Elections

SCRANTON, Pa. — The fate of the Democratic Party in northeastern Pennsylvania lies in the hands of people like Steve Papp.A 30-year veteran carpenter, he describes his job almost poetically as “hanging out with your brothers, building America.” But there has been a harder labor in his life of late: selling his fellow carpenters, iron workers and masons on a Democratic Party that he sees as the protector of a “union way of life” but that they see as being increasingly out of step with their cultural values.“The guys aren’t hearing the message,” Mr. Papp said.Perhaps no place in the nation offers a more symbolic and consequential test of whether Democrats can win back some of the white working-class vote than Pennsylvania — and particularly the state’s northeastern corner, the birthplace of President Biden, where years of economic decline have scarred the coal-rich landscape. This region is where a pivotal Senate race could be decided, where two seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs and where a crucial governorship hangs in the balance.No single constituency, of course, will determine the outcome of these races in a state as big as Pennsylvania, let alone the 2022 midterms. Turning out Black voters in cities is critical for Democrats. Gaining ground in the swingy suburbs is a must for Republicans. But it is among white working-class voters in rural areas and smaller towns — places like Sugarloaf Township, where Mr. Papp lives — where the Democratic Party has, in some ways, both the furthest to fall and the most to gain.A highway sign outside Scranton, Pa.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesSitting in the Scranton carpenters’ union hall, where Democratic lawn signs leaned up against the walls, Mr. Papp said that he often brought stickers to the job site for those he converted, but that he had recently been giving away fewer than he would like. He ticked through what he feels he has been up against. Talk radio. Social media. The Fox News megaphone. “Misinformation and lies,” as he put it, about the Black Lives Matter movement and the L.G.B.T.Q. community.“It’s about cultural issues and social issues,” Mr. Papp lamented. “People don’t even care about their economics. They want to hate.”Republicans counter that Democratic elites are the ones alienating the working class by advocating a “woke” cultural agenda and by treating them as deplorables. And they also argue that the current economy overseen by Democrats has been the issue pushing voters toward the right.The stakes are far higher than one corner of one state in one election.White blue-collar voters are a large and crucial constituency in a number of top Senate battlegrounds this year, including in Wisconsin, Nevada, New Hampshire and Ohio. And the need for Democrats to lose by less is already an urgent concern for party strategists heading into 2024, when Donald J. Trump, who accelerated the movement of blue-collar voters of all races away from Democrats, has signaled he plans to run again.Lt. Gov. John Fetterman boarding Air Force One after a meeting with President Biden.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesOne study from Pew Research Center showed that as recently as 2007, white voters without a college degree were about evenly divided in their party affiliations. But by 2020, Republicans had opened up an advantage of 59 percent over Democrats’ 35 percent.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Governor’s Races: Democrats and Republicans are heading into the final stretch of more than a dozen competitive contests for governor. Some battleground races could also determine who controls the Senate.Biden’s Agenda at Risk: If Republicans capture one or both chambers of Congress, the president’s opportunities on several issues will shrink. Here are some major areas where the two sides would clash.Ohio Senate Race: Polls show Representative Tim Ryan competing within the margin of error against his G.O.P. opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan said the race would be “the upset of the night,” but there is still a cold reality tilting against Democrats.“You can’t get destroyed,” Christopher Borick, the director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Pennsylvania, said of the task in front of Democrats. “Cutting into Republican gains in the Trump era among white working-class voters is essential.”There are, quite simply, a lot of white voters without college degrees in America. Another Pew study found that such voters accounted for 42 percent of all voters in the 2020 presidential election. And, by some estimates, they could make up nearly half the vote in Pennsylvania this year.Luzerne County, just south of Scranton, had been reliably Democratic for years and years. Then, suddenly, in 2016, Mr. Trump won Luzerne in a nearly 20-point landslide. He won it again in 2020, but by 5 points fewer. There are Obama-Trump voters here, and Obama-Trump-Biden voters, too. The region may have tacked to the right politically in recent years, but it is still a place where the phrase “Irish Catholic Democrat” was long treated as almost a single word, and where it might be more possible to nudge at least some ancestral Democrats back toward the party.The Roosevelt Beer Hall in Dunmore, Pa.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesScranton, a former coal town nestled in the scenic Wyoming Valley, has become synonymous with this voting bloc. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who hopes to become the next House speaker, visited the region this fall to unveil the Republican agenda, and both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump traveled to the area for events kicking off the fall campaign.This year, the Pennsylvania Senate race looms especially large.The Democratic nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, was seemingly engineered for the task of appealing to the working class. A bald and burly man with a political persona that revolves around Carhartt sweatshirts and tattoos, Mr. Fetterman has vowed from the start to compete in even the reddest corners of Pennsylvania. He is running against Mehmet Oz, a wealthy, out-of-state television celebrity who, according to polls, has been viewed skeptically from the start by the Republican base, and who talked of buying crudités at the grocery in a widely ridiculed video.Yet local Democrats said Mr. Fetterman was still facing an uphill climb among white working-class voters in the region, even before his halting debate performance as he recovers from a stroke. For those Democrats concerned about competing for the state’s biggest voting bloc, the success or failure of Mr. Fetterman’s candidacy has become an almost existential question: If not him and here, then who and where?Mr. Fetterman’s strategy to cut into Republican margins in red counties is displayed on his lawn signs: “Every county. Every vote.” But Republicans have worked relentlessly to undercut the blue-collar image Mr. Fetterman honed as the former mayor of Braddock, a downtrodden former steel town just outside Pittsburgh.Chris Tigue, a self-employed painter.Ruth Fremson/The New York Times“It’s a costume,” Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, said in one segment last month. Republicans have highlighted Mr. Fetterman’s Harvard degree, his middle-class suburban upbringing, the financial support he received from his