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      House Passes Overhaul of Electoral Count, Moving to Avert Another Jan. 6 Crisis

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      WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday took the first major step to respond to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, voting mostly along party lines to overhaul the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, the law that former President Donald J. Trump tried to exploit that day to overturn his defeat.The bill was the most significant legislative answer yet to the riot and the monthslong campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies to invalidate the 2020 presidential election, but it also underscored the lingering partisan divide over Jan. 6 and the former president’s continuing grip on his party.It cleared a divided House, passing on a 229 to 203 vote. All but nine Republicans opposed the measure, wary of angering Mr. Trump and unwilling to back legislation co-written by Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and a leader of the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 and what led to them.The partisan division could complicate future negotiations with the Senate, which is moving ahead with its own bipartisan version of the legislation that differs from the House bill in some significant respects. Lawmakers now say they do not expect final approval before Congress returns for a lame-duck session after the Nov. 8 midterm elections.The legislation is aimed at updating the law that governs Congress’s counting of the electoral votes cast by the states, the final step under the Constitution to confirm the results of a presidential election and historically a mostly ceremonial process. Democrats said that the aftermath of the 2020 election — in which Mr. Trump and his allies’ attempts to throw out legitimate electoral votes led to the violent disruption of the congressional count by his supporters on Jan. 6 — made clear that the statute needed to be changed.“These are common-sense reforms that will preserve the rule of law for all elections moving forward,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the Rules Committee. “Time is running out before the next election.”One key provision in the bill, which is also contained in the Senate proposal, would clarify that the role of the vice president, who by law presides over the counting of the ballots in his capacity as president of the Senate, is strictly ministerial. After the 2020 election, Mr. Trump and his advisers tried but failed to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to accept electoral votes from states where Trump was falsely claiming victory.The measure also would raise the threshold substantially for Congress to consider an objection to a state’s electoral votes, requiring that at least one-third of the House and Senate sign on to such a challenge, up dramatically from the one member of each chamber that is now required. The Senate proposal has a lower threshold, requiring one-fifth of the House and Senate to agree.Members of both parties have raised objections in recent elections, though none have been sustained by a majority of the House and Senate. The House bill would also more narrowly define the grounds for an objection to those with a defined constitutional basis.“Ultimately, this bill is about protecting the will of the American voters, which is a principle that is beyond partisanship,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat who leads the Administration Committee and introduced the measure with Ms. Cheney. “The bottom line is if you want to object to the vote, you’d better have your colleagues and the Constitution on your side.”Passage of the bill comes as the Jan. 6 committee is wrapping up its work after a summer of high-profile hearings and preparing an extensive report, which is expected to include recommendations for how to confront the threats to democracy raised by the riot and Mr. Trump’s drive to overturn the election. Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the panel, said the next and likely final hearing would take place on Sept. 28.“We have substantial footage of what occurred that we haven’t used; we’ve had significant witness testimony that we haven’t used,” Mr. Thompson said in an interview. “This is an opportunity to use some of that material.”The legislation was also a direct response to Mr. Trump’s efforts to orchestrate the submission of fake slates of electors in states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. It would require that states choose their electors under laws in place before the election, a provision intended to prevent states from reversing course if they do not like the result. And the bill would allow candidates to sue state officials if they failed to submit their electors or certified electors that did not match the election results..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-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs 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.It also would lay out the circumstances in which a federal judge could extend an election following a catastrophe and force election officials to count ballots or certify an election if they refused to do so.Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, sponsored the bill along with Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California.Kim Raff for The New York TimesRepublicans said the legislation represented a renewed Democratic attempt to exert more federal control over elections that are usually the responsibility of state officials and courts.Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, called it “another attempt to federalize elections at the expense of states.” Other Republicans accused Democrats of rushing the legislation to the floor without review by the appropriate committees or engaging Republicans.They also accused Democrats of using the bill to take aim at Mr. Trump, portraying the legislation as an extension of the work of the special committee investigating Jan. 6, which most House Republicans denounce as a partisan exercise aimed at blaming Mr. Trump for the assault on the Capitol.“This is nothing more than an attack on President Trump and the 2020 election, an attack on a man who has not been in office for nearly two years,” said Representative Guy Reschenthaler, Republican of Pennsylvania.Lawmakers said the legislation’s close association with Ms. Cheney led House Republicans to abandon it in large numbers. Her aggressive criticism of Mr. Trump prompted Republicans to remove her from a party leadership position in May last year, and she lost her re-election primary last month.But Ms. Cheney noted strong support for the measure from conservative jurists and analysts and called on Republicans to embrace it.“If your aim is to prevent future efforts to steal elections, I would respectfully request that conservatives should support this bill,” she said on the House floor. “If instead your aim is to leave open the door for elections to be stolen in the future, you might decide not to support this or any other bill to address the Electoral Count Act.”Leaders of the bipartisan group behind the Senate bill, which was made public in July, were surprised by the sudden House action on the legislation just days after it was introduced and after months with few details on how the House was proceeding. Backers of the Senate bill said the House approach could lead to more election lawsuits, a prospect that could increase Republican opposition. But they remained hopeful the bills could be reconciled.“We can work together to try to bridge the considerable differences,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and one of the chief authors of the Senate bill. “But it would have been better if we had been consulted prior to the House sponsors deciding to drop their bill.”The Senate Rules Committee is scheduled to consider that chamber’s version next week. Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and the chairwoman of the panel, is preparing a new version that incorporates changes sought by election experts and other lawmakers in hopes of enhancing its chances of approval. The legislation so far has at least 10 Republican backers, meaning it could overcome a G.O.P. filibuster if all Democrats supported it.Despite the differences, supporters of the legislation said it needed to become law.“Failure is not an option,” said Representative Pete Aguilar of California, a member of the Democratic leadership and the Jan. 6 panel. “We’ve got to put a piece of reform on the president’s desk. We’ve got to protect democracy.”Luke Broadwater More

