls close at 7:30 p.m. EST
___
FLORIDA
National Republicans and Democrats are pouring major resources into the Miami-area 27th District seat, held since 1989 by retiring Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. The Democratic nominee , Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, has ramped up her Spanish-language advertising and Hillary Clinton campaigned for her. But she's facing a stiff challenge from her Republican opponent, Maria Elvira Salazar, a Cuban-American and former broadcast journalist who, unlike Shalala, speaks Spanish. Though Trump won Florida in 2016, Clinton won this congressional district by nearly 20 points.
Polls close at 8 p.m. EST
___
NEW JERSEY
Along with California and Pennsylvania, suburb-filled New Jersey is a key battleground for House control. Two seats are open, vacated by veteran Republican Reps. Frank LoBiondo and Rodney Frelinghuysen , and could fall to the Democrats.
Keep a close eye on the 3rd District south of Trenton, which twice voted for President Barack Obama but went for Trump by about 6 percentage points. Fighting for re-election is Republican Rep. Tom MacArthur, who helped strike a deal that pushed the GOP's "Obamacare" repeal bill to House passage (it failed in the Senate). His Democratic opponent is political newcomer Andy Kim, a National Security Council staffer under Obama who has worked in Afghanistan.
Polls close 8 p.m. EST
___
PENNSYLVANIA
Democrats have particular reason to believe they can flip as many as six seats in the Keystone state. A state Supreme Court decision in January threw out 6-year-old congressional district boundaries as unconstitutionally drawn to benefit Republicans. The replacement districts approved by the court's Democratic majority have created more competitive contests.
One key race is playing out in the Philadelphia suburbs. Freshman Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a former FBI agent, has a centrist voting record and has explicitly tried to put distance between himself and Trump. He's facing Scott Wallace, a longtime Democratic Party donor who was co-chairman of the Wallace Global Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that supports liberal social movements. He's heavily funding his campaign and outspent Fitzpatrick nearly 5-to-1 in the July-September quarter.
Polls close at 8 p.m. EST.
___
KANSAS
Trump and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi loom large over a race in Northeastern Kansas. That's where Democrat Paul Davis, the former state House minority leader, and Republican Steve Watkins, an Army veteran and engineer, are battling for the seat vacated by retiring Democratic Rep. Lynn Jenkins. Davis has said he would not support Pelosi for speaker if Democrats win the House. And Republicans were hoping that Trump's visit to Topeka last month would boost Republican Steve Watkins, who has faced questions over claims he made about his qualifications and background.
Polls close 9 p.m. EST
___
MINNESOTA
Four House seats could flip from one party to the other in this traditionally Democratic stronghold.
For evidence of Democratic gains, look to the state's booming suburbs. Clinton won Minnesota's 3rd District west of Minnesota by 9 percentage points. GOP Rep. Erik Paulsen is under heavy pressure from Democrat Dean Phillips there. Paulsen avoided Trump's recent rally in Rochester and his rally this summer in Duluth, and he has said he wrote in Marco Rubio's name in the 2016 election. Still, Trump endorsed Paulsen last month.
Polls close 9 p.m. EST
____
NEW MEXICO
The open 2nd District seat left open by Republican Rep. Steve Pearce, who is running for governor, offers a look at how the parties fare along the border with Mexico, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans. Pearce attracted support from Hispanics and the region's oil and gas interests. But the race between Democrat Xochitl Torres Small and GOP opponent Yyvette Herrell has focused on hot-button issues such as immigration and guns. Torres Small has raised more than five times the campaign cash drawn by Herrell.