parents into his 40s and, most recently, a barrage of advertising that has cast him as a soft-on-crime liberal.Both sides are targeting voters like Chris Tigue, a 39-year-old who runs a one-man painting company and lives in Dunmore, a town bordering Scranton known for its enormous landfill. Mr. Tigue, a registered Republican, has gone on a political journey that may seem uncommon in most of the country but is more familiar here.He voted twice for Barack Obama. Then he voted twice for Donald Trump.As Mr. Tigue sat outside Roosevelt Beer Garden, a watering hole where the portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt on the wall was a reminder of the area’s Democratic heritage, he explained that Mr. Fetterman had won him back, not just because of his working class “curb appeal,” but because of his stances on abortion and medical cannabis.Mr. Tigue said he was voting for Mr. Fetterman knowing that Mr. Fetterman would probably support the president’s economic agenda in the Senate, a prospect he called “a little scary.” But he said he was looking past that fact. “I’m focusing on the person,” he said.Justin Taylor, the mayor of nearby Carbondale, is another Obama-Trump voter. Elected as a 25-year-old Democrat almost two decades ago, he endorsed Mr. Trump in 2020 and grew increasingly more Republican, just like the city he serves.Mayor Justin Taylor of Carbondale, Pa., at the Anthracite Center, a former bank he converted into an event space.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesToday, he is adamantly opposed to Mr. Fetterman, calling him a liberal caricature and the kind of candidate the left thinks will appeal to the people of Carbondale, a shrinking town of under 10,000 people that was founded on anthracite coal. “I think, quite honestly, he is an empty Carhartt sweatshirt and the people who are working class in Pennsylvania see that,” Mr. Taylor said.Mr. Taylor is still technically a registered Democrat, he said, but he feels judged by his own party. “The Democratic Party forces it down your throat,” he said, “and they make you a bigot, they make you a racist, they make you a homophobe if you don’t understand a concept, or you don’t 100 percent agree.”Still, Mr. Taylor said he might not vote in the Senate race at all. Of his fellow Fetterman doubters, and of Oz skeptics, he asked, “Do they stay home? That becomes the big question.”Northeastern Pennsylvania is also home to two bellwether House races with embattled Democratic incumbents.One race features Representative Matt Cartwright, who is the rarest of political survivors — the only House Democrat nationwide running this year who held a district that Mr. Trump carried in both 2016 and 2020. The other includes Representative Susan Wild, who is defending a swing district that contains one of only two Pennsylvania counties that Mr. Biden flipped in 2020.Representative Matt Cartwright, left. Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesThe union hall of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners Local 445. Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesTo emphasize his cross-partisan appeal, Mr. Cartwright has run an ad this year featuring endorsements from one man in a Trump hat and another in a Biden shirt. In an interview, he said the area’s long-term economic downturn, which he traced to the free-trade deals of the 1990s, had caused many people to work multiple jobs, sapping morale and even affecting the region’s psyche.“When something like that happens, who do you vote for?” Mr. Cartwright said. “You vote for the change candidate. And that’s what we saw a lot of. They voted for Obama twice. They voted for Trump twice. And my own view of it is when they vote that way, it’s a cry for help.”Demographic shifts in politics happen in both directions. As Democrats have hemorrhaged white working-class voters, they have made large gains with college-educated white voters who were once the financial and electoral base of Republicans. In Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia suburbs have become strongly Democratic, while the state’s less populated areas have become more Republican.Alexis McFarland Kelly, a 59-year-old former owner of a gourmet market near Scranton, is the kind of voter Democrats are newly winning over. Raised as a Republican, she was often warned by her father, a business owner, and her grandfather, a corporate vice president, of the excesses of labor and the left. But now, she is planning to vote for Mr. Fetterman.Her biggest misgiving is the hoodie-wearing persona that might appeal to the working class. “I just wish he’d put a suit on once in a while,” she said.Last year, she went to the local Department of Motor Vehicles and declared that she wanted to change her party registration to become a Democrat. The clerk was shocked. “She basically dropped her pen and said, ‘What?! A Democrat!’” Ms. Kelly recalled. “‘Everyone is going the other way.’”Nina Feldman More

A high-profile display of Republican and Democratic efforts illustrates how many of the state’s races have become unexpectedly close, including the governor’s race.HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — New York’s status as a battleground state was cemented over the weekend as a star-studded lineup of the country’s top Democrats and Republicans descended on the state.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida visited Long Island on Saturday night; hours earlier, former President Bill Clinton was the star attraction at a rally in Rockland County. And on the airwaves, former President Barack Obama lent his voice in support of Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat facing an unexpectedly stiff challenge from Representative Lee Zeldin, a Republican.In a sign of how close the governor’s race has gotten, the Democratic Governors Association filed paperwork in recent days to form a super PAC in New York that will prop up Ms. Hochul on TV and try to stave off losses further down the ballot. After watching from the sidelines for months, the group will now join prominent labor groups in rushing to start spending on behalf of Ms. Hochul in the race’s final days, as concerned Democrats scramble to ensure that their base turns out to vote.The high-profile display of Democratic force amounted to the type of last-minute intervention that traditionally plays out in swing states, not a liberal state like New York, underscoring just how vulnerable Democrats believe they have become in this election cycle.Indeed, Ms. Hochul and Mr. Zeldin are each entering the final stretch with about $6 million in their war chests, the campaigns said on Friday, a surprisingly leveled playing field given that the governor significantly outpaced Mr. Zeldin in fund-raising during much of the race. Ms. Hochul, who has raised nearly $50 million since she entered the race, and spent much of it, said she raised $3.37 million in the last three-week filing period. Mr. Zeldin reported raising slightly more — $3.6 million.Mr. DeSantis’s hastily organized appearance in Suffolk County — the rally for Mr. Zeldin, which drew thousands of people, was planned one day in advance — was a reflection of the party’s renewed bullishness in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican governor in 20 years.