Biden casts early vote in polarized midterm elections

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Joe Biden voted early in this year's polarized midterm elections on Saturday, casting his ballot alongside his 18-year-old granddaughter Natalie Biden at a polling station in his home state of Delaware.

"This is not a referendum," the Democrat said of the upcoming midterms. "It's a fundamental choice between two different people."

The 2022 midterm elections will be held on Nov. 8, with all 435 seats of the U.S. House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 Senate seats on the ballot.

Plus, 39 state and territorial gubernatorial elections, as well as numerous other state and local elections, will be contested.

More than 20 million people have voted so far in the elections, open data from the United States Elections Project showed.

Seventy-one percent of voters said the United States is headed in the wrong direction, compared with 20 percent who said it's on the right track, according to a NBC News poll released earlier this month.

Eighty-one percent of Democrats said they believed the Republican Party's agenda posed a threat that, if not stopped, will destroy America, the poll found.

A similar share of Republicans, 79 percent, held the same view of the Democratic Party's agenda.

"It seems like voters are no longer looking for a 'Contract with America,' they want a divorce," said pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates.

"The United States and its voters are in a very sour mood," said public opinion pollster John Zogby.

"The numbers of people that trust the government to do the right thing, the numbers of people that trust either political party, and even Republicans towards the Republican Party and Democrats towards the Democratic Party, are really at all-time lows," elaborated Zogby.