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A new poll suggests last week’s debate performance hasn’t put any significant dent on Democratic Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman’s base of support.

Fetterman is still recovering from a stroke a few months ago that left him struggling with language processing and had a rather halting performance with awkward pauses.

Democrats feared the performance could seriously affect a race that has grown tighter by the day.

The new Monmouth University poll, external finds that 48% of the electorate in Pennsylvania will either definitely or probably vote for Fetterman - similar to the level of support prior to the debate.

The support for Republican Mehmet Oz is at 42% but the number of voters who say they will definitely vote for him has gone up several points.

As BBC’s Anthony Zurcher pointed out after the debate, early voting has already begun in Pennsylvania and few voters in the state are uncertain who to support at this point.

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Laura Trevelyan
BBC World News America presenter

Speaking to mothers in the stands at the college football game in Scranton on Saturday about which issues matter to them in this election, abortion rights came up as frequently as inflation.

The right to choose whether to have an abortion should be available to women, the football mums told me.

But watching her grandson play football was Republican official Robin Medeiros, who told me that the party's more restrictive position on abortion rights isn't hurting it with voters.

Robin says when she speaks to women about it, she tells them abortion isn't going to become completely illegal under Republican leadership.

She says she tells them they should say relax when it comes to that issue.

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Ohio voted solidly Republican in two consecutive presidential elections, so this year’s Senate race was never supposed to be as close as it has been.

Democrats nominated Tim Ryan, 49, a 10-term lawmaker in the House of Representatives and 2020 presidential candidate.

Republicans chose JD Vance, 38, a venture capitalist who achieved widespread fame with his best-selling 2016 memoir-turned-Netflix-film "Hillbilly Elegy".

Once a so-called "Never Trumper", Vance now enthusiastically embraces Trump. Or as the former president described it: "JD is kissing my ass, he wants my support so bad."

The novice politician has stumbled on the campaign trail and Ryan - who once challenged Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her leadership gavel in the House - has kept the pressure on.

But outside spending by Republican groups is keeping Vance afloat in the final weeks of the campaign, with adverts assailing Ryan as a fake "moderate" who fully supports the Democrats' "radical agenda".

Vance has now edged ahead in polls, but he will have to work to win.

Read more: The races that could decide the US Senate.

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A federal judge in the hotly-contested key US state Arizona has issued a temporary restraining order against an election-monitoring group.

Clean Elections USA were being sued for voter intimidation after some members were allegedly seen carrying weapons and taking photos of voters at ballot boxes in Maricopa County.

The group was monitoring voters at election boxes and its members support unproven claims by former US President Donald Trump that voter fraud caused him to lose the 2020 US election.

They were sued last week by the League of Women Voters, who say the group are engaging in "time-tested methods of voter intimidation".

The judge has ordered members of the Clean Elections USA to stop openly carrying guns and wearing visible body armour within 250 feet.

He has also placed restrictions on members speaking to or yelling at voters close to ballot boxes.

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President Biden will deliver a major speech about threats to democracy at 19:00 (23:00GMT) on Wednesday night, it has just been announced.

The speech will focus on "the threat of election deniers and those who seek to undermine faith in voting and democracy," Democratic officials say.

Biden will address "horrible" political violence in a speech, according to White House advisers.

The speech will be delivered at Union Station, the train station within blocks of the US Capitol. It will be at an event sponsored by the Democratic National Committee.

Holly Honderich
BBC News, Washington

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From his home in Florida, Donald Trump - the self-proclaimed "king" of endorsements - has weighed in on almost 200 races, backing Republican candidates in Senate, House and top state offices across the US.

Experts say Trump's endorsement spree is extraordinary - far above the typical number for ex-presidents.

So who are the candidates?

The majority of candidates backed by Trump bore some resemblance to him - physically speaking.

Of the new candidates he endorsed, roughly 80% were Caucasian and 70% were male.

And, like Trump when he ran for presidents, many (53%) were political neophytes, who had never held office before, including Pennsylvania’s doctor Mehmet Oz and Georgia’s Herschel Walker.

Loyalty was the other key factor in securing Trump’s support.

The majority of candidates promoted, in some way, Trump’s unfounded claim that he won the 2020 presidential election, including Kari Lake, the former news anchor running to be Arizona’s governor.

Read more here

Speaking to a Pennsylvania radio station on Tuesday, Donald Trump added fuel to a baseless conspiracy theory about the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

He called the attack a "sad situation" and speculated that authorities are hiding details from the public.

"The glass it seems was broken from the inside to the out so it wasn't a break in, it was a break out," he claimed.

Authorities say the attack began with a break-in, and deny that Paul Pelosi, 82, and the assailant knew each other in advance.

On Tuesday, it emerged that the attack was caught on surveillance cameras owned by US Capitol Police, the force that guards congressional lawmakers.