“You need someone to just go and clean house in Albany,” Mr. DeSantis, a presidential hopeful, told thousands of mostly white supporters at a raucous rally at a parking lot on Long Island that was one of the largest campaign events of the governor’s race. He railed against Covid-19 mandates, crime, inflation and illegal immigration, before concluding that Mr. Zeldin’s potential victory would amount to “the 21st century version of the shot heard ’round the world.”Gov. Ron DeSantis, left, suggested that Mr. Zeldin, right, was someone who could “go and clean house in Albany.”Johnny Milano for The New York TimesEarlier in the day, the Hochul campaign sought to show off its own firepower by unveiling Mr. Obama’s radio ad, where he tells listeners that “the stakes could not be higher” in the governor’s race, which polls suggest Ms. Hochul is leading, even as Mr. Zeldin has surged in recent weeks.Mr. Clinton emerged in the Hudson Valley to deliver a nearly half-hour speech attacking the Republican Party while campaigning with Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, a top Democrat and longtime friend of Mr. Clinton’s who is locked in an unexpectedly close contest to retain his House seat.And on Sunday, Jill Biden, the first lady, was scheduled to speak at a fund-raiser for Mr. Maloney in Westchester, before traveling to Long Island for a phone banking event with Ms. Hochul.The Democratic Governors Association had not initially planned to spend on the race, but as polls have tightened and the Republican Governors Association began dumping $2 million into a pro-Zeldin super PAC, the Democrats decided to act. A spokesman for the D.G.A., David Turner, did not say how much it planned to spend.“Republican super PACs have spent a record amount of nearly $12 million to insert an election-denying, abortion-banning, MAGA Republican who would make New York less safe by rolling back laws to take illegal guns off the street,” Mr. Turner said. “The D.G.A. is taking nothing for granted, and won’t sit idly by.”Republicans are doubling down on the newfound enthusiasm around Mr. Zeldin: On Monday, he will campaign in Westchester alongside Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, a Republican who won in an upset victory last year..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.As early voting kicked off on Saturday, Ms. Hochul has begun to significantly scale up her campaigning: She was expected to make at least 14 campaign appearances this weekend. She cast her ballot in Buffalo, her hometown, on Saturday morning before traveling to Rochester and Syracuse, all Democratic-leaning bastions in upstate.Governor Hochul was stepping up her ground game, with at least 14 campaign events on her weekend schedule, including a stop at Syracuse University.Benjamin Cleeton for The New York TimesOn Sunday morning, she gave brief remarks at four Black churches in Nassau County on Long Island, an increasingly competitive battleground where polls suggest Mr. Zeldin has made significant inroads in recent weeks. Amid concerns that she may be struggling to animate Black voters, one of the most reliable Democratic constituencies, Ms. Hochul was joined by Hazel Dukes, the head of the New York State N.A.A.C.P., who introduced Ms. Hochul to churchgoers at the church stops on Sunday.“She’s comfortable with all of us,” Ms. Dukes told Black congregants at Antioch Baptist Church, highlighting her working-class roots and record on public safety and investments in public education. “In her soul and in her heart, she cares about the least of us.”At Union Baptist Church, the Rev. Dr. Sedgwick Easley told churchgoers that it was “important that in minority communities like ours, our people go out to the polls and vote.”When it was her turn to talk, Ms. Hochul made no mention of her commitment to protecting the state’s strict abortion rights, one of the pillars of her campaign. Instead, she emphasized her initiatives to strengthen gun laws and fight crime, including legislation she passed earlier this year to tighten the state’s contentious bail laws, a constant target of Mr. Zeldin’s attacks.“Having guns is not the answer. We have to stand up to that radical idea that this should become the wild West,” Ms. Hochul said. “We’re not going there. Donald Trump won’t take us there. His surrogate running for governor won’t take us there, because I am the firewall. You are the firewall.”Later, Ms. Hochul joined an array of Democratic elected officials from Long Island for a rally with hundreds of union workers, before traveling to southeast Queens to campaign with Mayor Eric Adams for the first time in the general election.Mr. Adams and the governor spoke to a crowd of several hundred people who gathered inside a shopping mall; some were union workers, but many of them were local residents who said they had received emails and fliers about the rally. Praising Ms. Hochul’s response to the pandemic and warning of the consequences of not voting, Mr. Adams said: “We cannot say on the Wednesday after Election Day, ‘we wish we had voted.’”Several attendees said they had already cast their ballot early for Ms. Hochul, including Robert Manigault, 70 a retired postal clerk who is Black and cited his experience during the civil rights era as one of the reasons for his vote.“I feel that she’s going to take us places,” he said. “I feel the Republicans are going to take us backward. I’ve been there and I don’t like it.”Later in the day, in an unannounced campaign stop, Mr. Zeldin visited Borough Park in Brooklyn, where he was greeted by hundreds of residents from the Orthodox and Hasidic community, a small but powerful voting contingent he has actively courted.Mr. Zeldin received a far larger reception on Saturday night in his hometown, Suffolk County, a Republican stronghold he has represented in Congress since 2015. Standing in front of a red tour bus emblazoned with his campaign’s slogan — “Save Our State” — he spoke to an audience that sported MAGA hats and appeared as familiar with Mr. Zeldin as they were curious about Mr. DeSantis visiting the small hamlet of Hauppauge.Mr. Zeldin said that the state’s conditions were leading New Yorkers to continue to move to Florida, “seeing that their money will go further, they’ll feel safer, they’ll live life freer, and that’s why New York leads the entire nation in population loss.”“For the next 10 days, there is no way that Kathy Hochul will be able to replicate the energy and momentum that we have,” Mr. Zeldin added.In the crowd, Laura Ortiz, 52, said she supported Mr. Zeldin because of his focus on public safety, saying her house in Lindenhurst was one of 13 houses on her street that were recently robbed in a spree that also saw one residence set on fire.“I know what it feels like to be violated,” said Ms. Ortiz, who was wearing a headband with a pair of American flags that bounced on springs each time she moved. “I don’t want to see anyone get hurt.”Nicholas Fandos More