Polls close 9 p.m. EST.
___
NEW YORK
This deep-blue state offers a look at how race and Trump's clout are playing out in the president's home state.
North of New York City in the 19th District, an ad released last month by the Republican National Congressional Committee showed clips of Democrat Antonio Delgado performing songs from his 2006 rap album under his stage name, A.D. The Voice. Delgado, a Rhodes scholar and Harvard Law School graduate, said his opponent, Rep. John Faso, was using racial attacks to alienate him, a black first-time candidate in a district that is more than 90 percent white. Voters there are evenly split among Democrats, Republicans and independents, and went twice for Obama but favored Trump.
And in the Buffalo-area's 22nd District, first-term Rep. Claudia Tenney, an early Trump supporter, is drawing comparisons to the president by brashly suggesting some people who commit mass murders are Democrats and promoting a petition to lock up Clinton. But in a close race against Democrat Anthony Brindisi, she's shifted to a softer tone of bipartisanship. Brindisi, a state assemblyman, argues that Tenney's hyper-partisan approach undermines her claim of working across the aisle. Trump beat Clinton by nearly 16 percentage points here.
Polls close 9 p.m. EST.
___
IOWA
One Iowa race offers a test of whether a Trump-style advocate for immigration limits can win.
Republican Rep. Steve King is keeping a low profile in his bid for a ninth House term, his success suddenly in question after he was engulfed in controversy for his support of white nationalists. But Democrats, already hoping to flip two other seats among Iowa's four-person delegation, have a tough road to success in the 4th District that voted for Trump by 27 percentage points. In an unusual move, the GOP's campaign chief condemned King the week before the election, but it's unclear whether the criticism will boost his Democratic opponent, J.D. Scholten.
Polls close 10 p.m. EST.
___
CALIFORNIA
Democrats have targeted a string of Republican-held districts in California that carried Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
One such battleground in the nation's fruit-and-nut basket, the Central Valley, is where Republican Jeff Denham is trying to keep Democrat Josh Harder from taking his job. Fallout from Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings and fights over health care and immigration have produced a tossup race where Democrats count a slender registration edge. Denham, a centrist who voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, won re-election by 3 percentage points in 2016, while Clinton won the district with about 49 percent of the vote.
In another test of GOP clout in a rapidly diversifying district, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher's re-election is in question for the first time in 30 years. A wave of new and more diverse residents and divisions over Trump and the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct have produced a strong challenge from Democrat Harley Rouda. The district went to Clinton in the 2016 presidential contest.
Polls close at 11 p.m. EST.
___
WASHINGTON STATE
Southwest Washington's 3rd District offers a test of whether the tea party-driven GOP House takeover in 2010 survives. Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, first elected that year and twice re-elected with more than 60 percent of the vote, has been out-raised in campaign funding by Democrat Carolyn Long. Herrera Beutler has broken with her party on such issues as health care. But Long has emphasized her credentials as an outsider. The district stretching east along the Oregon border voted for Trump by 7 percentage points.
Polls close at 11 p.m. EST.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Gender politics have been a defining issue of this election cycle, beginning back with the mobilization by women against the victory and inauguration of President Donald Trump.