Speaker Pelosi was in Washington, on the opposite side of the country from her San Francisco home where the attack occurred. Her security detail was with her at the time, and her husband had no protection in their home.

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With just six days to go until the midterm elections, campaigning is picking up speed across the country.

Let's take a quick look at who's speaking where today.

• First Lady Jill Biden will visit Pennsylvania for a political event for Democratic Congresswoman Susan Wild
• Both Republican Senate candidate Dr Mehmet Oz & Democratic Senate candidate Governor John Fetterman have events

• Oz will be in Lancaster county and Fetterman has an event at Penn State tonight along with state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is running for governor
• Vice-president Kamala Harris will be in Boston to stump for Massachusetts candidate for governor Maura Heale

• In Georgia, Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock & Republican challenger Herschel Walker are very close in the polls so will be pushing for votes
• Walker will be in Richmond Hill and St Mary’s while Warnock will be in Valdosta

• Barack Obama will make a stop on Wednesday in Laveen Village, Arizona as he rallies voters through the West
• He will be participating in another Get Out the Vote Rally, this time in support of Senator Mark Kelly and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs

Nada Tawfik
BBC News, reporting from New Jersey

Today I'm headed out to one of the most affluent congressional districts in the United States, which happens to be in my home state.

New Jersey's 7th District encompasses New York City commuter towns, wealthy suburbs and conservative rural areas in the northwest, cutting across the entire width of the state.

It was one of the 40 seats Democrats gained in the 2018 midterm elections when Donald Trump was president, largely because well-educated swing voters here were turned off by the former president.

Now that he's not technically on the ticket, all eyes are on whether they will stick with the Democrats or flip. This is a competitive race but one where Republicans have the advantage.

The district's boundaries were redrawn to include more Republican dominant towns following the completion of the 2020 census.

Laura Trevelyan
BBC World News America presenter

The Backyard Alehouse bar in President Biden’s hometown of Scranton was packed this weekend, as fans of the Philadelphia Phillies flocked here to watch their team take on the Houston Astros in the baseball World Series championship.

For most people in this bar, the midterm elections are commanding less attention than the fate of Scranton’s favourite baseball team. But for the Alehouse head chef James Bodnar, weighing which way to vote is proving very time consuming.

James voted for Donald Trump in 2016 but didn’t like how his Make America Great Again slogan translated into government.

In 2020, James switched his vote to Scranton’s most famous son, Joe Biden.

Now though, James is worried about the cost of gas and groceries in Scranton – and concerned about his staff, who struggle to earn enough to fill up their gas tanks in a state where the minimum wage is $7.25 (£6.30) an hour.

James is finding it tough to decide which party to support in the midterms.

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As we're focusing on the state of Pennsylvania, we would be remiss if we didn't mention the biggest news in the state this week that's on everyone's mind.

The Philadelphia Phillies are currently facing off against the Houston Astros in the baseball World Series final.

On Tuesday night, five home runs helped the "Phils" thrash the "'Stros'" 7-0 to take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series. Read more here.

Okay, now back to politics...

Laura Trevelyan
BBC World News America presenter

Image source, Getty Images

This ruling by Pennsylvania’s highest court is a win for Republicans, who have made election security a rallying cry in the midterm elections.

Donald Trump narrowly won the state of Pennsylvania in 2016, and then lost by a slim margin to Joe Biden in 2020, leading Republicans to contest the result – and for some to claim the election was stolen because of ballot irregularities.

Several Republican candidates running for state-wide office in Pennsylvania next week continue to insist that Trump is the rightful president.

With a close senate race between Republican Mehmet Oz and Democrat John Fetterman for the open seat in Pennsylvania, which could potentially decide which party controls the US Senate, the parties are chasing every vote.

So if some mail-in ballots are not counted because they're marked with the wrong date, this could be significant when it comes to the final tally.

However, Pennsylvania's top court has ordered that ballots with the incorrect date be saved - since legal appeals to this ruling are likely, and there’s the potential for a higher court to overrule or find that federal election law has been violated.

Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State has already warned that it could take several days for the votes to be counted and certified - and legal challenges over mail-in ballots could delay the result still further, depending on how close the margins are, and how fiercely contested the vote tally is.

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Let's take a look at some news that broke on Tuesday in the key midterm battleground state of Pennsylvania.

In a win for Republicans, the state's Supreme Court has ordered state election officials to refrain from counting mail-in ballots that lack a written date on their outer envelope.

This could throw out numerous votes in close races that could determine control of Congress.

Republicans filed the case and have been fighting to have cancelled ballots with incorrect information on them. They say it's part of an effort to ensure election security.

Democrats say the lawsuits are part of an effort to disallow votes and could sway tight races.

The question of whether ballots with small errors such as a missing date on the envelope or a signature that does not precisely match the one a voter used when registering to vote has been hotly contested in recent elections in Pennsylvania.