ATLANTA — Raphael Warnock, the Democrat fighting for a full term in the Senate, has three jobs these days: candidate, senator and pastor.On Sunday in Atlanta, he was working double time. First, he delivered a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he serves as senior pastor, preaching to his parishioners from the book of Acts and delivering a message about both the healing powers of God and the dangers of power-hungry politicians.Then, at a sanctuary 15 minutes away, with his campaign bus parked out front, he spoke at a Souls to the Polls event, encouraging supporters to vote immediately after church.Mr. Warnock both preaches and talks politics on the campaign trail, where he invokes Scripture and calls voting “a kind of prayer” before calling for Medicaid expansion and levying thinly veiled criticisms against his Republican opponent, Herschel Walker. His closing message is the same on the stump as it is in the pulpit: “Keep the faith and keep looking up.”On Saturday Mr. Warnock addressed a group of canvassers before they knocked on doors around the Atlanta suburb of Douglasville: “I’m not a senator who used to be a pastor. You might as well know that you sent a pastor to the Senate.”He has made blending the religious and the political a cornerstone of his campaign to highlight his belief in the need for social and political renewal. Speaking to an electorate and church community that have taken an increasingly pessimistic view of politics, he also underlines his belief that change in both arenas is still possible.This approach has invited outsized support and scrutiny for both his candidacy and his church, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once presided.At his church: Mr. Warnock preaching at Ebenezer Baptist in 2018.Kevin D. Liles for The New York TimesMr. Warnock has maintained a consistent presence at Ebenezer while in the Senate. He still presides over most Sunday services, although he has invited several guest preachers in recent weeks as Election Day nears.He was back in the pulpit on Sunday, however, with Scripture-specific anecdotes as well as calls for Medicaid expansion and turning out to vote.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Governor’s Races: Democrats and Republicans are heading into the final stretch of more than a dozen competitive contests for governor. Some battleground races could also determine who controls the Senate.Biden’s Agenda at Risk: If Republicans capture one or both chambers of Congress, the president’s opportunities on several issues will shrink. Here are some major areas where the two sides would clash.Ohio Senate Race: Polls show Representative Tim Ryan competing within the margin of error against his G.O.P. opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan said the race would be “the upset of the night,” but there is still a cold reality tilting against Democrats.“Something happens when people find their voice,” he told the congregation, imploring them not to “mute your own voice.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“I thank God for this record voter turnout, but don’t you let up,” he added, to a standing ovation.Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta’s historically Black Sweet Auburn neighborhood, practices a prophetic faith tradition not unlike many Black churches, calling on its members to challenge oppressive systems and be of service to marginalized groups. The church’s national profile, though, is unmistakable: Large groups of tourists sit in the pews alongside regular churchgoers, thousands watch its services via livestream, and outside its doors anti-abortion protesters hold signs criticizing Mr. Warnock’s support for abortion access.Mr. Warnock has been senior pastor at Ebenezer since 2005 and committed to maintaining the post from the earliest days of his 2020 special election campaign. Though he embraces politics from the pulpit and makes frequent mention of his home church on the trail, his Senate and campaign aides say that his function as a pastor operates entirely separate from his political roles.Mr. Warnock has described himself as a “Christian progressive” in the mold of Dr. King. Republicans have seized on that posture, criticizing in particular his views on abortion, policing and the role of race and racism in American life.Warnock supporters at the College Park rally, held with former President Barack Obama.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesIn 2020, his Republican opponent, Kelly Loeffler, repeatedly called him a “radical” and used footage of his old sermons to paint him as a dangerous candidate. Black church leaders across the state quickly condemned the move, calling it offensive and an attack on Black church traditions.This year, Republicans have zeroed in on Mr. Warnock’s professional relationship to Ebenezer by using the $7,400 monthly housing allowance he receives from the church to paint him as a self-serving politician. And Mr. Walker has also claimed that Mr. Warnock’s church had a direct hand in evicting residents with low outstanding balances at an apartment complex near downtown Atlanta that houses low-income, disabled and mentally ill residents. The building, Columbia Tower at Martin Luther King Village, is owned by MLK Village Corporation, a for-profit company with ties to Ebenezer.No evictions have taken place at the building since 2020, according to representatives for Columbia Residential. In a statement, they described “certain circumstances” that would require the building to file a notice to a resident who has overdue rent, a process they said rarely results in eviction and removal of the resident.“Columbia’s team works with residents through a variety of mechanisms to provide help with past due rent, as evidenced by more than $2.7 million dollars of rental assistance we have helped to secure for residents in Atlanta during the pandemic,” a representative for Columbia Residential said in a statement.Derrick Harkins, director of the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, said the characterization of Ebenezer as having a direct hand in the eviction notices is “just not correct.”“He is certainly not overseeing the operational elements of a property that is part of the larger portfolio that’s under the umbrella of what Ebenezer has put together,” Mr. Harkins said of Mr. Warnock. On the campaign trail, Mr. Warnock has responded more directly to criticism of his mixing of faith and politics. On Saturday, after a canvasser asked about such criticisms, he said he wasn’t worried about them.“That puts me in good company,” he said. “That’s what they did to Dr. King. They challenged his Christian identity. They challenged his pastoral vocation.”Mr. Warnock has maintained a consistent presence at Ebenezer while in the Senate and on the campaign trail.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times More

Plus Russia halts Ukrainian grain shipments and Brazilians vote for their next president.A man paid his respects at the memorial site of the crowd crush in Seoul on Sunday.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesAt least 150 dead in SeoulAt least 150 people were killed in Seoul after they were crushed in a Halloween crowd on Saturday. Most were in their teens and 20s, and women significantly outnumbered men among the victims. South Koreans are trying to understand how the crowd crush happened now that most of the victims have been identified. Witnesses said they saw almost no crowd control and scant police presence in the hours leading up to the tragedy, even though people were filling the streets. The crush happened in Itaewon, a popular nightlife district, on the first Halloween after most pandemic-related social distancing measures were lifted.As the night grew more frenetic and the mass of revelers swelled, many of them crammed into an alleyway barely 11 feet wide, in a bottleneck of human traffic that made it difficult to breathe and move. From within the crowd came calls to “push, push” and a big shove. Then, they began to fall, a tangle of too many bodies, compressed into too small of a space.Toll: At a community center where family members had been awaiting news, wrenching wails followed dreaded confirmations. Shin Su-Bin, 25, is among the dead. Her family had been calling her phone that night to no answer.Details: Among those killed in Itaewon, Seoul’s most diverse neighborhood, were citizens of the U.S., China, Iran, Norway and Uzbekistan. Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s president, has declared a weeklong period of national mourning.Context: The tragedy is one of the deadliest peacetime accidents in South Korea’s history. In recent years, it has been eclipsed only by the Sewol ferry sinking in 2014, where more than 300 people died — including 250 high school students.Friends and relatives helped Anna Moroz, 80, salvage what she could from her home in Ukraine.Ivor Prickett for The New York TimesRussia pulls back from grain dealOn Saturday, Russia withdrew from a deal that had allowed grain to be exported from Ukrainian ports, upending an agreement that was intended to alleviate a global food crisis. Yesterday, the U.N. and Turkey pushed to revive the deal, which they helped broker.Russia’s move came hours after a drone attack on its Black Sea Fleet in Crimea, which Russia blamed on Ukraine. Russia said it could no longer ensure the security of cargo ships taking grain from Ukrainian ports and would suspend the agreement’s implementation “for an indefinite period.”The State of the WarGrain Deal: After accusing Ukraine of attacking its ships in Crimea, Russia withdrew from an agreement allowing the export of grain from Ukrainian ports. The move jeopardized a rare case of wartime coordination aimed at lowering global food prices and combating hunger.Turning the Tables: With powerful Western weapons and deadly homemade drones, Ukraine now has an artillery advantage over Russia in the southern Kherson region, erasing what had been a critical asset for Moscow.Fears of Escalation: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia repeated the unfounded claim that Ukraine was preparing to explode a so-called dirty bomb, as concerns rose in the West that the Kremlin was seeking a pretext to escalate the war.A Coalition Under Strain: President Biden is facing new challenges keeping together the bipartisan, multinational coalition supporting Ukraine. The alliance has shown signs of fraying with the approach of the U.S. midterm elections and a cold European winter.The grain deal, which was signed in July, also aimed to lower food prices. Russia’s move jeopardized a rare case of wartime coordination, which ended a five-month Russian blockade. The deal allowed more than 9.2 million tons of grain and foodstuffs to be exported again. Many were bound for poor countries.Reaction: The U.S. accused Russia of using food as a weapon. “It’s really outrageous to increase starvation,” President Biden said on Saturday. Fighting: With Western weaponry, Ukraine now has a front line advantage in the south. Despite the slog of mud season, its army keeps advancing.Toll: Ukraine’s children face years of trauma.Brazil’s vote is one of Latin America’s most important in decades. Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesBrazilians choose their new presidentVoters headed to the polls yesterday to cast their ballots in a presidential runoff. Polls closed just before this newsletter was sent, and results are still coming. Here are live results and an overview of the race.Voters faced a stark choice after an ugly campaign. Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing populist, seeks a second term as president. He faces Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the once-incarcerated former leader who vows to revive leftist policies.The vote carries major consequences for the Amazon, and thus the entire planet. Bolsonaro gutted the agencies tasked with protecting the rainforest, leading to increased deforestation. Da Silva has vowed to eradicate illegal logging and mining.It is also a test for democracy. Bolsonaro has spent years attacking Brazil’s democratic institutions, including a sustained effort to undermine its election systems. In so doing, he has destroyed public trust in the elections.What’s next: If Bolsonaro loses, will he accept his defeat?Details: Brazil’s elections chief ordered the head of the country’s highway police to answer allegations that he had ordered traffic stops, particularly of buses transporting voters to the polls, in an effort to suppress turnout.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificDozens of Australians, many of whom are children, remain in the camps.Ivor Prickett for The New York TimesSeventeen Australians have returned home from Islamic State detention camps in northeast Syria, where they had lived since 2019. Dozens remain at the camps.At least 70 people were killed after a suspension bridge collapsed in the western Indian state of Gujarat yesterday.Flooding and landslides left at least 45 people dead in the Philippines.Kazuki Takahashi, who created Yu-Gi-Oh!, died in July. New details have been released: The 60-year-old drowned while trying to save others.Around the WorldElon Musk took charge of Twitter and quickly ordered layoffs. My colleagues analyzed the deal on “Hard Fork,” our podcast.Israel will hold its Parliamentary elections tomorrow. Benjamin Netanyahu is the leading candidate.At least 100 people died in the deadliest terrorist attack in Somalia in five years.The U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked in their home. He is expected to heal, but the encounter highlights fears of growing political violence in the U.S. Other Big StoriesRishi Sunak, Britain’s new prime minister, married into a secretive $800 million fortune, which might not fit within his party’s views.The U.S. released Guantánamo’s oldest prisoner, a 75-year-old businessman who was held for nearly two decades without being charged with a crime.Census data revealed that more than one in five Canadians is an immigrant. Polls show the nation approves.Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen divorced after 13 years of marriage.A Morning ReadThis year, parts of Riyadh, the Saudi capital, looked like creatures from a haunted house had escaped and taken over the city.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesUntil recently, Saudi Arabia banned Halloween, which was viewed as suspicious and pagan. But this past weekend, the kingdom hosted a government-sponsored “horror weekend” — not strictly speaking a Halloween festival, but certainly conveniently timed.Clowns and goblins filled the streets, and costume shops sold out almost as fast as employees could restock the shelves. “Saudi is changing,” said a young man going as a wizard.UP FOR DEBATEShould daylight saving time end?Mexico City (and most of the rest of Mexico) would stop springing forward and falling back.Marco Ugarte/Associated PressLast week, Mexico’s Senate voted to end daylight saving time for most of the country, prioritizing morning light. In March, the U.S. Senate took the opposite approach when it unanimously passed legislation to make daylight saving time permanent. (The House has not found consensus.)Each side of the debate carries strong opinions. The business community generally supports keeping daylight saving time: Many retailers and outdoor industries say that extra afternoon light can boost sales because people have more time to spend money after work or school.But many scientists believe that doing away with it, as Mexico is poised to do, is better for human health. They argue that aligns more closely with the sun’s progression — and, therefore, with the body’s natural clock.Mexico’s Senate seems to agree. “This new law seeks to guarantee the human right to health and increase safety in the mornings, procure the well-being and productivity of the population, and contribute to saving electric energy,” the body said on Twitter.