The Run-Up
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The people who don’t vote are often left out of the political conversation. Campaigns don’t spend much money on them, and the media doesn’t devote much coverage to them. But to understand a presidential contest like the 2024 race — one that threatens to be extremely close — we have to understand not just the people who show up to vote, but also those who sit out elections. This week, we talk to several people who skipped the last Trump-Biden matchup in 2020 and ask how they’re thinking about 2024. We also speak to Anthony Williams, who directed a project at the Knight Foundation that surveyed 12,000 nonvoters ahead of the 2020 election. We ask: How do you define this group of people? And what, if anything, will change their minds when it comes to voting? https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
This week, the Democratic National Committee formed a unit to push back against third-party candidates and independents. At the same time, a number of Biden allies have formed a super PAC called Clear Choice, which plans to do the same, signaling the seriousness of the potential impact of an outsider candidate. One such candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is polling above 10 percent in national surveys and is well known for his family lineage. Today, the candidate shares why he decided to jump in, the issues that matter most to him personally and his thoughts on positioning himself as a potential spoiler. https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
On Tuesday night, Donald J. Trump won another four nominating contests and officially became the presumptive Republican nominee. That’s despite the criminal charges, the judgments made against him in defamation and sexual abuse cases, the hundreds of millions of dollars in legal penalties and the continued fallout from the events of Jan. 6, 2021. Considering all of that, we want to ask Republicans the same questions we posed to Democrats last week https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/podcasts/trump-biden-rematch.html — and to answer them more directly than we have before: How exactly did we end up with Donald Trump as the Republican nominee again? And why? To answer these questions, we turn to two different branches of the Republican Party today. First, we speak with Henry Barbour, who has been a member of the Republican National Committee since 2005, a consummate party insider. He supported Nikki Haley in the primary but now supports Mr. Trump. Then we speak with Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran against Mr. Trump for the nomination, but was most similar to the former president among the other candidates in terms of ideology and style. He now fully backs his one-time rival and embraces the MAGA philosophy he represents. https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
With Super Tuesday behind us, this week is the end of one chapter of this campaign. On the Republican side, former President Donald Trump’s only remaining challenger, Nikki Haley, is out of the race. And on the Democratic side, President Biden has so far secured more than 70 percent of the delegates he needs to secure the nomination. The general election is here. And so too is the rematch we’ve been expecting, despite the fact that the majority of Americans continue to say they wish they had other options. So for the next two episodes, we’re going to focus on a question we hear more than anything else: How exactly did we wind up with these two candidates? And why? First up: We map Mr. Biden’s path to the 2024 election through conversations with Elaine Kamarck, a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee and the author of “Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates,” and Ron Klain, the president’s former White House chief of staff. https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
It’s Super Tuesday. That means that people in 15 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia) and one territory (American Samoa) are going to the polls. Usually, Super Tuesday is one of the biggest dates on the primary calendar — a day when a lot of people across the country make their voices heard. This year is different. There’s no reason to believe that today’s results will alter the seemingly inevitable rematch between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump. But there are noteworthy primaries in contests that could matter for control of the House and Senate and in important governor races. Today: Amy Walter, the publisher and editor in chief of The Cook Political Report, previews the Super Tuesday races worth watching. https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
For a lot of his most loyal supporters, Donald Trump isn’t just the former president or even the potential next president. He is, in their view, the true president — because many of them believe the 2020 election was stolen. So with Mr. Trump marching toward the Republican nomination and a likely rematch with President Biden in November, we went to this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference for a temperature check on election denial. Can the MAGA movement move on? Or is the only result they’ll trust a result where Mr. Trump wins? https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
For the past few months, we’ve been asking our listeners to write in with questions, and we’ve gotten some great ones. Things like: How does polling work https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/08/podcasts/polls-2024-election-trump-biden.html? Does Joe Biden’s stance on Gaza present a campaign challenge https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/01/podcasts/biden-israel-war-approval.html? And who might Donald Trump select as his running mate? But as we were sorting through them, an underlying theme started to emerge: People can’t seem to fathom that we’re careening toward a Biden-Trump rematch — and they want to know if anything could alter this seemingly inevitable reality. So today, with some of our most trusted colleagues on the Times Politics team, we talk through all of the hypotheticals: What happens in the case of a health emergency? How about a criminal conviction? Could this be the year that a third-party candidate breaks through? Or is it too late? Do you have a question you want us to answer? Nothing is out of bounds. We’re game for everything from the existential (Will democracy survive?) to the more trivial (Do celebrity endorsements make a difference?). https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