In 2020, county boards of elections in the state were stopped from cancelling absentee or mail-in ballots based on signature comparisons, rejections that Democrats said were designed to annul votes for Joe Biden.

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Close contests have become the norm in Pennsylvania. The last two presidential elections were each decided by barely 1% in the state - and this year’s Senate race could also come down to the wire.

Perhaps that's why it's become so personal. Or maybe it's because of the larger-than-life characters.

John Fetterman, 53, is the tattooed 6ft 8in (2m) Harvard graduate turned small town mayor who usually dresses in shorts and a hoodie. The progressive Democrat had a commanding lead until he suffered a stroke a few months ago that required him to use closed captioning technology to answer questions.

His Republican opponent, 62-year-old Mehmet Oz - better known to TV viewers as "Dr Oz" from the Oprah Winfrey Show - has capitalised, repeatedly challenging him to public debates and even suggesting Fetterman would not be ill if he "had ever eaten a vegetable in his life".

In return, the Fetterman campaign has trolled the celebrity heart surgeon on social media as a “carpetbagger” (meaning an opportunistic outsider) from New Jersey, a peddler of disproven miracle cures and even a puppy killer.

Don’t expect a quick result here on election night. In fact, we’ve heard reports it could take days.

Read more about key races that could decide the US Senate here.

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Today we're putting the spotlight on races in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Ohio.

We'll be bringing you Laura Trevelyan's reporting from Pennsylvania, Nada Tawfik is on-the-ground in New Jersey talking to voters, and Kayla Epstein is in New York and will be telling us about the governor's race.

Image source, Getty Images

Historically, turnout in midterm elections has been much lower than for presidential votes.

While this began to change in 2018, this year looks set to see a historically high numbers of voters.

It’s too early to say how strong voter turnout will be for the midterm elections, but one thing we can expect is a reasonable level of early and postal voting.

One set of data from election officials, Edison Research, found that more than 21.4 million ballots had already been cast in 46 states by 31 October, with more expected as the vote approaches.

And in Georgia - the site of several key races - the amount of voters who turned out on the first day of voting alone was almost double the figure from the last midterms.

While we’ll have to wait awhile to see the final turnout, most experts are expecting it to be at least on par with the 2020 presidential election (66.8%), which some suggest may reflect the importance of this year’s election.

Image source, Getty Images

With less than a week to go until election day here’s what we can expect on Wednesday, and the latest news lines today.

• Barack Obama continues to support Democrats on the campaign trail - this time in Phoenix, Arizona, to campaign for Senator (and former astronaut) Mark Kelly and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who is running for governor
• President Joe Biden will deliver remarks on infrastructure this evening and speak on how the administration is creating "good paying jobs”, the White House says. On Thursday and Friday he’ll be in New Mexico and California, before focusing on the East Coast again over the weekend
• An emergency court order issued by a judge in Arizona goes into effect, barring people from monitoring ballot drop boxes. Conservatives who say they fear election fraud have been hanging around boxes, sometimes armed, and videotaping people as they drop off their early votes
• A new Wall Street Journal poll of white women living in suburban areas finds that many are once again favouring Republican candidates. It comes after Democrats saw a huge boost in support over the summer following the Supreme Court’s invalidation of the national right to abortion
• Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court has ordered election officials not to count mail-in ballots that are undated or incorrectly dated by voters. This is expected to disproportionally invalidate Democratic votes, since their supporters more commonly vote by mail. The state’s highest court has been quarrelling over the issue for years

Some major names were on the campaign trail in the last 24 hours.

The midterm elections are just six days away - Americans go to the polls on Tuesday.

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We know the midterm elections are confusing, and we want to answer your questions.

Over the coming days, BBC News correspondents from across the US will be answering your questions as part of the build up to election day - one which could define the next two years of Joe Biden's presidency.

For anyone who would like to submit a question, click here and fill out the form so our reporters can take a look.

John Sudworth
North America Correspondent

Stephen Richer is a one-man embodiment of the exasperation and despair at the heart of traditional Republicanism.

A long-term GOP supporter, as well as an elected official in charge of running the voting process in Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa, nowadays he finds himself very much out of step with the direction his party has taken.

The Republican slate here is dominated by election deniers in a state where the conspiracy has really taken root.

"One of the most preposterous allegations that still has people believe in it, is that we took ballots from the 2020 election, we fed them to chickens, and then we incinerated the chickens," Richer tells me.

With key positions - including the job of administering Arizona’s vote in the 2024 presidential election - being contested by candidates who claim Donald Trump won in 2020, Richer says he’s deeply worried about the future health of US democracy.

While he believes many of the candidates don't actually believe the last election was stolen and are instead supporting the theory purely for "pecuniary of political gain" he sees little comfort in that.