Trump and Melania step out to vote in Florida while teasing 2024 bid

Donald Trump joined millions of Americans turning out to vote on Tuesday as he cast his ballot for the critical 2022 midterm Election Day. He told reporters afterward that he was ‘looking forward’ to a planned announcement at his Mar-a-Lago home, which is widely speculated to be the beginning of his third campaign for the White House. Trump also confirmed that he voted to re-elect GOP Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, with whom he’s been at odds over the rising Republican star’s refusal to rule out a potential 2024 primary challenge to Trump.

The ex-president bashed his former ally as ‘Ron DeSanctimonious’ at a campaign rally on Saturday night, a move that provoked the ire of fellow Republicans. The former president was seen voting in-person at the Morton and Barbara Mandel Recreation Center in Palm Beach, Florida alongside his wife Melania Trump. It’s his second election voting as a Sunshine State resident after switching his home state from New York in 2019. It comes after he told supporters in Ohio last night that Tuesday would bring a ‘red wave’ and dropped his biggest hint yet that he’s considering another White House bid.

Asked about his potential 2024 candidacy while in Palm Beach, Trump replied: ‘I think Tuesday (Nov. 15) will be a very exciting day for a lot of people, and I look forward to seeing you at Mar-a-Lago.’ ‘I think we’re going to have a great night, it’s going to be great for the country,’ he told reporters of the midterms after casting his ballot. ‘No matter who you vote for, you have to vote. This is going to be a very important election.’ A Trumpworld source told DailyMail.com that he was planning to announce at the rally in Ohio on Monday night to ‘take credit’ for Republicans’ expected victory. His close friend and former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, also told DailyMail.com that Trump should let Tuesday’s results speak for themselves.

‘I’m going to be making a very big announcement on Tuesday, November 15,’ Trump said. He added: ‘If you want to stop the destruction of our country and save the American dream, then tomorrow you must vote Republican in a giant red wave that we’ve all been hearing about,’ Trump said. Giuliani told DailyMail.com on Monday afternoon, ‘I think he’s gonna run. In fact, I’m at a point where I’d be surprised if he didn’t.’ But Republicans, especially those in moderate districts, are privately worried about the specter of a potential Trump 2024 campaign. They’re likely relieved he did not announce last night, which could have given Democrats an eleventh-hour spike in momentum if Trump made the race about himself.

Early on Tuesday morning, voters began casting their ballots in the ‘knife-edge’ midterm election which could see President Joe Biden’s agenda stymied by a Republican-controlled Congress for the next two years. A record Election Day turnout is likely after a 40-year-high of more than 44 million Americans cast their ballots early. It surpassed the early voter turnout for 2018, the year of Democrats’ ‘blue wave’ and is the highest number for a midterm election since at least 1982. Photographs showed lines already wrapped around the block at polling stations across the East Coast and then in the West in states like Arizona (pictured), where polls open at 6am local time.

It’s shaping up to be a long night for President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after polls close, with the vast majority of election forecasts suggesting big gains for Republicans in the House of Representatives and a very high chance of winning a slim majority in the Senate. The GOP’s confidence is palpable – an aide told DailyMail.com that anything less than a 30 to 40-seat pickup would be a ‘bad night.’ Biden himself conceded that it will be ‘tougher’ for Democrats to keep their slim majority in the House, in comments to reporters on Monday night. With job approval numbers in the high 30s and low 40s for much of his term, the president has largely stayed out of races in competitive states like Arizona and Nevada.

A brief surge of momentum that Democrats experienced over the summer, following the Supreme Court’s reversal of federal abortion protections, seems to have dissipated as voters remain increasingly concerned about the state of the economy and rising crime levels. The vast majority of pre-Election Day polls have shown Republicans experiencing a last-minute surge in enthusiasm driven by those issues. Left-wing voters are also disenchanted with their party’s messaging, which has been heavily focused on abortion and the GOP’s threat to democracy, and have complained that Democrats’ platform does not resonate enough with people’s everyday issues. If the margins are unprecedentedly close tonight, it’s possible that Americans may not know which party controls the House or Senate for a matter of days. Pictured: People casting their votes in Miami, Florida. 

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