If you had just a few minutes to win someone’s affection, how political would you get? Would you dive right in, or avoid politics altogether? The Run-Up went speed dating in suburban Philadelphia to find out. Usually when we’re out in the field, we’re at rallies or campaign events – places where people are vocal about their political beliefs. But for many participants at the dating event, talking politics was a complete turn off. This got us thinking: How do political divisions — the things that seem so present on the campaign trail and in polling — actually play out in people’s personal lives? We turned to two of our colleagues -- Anna Martin, host of the Modern Love Podcast, and Jessica Grose, a writer for the Times Opinion section -- for perspective and additional reporting from the intersection of love and politics. WANT MORE FROM OUR GUESTS? You can subscribe to the Modern Love podcast here, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/14/podcasts/modern-love-unmarried-dave-finch.html and sign up for Jessica’s newsletter here. https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/jessica-grose?emc=edit_ptg_20240214&nl=jessica-grose&te=1 https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
Our listeners have lots of questions about polling. Questions such as: Is it still relevant? How does it work? How do you get a reliable sample when people don’t answer the phone? At this point in a usual primary season, still weeks away from Super Tuesday, most of the attention of polling would be on who might capture the nomination. But this year, with the race all but set, we’re anticipating nine months of polling on two men we already know very well. Today, to prepare for that future and to answer the many questions on the subject, we go behind the scenes with the New York Times polling team. And Nate Cohn, our chief political analyst, introduces us to “double haters” and other swingy voters he thinks will decide 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
Nevada is doing things differently this year. Or at least, it tried to. The first presidential nominating contest in the west takes place on Tuesday — and on Thursday. But that’s not what state officials were hoping would happen when they decided to move from a caucus to a primary in 2021. Democrats got on board — and President Biden is expected to win that contest handily on Tuesday. On the Republican side, however, things did not go according to plan. A caucus was seen as being beneficial to former President Donald J. Trump, so state party officials — who were aggressively lobbied by the Trump campaign — decided to hold a caucus anyway. The caucus, not the primary, is what will determine which Republican candidate wins Nevada’s delegates. Nikki Haley, the last remaining significant challenger to Mr. Trump, opted to run in the primary, not the caucus. So Mr. Trump is effectively in a caucus without a real opponent. And his win is a foregone conclusion. Confused? You’re not alone. Today, with our colleague Jennifer Medina, we travel to East Las Vegas to talk to voters about what makes their state so critical — and so confounding — to Republicans and Democrats alike. https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
President Biden has started to switch gears into campaign mode. On the trail, he’s particularly focused on South Carolina, which holds the first official Democratic primary contest on Saturday. And one of his first campaign events of the year took him to Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, for a speech that addressed the dangers of white supremacy. But a few minutes into the speech, he was interrupted by protesters calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. Since that day in early January, it seems as if wherever Biden goes, protesters are ready to voice their dissatisfaction with the way the administration is handling the war between Israel and Hamas. Today: The activists drowning out the president at campaign events. And the Arab American swing state mayor, Abdullah Hammoud of Dearborn, Mich., on why he declined a recent invitation from Biden’s team. https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
Donald Trump’s victory over Nikki Haley in the New Hampshire primary made two things clear: The MAGA wing of the G.O.P. is ready for his coronation, while anti-Trump Republicans believe the race is far from over. From inside Trump’s victory party on Tuesday night, we hear from supporters of the former president and from the stars of his orbit, who see themselves as being on the verge of “obliterating the establishment.” And from Tim Draper, a billionaire venture capitalist who is backing Haley. https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
On Sunday, after a disappointing finish in the Iowa caucuses and with just two days to go before the New Hampshire primary, Ron DeSantis ended his campaign for president. His decision made it official: The race for the Republican nomination is now a head-to-head contest between two wildly different candidates, Nikki Haley and Donald Trump. And now, the famously independent New Hampshire voters are going to determine how serious a contest it is. We’re looking for three big things. First, how Haley’s recent change in tone and sharpening attacks on Trump will play with independents. Second, whether Trump is as dominant here as he was in Iowa. And third, what the Democrats are up to — since there’s a contest here on that side too. https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
Going into the Iowa caucuses, there were a handful of key things we were watching for: Would the frigid weather hamper turnout? Would his overwhelming dominance in the polls translate to a decisive victory for Donald Trump? And finally, could the other candidates muster enough of a showing to keep the race alive? Today: Through conversations with Iowa caucus goers — especially those who preferred another candidate to Trump — we get answers to our questions. And we check in with our colleague Nick Corasaniti in New Hampshire about how the state’s independents are approaching the primary next week — and how confident Trump is of a second early state victory. https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
