The US mid-term elections in just under three weeks’ time will help define the rest of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Americans will vote for members of both chambers of Congress, as well as for governors in 36 out of 50 states.
Between now and then, we’ll bring you updates and all the best analysis every weekday in this round-up.
Today’s round-up includes some big, big numbers and the debate on healthcare being placed front and centre.
One of the big questions this year is whether the trend of low turnout in mid-term elections will be bucked.
We won’t have a definite answer until 6 November itself, but we might already be getting a sense that things certainly are different this year.
That’s because early voting or mail-only voting has already started in 20 states – and there are some pretty striking numbers coming in.
The office of Georgia’s secretary of state says 69,049 people turned up to vote on Monday, the first day they could do so in person. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that some people in Cobb County had to queue for two hours to vote – more than three weeks before the election is held.
Compare that number with the first day of early voting in the last mid-terms in 2014 – only 20,898 people voted then.
The total of people who had voted early in Georgia (by mail or in person) is up 170% on 2014.
There might other factors at play in Georgia – there’s a particularly close race for governor between Stacey Abrams (who could become the first black female governor) and Brian Kemp. And as we reported last week, there is real concern over the suppression of the black vote in Georgia.
But what’s happening in Georgia is also happening elsewhere – in neighbouring Tennessee, for example.
The Tennessean newspaper reports that in Davidson County (where the state capital Nashville is located), 10,249 people turned up on the first day of early voting on Wednesday.
That’s just 2,000 people fewer than turned out on the first day of early voting in the 2016 presidential election. Generally, presidential elections tend to get a significantly higher turnout than mid-terms.