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChristopher Simpson for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.Start your week off right with this simple salted-caramel rice pudding for dessert.What to Watch“The Novelist’s Film,” by the South Korean director Hong Sang-soo, is a study in small moments and chance encounters.Tech TipA latecomers’ guide to TikTok.TravelThe next time you’re in Mexico City, tour the former houses of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Hair colorer (three letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. Happy Halloween, and see you next time. — AmeliaP.S. Jenna Russell, a longtime reporter at The Boston Globe, will be our next New England bureau chief.Start your week with this narrated long read about animal voyages. And here is Friday’s edition of “The Daily,” on Brazil’s elections.You can reach Amelia and the team at [email protected]. More

As the race between Brazil’s right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, and his leftist challenger, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, tightened, Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies intensified their courting of a voting bloc key to his campaign: evangelical Christians.In the days leading to Sunday’s runoff election, the country was awash in harsh attacks against Mr. da Silva that were meant in part to sway evangelical voters, who make up by some estimates roughly 30 percent of the population and have become key supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro.The president likely needs this bloc, which tends to be more conservative than other religious groups in Brazil, to vote for him in significant numbers if he is to win a second term.Mr. Bolsonaro won more than 60 percent of the evangelical vote in his first campaign for the presidency in 2018 and received a similar percentage during the first round of voting in this election cycle.Evangelicals are the only religious group that has clear political representation in Congress, and they vote as a bloc on certain conservative topics.Bolsonaro supporters in recent weeks accused Mr. da Silva of being a Satanist who would close churches if he won and described him as a supporter of abortion rights, the legalization of drugs and “gender ideology,” a movement to re-examine the concept of gender.Mr. Bolsonaro amplified some of these claims. “When someone is in favor of abortion, as Lula is in favor, the guy turns on the yellow light,” the president said in a recent interview on a podcast, warning voters to be wary of Mr. da Silva.Mr. da Silva, who has said he is opposed to abortion rights and the legalization of drugs, recently had to clarify that he does not have a pact with the devil. (He has not given a position on “gender ideology.”)Mr. Bolsonaro has also drawn the backing of evangelical pastors who have used their pulpits to pressure their congregants to vote for the president.“The speeches within the churches say that this is not an election, but spiritual warfare,” said Vinicius do Valle, a political scientist and the leader of the Observatory of Evangelicals, an organization studying their impact on Brazilian society.Mr. da. Silva’s allies have fired back with their own attacks on Mr. Bolsonaro’s character, including trying to link him to freemasonry and questioning his sexual morals by pointing to a video in which he suggests sexual interest in teenage girls.Mr. Bolsonaro has also been accused of cannibalism because of another video, a 2016 interview with The New York Times in which he talks of eating an Indigenous person.Mr. da Silva, who has said that he has “never used religion in his campaign,” recently met with evangelical leaders and called Mr. Bolsonaro a “compulsive liar.” More

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s elections chief ordered the head of the country’s highway police to answer allegations that he had ordered traffic stops, particularly of buses transporting voters to the polls, in an effort to suppress turnout in Sunday’s presidential election.There were dozens of reports on social media on Sunday that federal highway agents were stopping vehicles and questioning people in several states across Brazil. Such stops appeared to violate orders from election officials on Saturday to halt any traffic stops on Election Day that could hinder people’s efforts to vote.Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice who leads Brazil’s election agency, issued an order to the head of Brazil’s federal highway police, calling on the official to provide proof that his officers were not violating election rules to benefit President Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right incumbent.In the order, Mr. Moraes included a link to a tweet from a person claiming that the highway police had set up a roadblock in the northeastern city of Cuité and were not letting people pass. “It’s already driving away the population of the countryside!” the tweet said. Brazil’s northeast is a leftist stronghold.On Sunday afternoon, Mr. Moraes told reporters that election officials’ initial investigation found that the stops delayed the buses, but they all still reached their intended polling stations. “We didn’t have any voters who didn’t vote because of the operations,” he said.Silvinei Vasques, the highway police chief, responded to Mr. Moraes’s order to halt Election Day traffic stops, saying that the highway police would not target public buses. But, he added, the police would continue to conduct stops because, he said, Mr. Moraes’s order did not apply to all federal highway operations.As of Sunday afternoon, the federal highway police had stopped more than 550 buses across the country, according to a federal highway officer with access to internal data who spoke on condition of anonymity. On Sunday, Oct. 2, in the first round of voting, the highway police stopped nearly 300 buses, according to the officer.A post on Mr. Vasques’s official Instagram account on Saturday urged people to vote for Mr. Bolsonaro, according to O Globo, one of Brazil’s biggest newspapers. The kind of message he posted automatically disappears from Instagram after 24 hours and was no longer visible on Sunday. Mr. Vazques had previously posted various photos with Mr. Bolsonaro.Thomas Thaler, 45, a computer programmer, said his wife gave up on voting after her bus got stuck in traffic and then was stopped by highway police on the way to vote in Recife, a large city on Brazil’s northeastern coast. She eventually exited the bus and took a different bus back home. She said she had planned to vote for Mr. da Silva.Jessica Sousa, 22, a student, said she was stuck in traffic near Cuité in Brazil’s northeast and then eventually questioned by the highway police, who requested her I.D. and asked about her plans. She eventually managed to get to a polling station and vote for Mr. da Silva. More