Finally. More than a year after Donald Trump first announced his 2024 presidential run, six months after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida refocused his campaign strategy to be all-in on Iowa, and right in the midst of debilitating winter weather, the Iowa caucuses are upon us. And “The Run-Up” has everything you need to know to understand what might happen today — and what it will mean for the race going forward. What’s at stake is clear: Anyone who is going to slow Mr. Trump on his path to clinching the nomination has to get started in Iowa, with at least a close second-place finish. Going into the caucus, Mr. Trump has a dominant polling lead. But now it’s up to the voters. Iowa voters tend to care more about candidates who can speak more to small-town and religious values. The state’s evangelical leaders have largely backed Mr. DeSantis, but evangelical voters themselves — including people coming out to Trump events in freezing temperatures in the last week — have largely backed Mr. Trump. There are three big questions going into caucus day. One, will people come out and participate despite the weather? Two, are the campaigns organized enough to have made a successful last-minute push, to turn interest into actual votes? And three, will any of it matter, or will the freezing temperatures and snowdrifts mean that no matter the result, campaigns will excuse it away? We’ll know the answers later this week. https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
At the start of the 2024 Republican primary campaign, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was considered by many in his party to be the biggest threat to Donald Trump. He was seen as someone who could win over the voters who were tired of Trump’s antics, and also bring along the MAGA movement. But it didn’t work out that way. And as Mr. DeSantis has struggled, one main opponent, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, has seen her star — and her standing in the polls — rise. Still, as the Trump alternatives crisscross Iowa and New Hampshire trying to appeal to voters, polling averages put the former president ahead by an average of 35 points. Now, with just days to go until the Iowa caucuses, we ask: Did anti-Trump Republicans rally around the wrong candidates? And have they run out of time to fix it? https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
It’s the start of the actual election year — and a new chapter in the campaign. Voting in early states is less than two weeks away. But, amid the crunchtime campaigning, another story line is unfolding. Two states are saying that Donald Trump can’t be on the ballot … at all. Officials in Colorado and Maine are basing this on a clause of the 14th Amendment https://www.nytimes.com/article/14th-amendment-trump-colorado.html, which bars candidates from holding office if they have engaged in insurrection. The Trump campaign is appealing. And other states, like California and Michigan, have ruled the opposite way on the same issue. But with more than a dozen similar cases pending, the question is almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court. We speak to Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, about her decision to disqualify Trump from the 2024 primary ballot and to Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
Last summer, politics, country music and cultural grievance collided with the growing popularity of a new song from recording artist Jason Aldean. In the lyrics, Aldean lists behaviors he associates with cities, like lawlessness and disrespect for the flag or the police. And then he warns listeners of the consequences if they “try that in a small town.” The song quickly hit the country music charts. Then, the music video was released. In it, images of Aldean singing alternate with newsreel footage of looting, violence and scenes from the racial justice protests that took place during the summer of 2020. The video was quietly edited to remove some of the more contested footage, but the battle lines had already been drawn. The song quickly gained popularity on the political right. And Republican primary candidates, including Donald Trump, began praising Aldean and playing the song at their events. And so as we were thinking about how to understand the G.O.P. presidential primary, we saw that Jason Aldean would be performing at the Iowa state fair. And we knew we had to go. https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
Iowa was supposed to be fertile ground for Donald Trump’s primary challengers. Its population is disproportionately evangelical, and voters were expected to coalesce around a more faith-driven alternative. But that’s not what’s happened. This past summer, Trump was polling at around 42 percent in the state, a lead that has only continued to grow. Increasingly, it looks like Iowa is on track to coronate the former president. So when we visited the state fair in August, it was less to follow around a bunch of the candidates while they were milking a cow or flipping a pork chop, but rather to ask Iowa’s voters: What’s different this time? https://www.nytimes.com/article/2024-election-primary-questions.html https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?fs=1&tf=cm&source=mailto&to=therunup@nytimes.com
Watching the Republican primary debates can feel like a study in self sabotage. In the latest one, which Donald Trump skipped, the candidates spent most of their time attacking one another — not the guy who is 50 points ahead in the polls. But there is a logic to it. Candidates are trying to position themselves as the party’s alternative to the former president. And to do that, they have to push one another aside and unite the roughly 40 percent of Republicans who are still up for grabs. This week, we ask anti-Trump Republicans: What’s stopping their coalition from getting on the same page? And with the early contests fast approaching, is it too late? We travel to a debate night watch party for Nikki Haley in New Hampshire and check in with Bob Vander Plaats, an influential Iowa evangelical and supporter of Ron DeSantis.
There was a moment in early 2023 when Donald Trump seemed like a politician in decline. And it wasn’t just his political opponents who thought so. National Republicans, who blamed Mr. Trump for the party’s run of bad results in the midterms, largely agreed. But now it’s starting to set in: It appears the former president’s staying power was underestimated … again. Mr. Trump is the overwhelming favorite to be the Republican presidential nominee — and his supporters remain the most influential force in the party’s politics. This week, through conversations at an event with South Carolina Republicans, we try to understand why the party continues to back an embattled Mr. Trump — and how it came to feel as though this primary ended before it even began. Then, Astead talks with Jonathan Swan https://www.nytimes.com/by/jonathan-swan, a New York Times political reporter, about how the Trump team has approached this campaign with discipline and strategy, and what it is planning should he win back the White House.