But it's not clear whether the #MeToo movement — and the controversy that sometimes surrounds it — will translate into political success for either party on Tuesday.
More women than ever before won major party primaries for Congress and governor this year, giving women the chance to significantly increase their numbers in office. They're donating more money to political campaigns, too, and they've become a well-established force in the 2018 elections.

"I feel very good about where women are going to be," said Christina Reynolds, the vice president of communications for EMILY's List, a group dedicated to supporting Democratic women in politics. "I think regardless of what happens, women have shown that they are no longer happy with other people representing them and speaking for them."

But Republicans, too, feel the focus on gender politics could benefit them. The fight over Justice Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court galvanized their voters, they say, and could be a factor in races including the close re-election campaign for Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.

Meanwhile, #MeToo's impact has had ripples in other races, too. In Minnesota, Rep. Keith Ellison is fending off allegations of abuse from an ex-girlfriend that have turned the race for state attorney general on its head. Ellison has denied those allegations. In the same state, U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat, and Karen Housley, a Republican, are fighting over the seat that Smith was appointed to after Al Franken resigned following allegations by women that he touched them inappropriately.

Like most midterm elections, the 2018 campaign is also a referendum on the incumbent president. And among women, who vote historically at higher rates than men, Trump's standing is still bleak. In the latest NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll, 49 percent of women said that they disapproved of Trump's performance, compared with 44 percent of men. And 51 percent of women overall said that Trump would be a major factor in their vote.
"Women have been energized for a long time, and it's connected to Donald Trump," said

 

Karine Jean-Pierre, a senior adviser for MoveOn.org and a veteran of four Democratic presidential campaigns. "We are in this really awful time where people are just tired and ready and there's been such an energy around electoral politics, for at least a year since the Women's March."

 

Republican women say they, too, can lay claim to a share of the energy, particularly in the weeks since the bruising fight over Kavanaugh's nomination. Alice Stewart, a veteran of Republican presidential campaigns, said it's critical that the #MeToo movement "stay strong and continue."

 

"It has done a lot of good to hold men in power and men who have committed these acts accountable," she said in an interview. "In terms of significance, it is greater than the midterm elections."

 

But, Stewart added, in the case of Kavanaugh's confirmation, the movement was "temporarily hijacked for certain groups for their own gain," a tactic that she believes ended up hurting Democrats.

 

"In that instance, it backfired. It galvanized Republicans. It made them unite behind Brett Kavanaugh," she said. "I say it backfired in that it reignited the intensity of Republicans due to the levels that the Democrats would go to, to turn the confirmation process into such a character assassination."

 

But women who opposed Kavanaugh said the energy from recent protests in Washington and elsewhere over his nomination would fuel Democratic women in 2018 and beyond.
Kelley Robinson, the national organizing director for Planned Parenthood Action Fund, remembered standing on the Supreme Court steps, addressing a rally after Kavanaugh was confirmed. "I've never felt that kind of wave of sadness, of grief and of anger that I felt in front of that large group," she said.

 

Robinson said she believes that voters — and particularly women — will remember that fight. Every senator that voted for Kavanaugh, Robinson said, "they sided with folks that disbelieved, that mocked survivors and sided against women."

 

Sarah Sherman, who founded Vote MeToo PAC to support female candidates this year, said that after the Kavanaugh vote she personally felt "really steamrolled, but we peeled ourselves off the pavement" to continue to fight on behalf of women.

The fight was "definitely something that has galvanized Republicans," she said. But she also said there may be women — some survivors of assault themselves  — who will be propelled to the polls by the Women's March, the Kavanaugh battle and in rebuke to the Trump presidency who go unseen.

 

"When you're walking in there, you don't have to explain yourself to anyone. You don't have to explain yourself to your boss," she said. "You still have your vote."

 

Some women said that while #MeToo is not explicitly aimed toward electing more women or driving female voters to the polls, the movement and the new wave of women in politics share the same fuel.

 

"It's about ways of approaching the same basic problem: A group of people who have not seen themselves reflected in the power system is stepping up and saying, 'This isn't working for me. I want to push back against the status quo because otherwise, I won't be protected or fought for,'" said Amanda Litman, a co-founder of Run For Something, which helps left-leaning millennials run for office.

 

At its core, the #MeToo movement is a cultural movement, and cultural movements often far outpace national politics, said Shaunna Thomas, a co-founder of Ultraviolet, which advocates for women's rights. She noted that November's elections are the first "since women around the country started demanding that sexual abusers be held accountable."

 

"An electoral outcome at this stage is a lot to expect of a movement that is about challenging patriarchy -- it's a huge goal," offered Thomas. "It's not just, we want fewer women to be sexually assaulted or raped or harassed. What we're demanding is a world where women have control over their own bodies, their own minds. That's a project that goes far beyond needing to build and exercise electoral power."
___
For AP's complete coverage of the U.S. midterm elections: http://apne.ws/APPolitics