As Israel prepares to go to the polls again, some of the voters who helped propel an Arab party into the governing coalition for the first time are worried about a lack of results.KHASHAM ZANA, Israel — A new school in portable buildings, a paved road that reaches only halfway into the village and a sign in Arabic, English and Hebrew are the only indications of recent improvement in the Bedouin village of Khasham Zana in southern Israel.Like many other Palestinian Bedouin villages in Israel, it has existed for decades without state recognition of land ownership claims, leaving residents at constant risk of home demolitions and without basic services and infrastructure.Last year, when an independent Arab party, Raam, made history as the first to join an Israeli governing coalition, it pledged to address the plight of these villages.But when the government of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett collapsed in June, precipitating Israel’s fifth national election in less than four years on Tuesday, Raam and its leader, Mansour Abbas, had delivered on few of their electoral promises. And in places like Khasam Zana, the impact has been minimal.Raam’s inclusion in the government was welcomed by many Palestinian citizens of Israel who saw it as an important step in securing their rights. But now, many Palestinian-Israeli voters say they are disillusioned. Some are questioning how much they can realistically benefit from political engagement in a parliament that, four years ago, passed a controversial law that enshrined the right of national self-determination as “unique to the Jewish people” rather than all Israeli citizens.Palestinians as well as Israeli centrists and leftists condemned the law as racist and anti-democratic, and it was criticized by the European Union and rights groups including Human Rights Watch. Mansour Abbas, the leader of Raam, which last year became the first independent Arab party to enter an Israeli governing coalition.Dan Balilty for The New York TimesTuesday’s elections for the 120-seat Parliament, or Knesset, could see record low turnout among Israel’s one million Palestinian voters who hold Israeli citizenship. They account for about 17 percent of the country’s possible voters, but a public opinion poll in early October for Israeli public television’s Arabic-language Makan channel found that less than 40 percent of Arab voters planned to take part in the election.“The frustration is at its highest, maybe because we tried to enter the government and nothing changed,” said Mirvat Abu Hadoba-Freh, 33, a former high school civics teacher now earning a doctorate on political awareness among minority communities, including Palestinians.“This election, I hear educated people say they have gotten fed up. They don’t feel like there is anything encouraging them to vote,” she said.Though the majority of Palestinian citizens of Israel are in favor of integration and greater involvement in government, voter turnout has largely been on a downward trend over the past decade, said Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, a polling organization in Ramallah.“More and more people say what is the point in participating if nothing changes, essentially,” he said. “Obviously, it’s not fair to judge what Mansour Abbas and his party have done in a single year, but that’s what people have to go by and people’s assessment is it wasn’t worth it,” he added, referring to the leader of Raam.Raam’s green campaign banners hang along the entrance of Khasham Zana village, with different slogans playing off its campaign theme of being closer to the pulse of the street.“Closer to be effective,” reads one. “Closer to combating racism,” reads another.Palestinian Bedouin villages in the Negev Desert. Many such villages have gone unrecognized by the state for decades, leaving them without basic services. Amit Elkayam for The New York TimesThe largely conservative Palestinian communities in Israel’s Negev constitute a Raam stronghold and helped put the party into office last year.But Ms. Abu Hadoba-Freh says Raam’s brief time in office has helped put into perspective for Palestinian voters what can realistically be accomplished.“We as Arab voters, we may be able to send our leaders to the Knesset, but we don’t know if it will have much of an impact,” she said. “It may affect local budgets and services, but things like the discrimination against Arabs, this is impossible to change unless the country changes.”Raam promised to secure the official recognition of Khasham Zana and two other villages — homes to Bedouin, Palestinian communities that were once seminomadic — and said it also intended to prepare a plan to deal with dozens of other unrecognized villages in Israel’s Negev Desert.But that has not happened, and few other improvements have taken place in a village where, besides the school and half-finished road, there is no other infrastructure. Though power lines run alongside the edges of Khasham Zana, there is no state-supplied electricity, and residents must rely on solar power. There are no sewers or garbage collection. Running water comes from water tanks and pipes that residents installed themselves.Ms. Abu Hadoba-Freh comes from another unrecognized village, Wadi Samara, where residents face home demolitions and must rely on themselves for almost all services, including setting up solar panels for electricity.She voted in the past four elections. But she is questioning whether she will vote again this time.Even before Raam, more Palestinian voters were beginning to question their involvement in the Parliament, said Mansour Nasasra, a professor of politics at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, especially as there has been no progress on other key issues of importance to the Palestinians, including rising violence within the Arab community and increased attacks and police raids on holy sites.Those reservations have only increased with an Arab party in government, he said.When the government of former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, center, collapsed in June, few of Raam’s promises had been fulfilled.Dan Balilty for The New York TimesMr. Bennett’s governing coalition needed Mr. Abbas and his party to form a coalition, hailed at the time as a sign of national unity. But some Palestinians say they don’t feel they got enough in return for one of their parties’ joining the government.“The number of Palestinians killed has increased. The number of home demolitions increased in Abbas’s presence. The number of raids and closures of Al Aqsa increased in Abbas’s presence,” Mr. Nasasra said, referring to Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third-holiest site in Islam. “And Abbas couldn’t say one word about it.”Dr. Kayed al-Athamen, a hematologist and community leader from Khasham Zana who supports Raam, acknowledges that the past year’s accomplishments have been minimal. But he still encourages his fellow villagers to vote. He said he explains to them that political engagement is a long game and that they cannot be discouraged because the first Arab party in government was not as successful as they may have hoped.“We’re not going to solve the Palestinian cause in the Knesset,” he said. “But if we have four or five parliamentarians, we can make progress in terms of getting services.”Mr. al-Athamen, 43, is also banking on the idea that even if some Palestinians might not be motivated by progress, they might vote anyway because of the potential negative consequences of staying away from the polls.A campaign rally for former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this month. A comeback for him could bring more right-wing figures into government.Amit Elkayam for The New York TimesThis election could lead to a political comeback for Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing prime minister who left office last year amid corruption charges, and to his bringing even more radical figures into government, namely Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right lawmaker.If Arab voter turnout surpasses 50 percent, they would constitute an important voting bloc that could help decide what the future government looks like, Mr. al-Athamen said he tells people. That might include keeping Mr. Ben-Gvir out of government, he said.“If not, then it will be a government for Netanyahu, and the situation for Arabs will be even worse,” he said. More