The former president’s legal status is one of the biggest wild cards heading into 2024. Even as he dominates the Republican primary and his party, Trump has been indicted on 91 felony charges, across four criminal cases in state and federal courts. We spent a day talking to our colleagues in The Times’s newsroom, trying to get answers to questions it’s surreal to even be asking. Among them: Are Republicans coalescing around a man who may soon be a convicted felon? And how much will Trump’s legal troubles collide with an election cycle that is unlike any we’ve seen before? Guests: __ __
Polls suggest that they are – and that Black voters’ support for Donald Trump, especially among men, is rising. Astead W. Herndon convened a special "Run-Up" Thanksgiving focus group to explore what might be behind those numbers. He spoke with family, friends and, parishioners from his father’s church, community members and people he grew up with. It’s a lively conversation with real implications for what might happen if the 2024 presidential election is a Biden-Trump rematch. Because where better to talk politics than over turkey and an ample dessert spread?
Vice President Harris believes that democracy is once again on the line in November. She is key to the Biden campaign’s strategy for getting that message to its skeptical base — and winning over groups of voters that Democrats can't afford to lose. In a wide-ranging conversation recorded in Chicago in August, Astead Herndon sat down with the vice president to discuss her life and work before Washington, and the fight ahead for her party. This interview was conducted as part of the reporting process for a New York Times Magazine cover story on Ms. Harris, which you can read here https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/magazine/kamala-harris.html.
Yes, President Biden’s team has seen the polls that show him struggling in a 2024 rematch with Donald Trump. But it says it’s focused on other things — like how well Democrats are doing at the ballot box.
Out of more than 3,000 counties in the United States, Clallam County, Wash. is the only one that has voted for the winner of the presidential race every year since 1980. It earned this distinction in 2020, the election that broke everyone else’s streak. We’re a year out from the 2024 presidential election and despite a robust Republican primary field, the race is looking like it could easily be a 2020 rematch. So we thought Clallam County could give us something resembling a prediction. Here’s how the people there are feeling — and how they think this is going to go. To see photographs from our reporting trip to Washington, click here https://nytimes.com/therunup.
It could be 2020 all over again. That’s what makes 2024 so different. And why it demands a different kind of political reporting. That is The Run-Up’s specialty. We’ll be back Nov. 2.
For the past few months, The Run-Up has been reporting on political insiders and the work they’ve quietly been doing to shape the 2024 presidential election. What we’ve found is a group of people — Republicans Democrats — all operating under the premise that this race will revolve around former President Donald Trump. That his nomination — and thus a rematch between Trump and President Biden — is almost inevitable. But if anything is going to blow up that assumption, it’s probably going to start in Iowa. As the first state in the Republican primary process, Iowa plays a key role in narrowing the field. If Trump wins there, it may effectively mean that he has secured the nomination. However, there’s a group of voters that holds disproportionate power in the state and in American culture more broadly. These voters were once part of Trump’s coalition — and they are now wavering. If they go another way, the whole race could open up. In our final episode of the season, The Run-Up goes to Iowa and inside the evangelical church. We speak with Bob Vander Plaats, an evangelical activist with a history of picking Iowa’s winners. And we go to Eternity Church, where Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida recently spoke, and talk to Jesse Newman, the pastor, and other members of the congregation.
Back in 2020, Joe Biden stood out in a crowded Democratic primary field filled with younger, more historic candidates. Voters worried that Mr. Biden was too moderate, too uninspiring and too old. One of his challengers, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, got a lot of attention for his willingness to echo those concerns. But after going hard at Mr. Biden in a debate, his campaign fizzled and Mr. Castro, once a rising star in the Democratic Party, left Washington altogether. To some, it seemed like evidence of the consequences of stepping out of line with the party. Heading into the 2024 election, as voters grapple with the same questions about the incumbent president, Astead sits down with Mr. Castro to explore the party’s code of silence surrounding Mr. Biden’s primary alternatives and his advanced age. For more information on today's episode, visit nytimes.com/therunup.
Heading into the 2024 presidential election, a big part of the Democratic Party’s approach is to win through defense — to watch Republicans and promise voters that Democrats will be the solution to G.O.P. extremism. Some Democrats, however, argue that this is not a viable long-term strategy. This week, Representative Elissa Slotkin shares what happens when Democrats have a plan, and Megan Hunt, a Nebraska state senator, explains what happens when they don’t.