Gearing up to report this year’s midterm election results, American television networks are facing an uncomfortable question: How many viewers will believe them?Amid rampant distrust in the news media and a rash of candidates who have telegraphed that they may claim election fraud if they lose, news anchors and executives are seeking new ways to tackle the attacks on the democratic process that have infected politics since the last election night broadcast in 2020.“For entrepreneurs of chaos, making untrue claims about the election system is a route to greater glory,” said John Dickerson, the chief political analyst at CBS News, who will co-anchor the network’s coverage on Nov. 8. “Elections and the American experiment exist basically on faith in the system, and if people don’t have any faith in the system, they may decide to take things into their own hands.”CBS has been televising elections since 1948. But this is the first year that the network has felt obligated to install a dedicated “Democracy Desk” as a cornerstone of its live coverage. Seated a few feet from the co-anchors in the network’s Times Square studio, election law experts and correspondents will report on fraud allegations and threats of violence at the polls.“It’s not traditional,” said Mary Hager, CBS’s executive editor of politics, who has covered election nights for three decades. “But I’m not sure we’ll ever have traditional again.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: The debate performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke, has thrust questions of health to the center of the pivotal race and raised Democratic anxieties.G.O.P. Inflation Plans: Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture Congress, but few economists expect their proposals to bring down rising prices.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Across the industry, networks have deployed dozens of reporters to state capitals around the country, where journalists have spent weeks cultivating relationships with local election officials and learning the minutiae of ballot counting procedures.Still, an election night that ends without a clear indication of which party will control the House and Senate — a likely possibility, given the dozens of tight races — could present an extended period of uncertainty, allowing rumors and disinformation to run rampant. And Americans’ trust in the national news media has rarely been lower, with barely one-third of adults in a recent Gallup poll expressing confidence in it.“I can’t control what politicians are going to say, if they choose to call an election result into question,” said David Chalian, CNN’s political director. “You’ve got to be clear, when it’s a partial picture, that nothing about that is untoward.”Two years ago, TV networks prepared for pandemic-related ballot headaches and speculation that President Donald J. Trump might resist conceding defeat.But 2022 has presented novel challenges. Allies of Mr. Trump — who claimed two years ago, without evidence, that “frankly, we did win this election” — continue to sow doubts about the integrity of the vote-counting process. Republican candidates in some key races still refuse to accept that Mr. Trump lost.Even as Americans consume information from an increasingly kaleidoscopic set of news sources — social media, hyperpartisan blogs, streaming services and family Facebook posts — the big TV networks still play a major role in setting the narrative of an election night, for better and worse.In 2020, Fox News’s early Arizona call signaled that Joseph R. Biden Jr. might emerge victorious (and left Mr. Trump enraged). In 2018, TV had a more ignominious evening: After a series of deflating early defeats for Democrats, some anchors predicted that a “blue wave” had fizzled and that Republicans would retain control of the House. It was Fox News again, working off a proprietary data model, that made the correct call that Democrats would take the chamber.Fox News made the early call that Joseph R. Biden had won in Arizona in 2020.Fox NewsMarc Burstein, the executive in charge of ABC News’s election night coverage, said his team “will be very clear to explain that there could be red or blue mirages. We’re going to be patient.” Carrie Budoff Brown, who runs “Meet the Press” on NBC, said it was “everybody’s responsibility” to prepare audiences for an extended wait.Executives are optimistic that Americans will tune in — and stick around. Despite steep drops this year in viewership of CNN and MSNBC, the Big Three broadcast networks are planning to pre-empt their entire prime-time lineups for political coverage on Nov. 8.ABC, CBS and NBC will kick off their traditional election night coverage at 8 p.m. Eastern time and continue into the wee hours. In the past, those networks often shied away from midterm nights, shoehorning in an hour of coverage between police procedurals and the local news. Executives reasoned that, without a presidential race, audiences were less engaged. That changed in 2018 at the height of the Trump presidency, when ABC, CBS and NBC each devoted three prime-time hours to covering the midterms.On cable, the anchors are preparing for the usual marathon. “This is our Super Bowl,” said Bret Baier, the chief political anchor at Fox News.Fox News’s decision desk will again be run by Arnon Mishkin, the outside consultant who spearheaded its controversial Arizona call in 2020. Although Fox’s projection was eventually proved correct, it took several days for other news outlets to concur. Mr. Trump turned his wrath on the network in retaliation, and Fox News eventually fired a pair of top executives who were involved in the decision to announce the call so early.“What we want to be, always, is right — and first is really nice — but right is what we want to be,” said Mr. Baier of Fox. “In the wake of 2020, we’re going to be looking at numbers very closely, and there may be times when we wait for more raw vote total than we have in the past.”“It’ll be a lot smoother than that moment,” he added, referring to when he and his fellow co-anchors were visibly caught by surprise as their colleagues projected a victory for Mr. Biden in Arizona. Fox officials later ascribed the confusion to poor communication among producers.“I think,” Mr. Baier said, “we all learned a lot from that experience.” More