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      Democrats Are Starting to Feel Hopeful About the Midterms. Should They?

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      Illustration by The New York Times; images by Olivier Douliery, Anna Moneymaker and Andrii Shyp, via Getty ImagesThis article is part of the Debatable newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it on Wednesdays.Just a couple of months ago, Democrats’ prospects heading into the November elections looked, if not quite doomed, then decidedly dour: Not only do Americans tend to swing against the president’s party in the midterms, but President Biden was also presiding over the worst spate of inflation in four decades and his approval ratings over the summer had plunged to the lowest of any elected president at that point in his term since the end of World War II, according to FiveThirtyEight.But the national political environment has changed: Since July, Biden’s approval rating has risen by five percentage points and Democrats have gained around a net three percentage points in the generic ballot, which asks whether voters would prefer Democrats or Republicans to control Congress, overtaking the Republican Party’s lead.What are some of the issues that voters care most about, and how might the parties’ recent rhetorical and legislative handling of them be driving the race? Here’s what people are saying.AbortionWhen the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, there was a great deal of speculation among poll watchers and pundits about whether the abrogation of the constitutional right to abortion would redound to the Democratic Party’s benefit, potentially boosting turnout and swinging independents who might otherwise vote for Republicans.Shortly before the decision was handed down, but weeks after a draft of it had been leaked, the Times columnist Michelle Goldberg didn’t find much evidence to support this theory: “I don’t know that I’ve seen a new influx of energy,” Samhita Mukhopadhyay, the co-editor of “Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance and Revolution in Trump’s America” and the former executive editor of Teen Vogue, told her. “It’s surprising. There were marches, but it wasn’t the level of activism that we saw a couple of years ago with Black Lives Matter or even the Women’s March.”In the months since, though, there have been signs that the curtailment of abortion rights has moved the needle: In an August poll, Gallup found that abortion had climbed on Americans’ list of “most important problems” facing the country, ranking behind only economic concerns and more general issues of government and leadership. What’s more, according to a Times analysis, Roe’s overturning was followed by a surge in voter registration among women in 10 states with available data, including Kansas, where strong turnout in an August primary helped defeat a referendum that would have effectively ended abortion rights in the state.Because most Americans favor at least some abortion rights, many Republicans have tried to avoid making abortion a central campaign issue, emphasizing instead that the matter has been returned to the states. But that rhetorical posture became much harder to maintain last week, when Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, proposed a federal ban on the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy — “to cringes from many of his Republican colleagues,” The Times’s Carl Hulse reported.In the view of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, renationalizing the question of abortion regulation could be a risky political gamble for Republicans: “By Mr. Graham’s political logic, if voters in Colorado, Pennsylvania or Arizona think 15 weeks is too restrictive, they now have a reason to vote against those G.O.P. Senate candidates. Every Republican candidate will be asked to take a stance, and a Senate majority is made by swing states.”InflationPoll after poll after poll has found that inflation remains voters’ top concern heading into November. And while July’s Consumer Price Index report suggested that inflation had peaked, the August report suggested that it was not cooling as quickly as the White House and many economists had forecast. The price of rent and some food items actually increased between July and August, and workers lost buying power over the last year as prices increased faster than wages.These would be problems for any party in power during an election year, much less one whose leader has boasted of delivering wage gains. “Citizens of countries suffering from inflation have routinely sought to assign blame — to the government, to greedy companies or to politicians,” The Times’s Jonathan Weisman wrote last week of the Republican campaign strategy to blame Democrats for inflation. “Inflationary periods often yield labor strife, as workers and unions press for wage increases to keep up with rising prices, point fingers at ‘price-gouging’ companies and, more than anything, rage at those in power.”At the same time, some Republican officials have become concerned that inflation may no longer be the electoral clincher they had hoped for: Gasoline prices have fallen 26 percent from the record above $5 a gallon set in June, and consumer sentiment has improved as a result. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported this month that consumer inflation expectations were also falling, with households now expecting gas prices to be roughly unchanged a year from now.If inflation is indeed sinking in salience, some conservatives believe that Republicans will regret not elevating other issues like school curriculums, crime and immigration, Gabby Orr reported for CNN. “Our closing pitch must be compelling enough to make Republicans want to vote,” a Senate campaign aide told her. “‘It’s the economy, stupid’ no longer fits into that category.”Student debt reliefWhen Biden made the decision in August after months of lobbying to wipe out up to $20,000 of student loan debt for tens of millions of low- and middle-income Americans, it was in part because his chief of staff, among others, had argued that the relief could endear the administration to younger voters — an age group that, while more Democratic-leaning than any other, had broadly soured on the president.“It certainly energizes young people and people with student loan debt, which also includes many Republicans,” Andre Perry, a senior fellow at Brookings, told NPR. “Overall, it’s a political win for Biden because he’s delivering on his promises, he has a chance to pick up on some moderate Republicans who have debt.”This read of Biden’s debt jubilee is shared even by some of his political enemies:But Philip Bump wrote for The Washington Post that, so far, there are no obvious signs that young people will reward Biden for the relief plan, which hasn’t yet taken effect. In approval rating polls since August, “when we look at Americans under 30 — the group with the most debt — there’s been little to no movement at all,” he noted.Nor, as Vox’s Christian Paz pointed out, does the relief plan seem to be making much of an impression with independent voters, who polls have suggested are divided on the issue. “Ultimately, the policy might have had the effect of stopping the bleeding of support that Biden and Democrats were experiencing among their base,” he wrote. But, he added, “What is apparent is that Biden’s action is not as popular with the kind of voter that tends to matter in midterm elections in swing states: older white Americans and independents.”The polling wild cardThe polling profession entered something of a legitimacy crisis after the 2016 presidential election that only deepened in 2020, as this newsletter has explored, and there’s good reason to be wary of the polling data we’ve seen so far in 2022: As Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, noted last week, Democratic Senate candidates are outrunning expectations in the same places where the polls overestimated Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, raising the possibility that the party’s supposedly favorable odds of retaining Senate control are an illusion.Polling mistakes matter not just because they can give pundits and readers a false impression of how an election might turn out; as Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to Barack Obama, wrote in his newsletter last weekend, they can also change the outcome of the election itself, because campaigns, national party committees and super PACs rely on polling to make decisions about where to direct their efforts and funds.But Pfeiffer (and Cohn, too) sees evidence that the polls might actually be right this time around: Polls were more accurate in the 2018 midterms than they were in the 2020 presidential race, and recent special elections — including one that resulted in the pickup of a House seat in Alaska — have been encouraging for Democrats.Their predictive function (or dysfunction) aside, polls can also be useful for revealing trends in public opinion and voter behavior. In 2016, for example, pre-election polls accurately showed that Donald Trump was making huge gains among white voters without college degrees, and in 2020 they showed that he was also making gains among Hispanic voters. Even when polls miss on the horse race, Cohn noted this week, “these trends uncovered by polls continue to have import.”Do you have a point of view we missed? Email us at debatable@nytimes.com. Please note your name, age and location in your response, which may be included in the next newsletter.READ MORE“Are the Polls Wrong Again?” [The New York Times]“Will Abortion Affect the Midterm Vote for Candidates? Lessons From the Ban Gay Marriage Ballot Initiatives” [The Brookings Institution]“Two Months That Turned the 2022 Midterms on Their Head” [The Cook Political Report]“America’s Dueling Realities on a Key Question: Is the Economy Good or Bad?” [The New York Times]“Four Types of Voters We’re Watching in the Midterms” [The New York Times]What’s at stake for you on Election Day?In the final weeks before the midterm elections, Times Opinion is asking for your help to better understand what motivates each generation to vote. We’ve created a list of some of the biggest problems facing voters right now. Choose the one that matters most to you and tell us why. We plan to publish a selection of responses shortly before Election Day. More

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      Los votantes latinos y el Partido Republicano frente a las elecciones

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      Una encuesta de The New York Times/Siena College revela que los demócratas están mucho peor que en el pasado con los votantes hispanos. Pero, en general, el partido ha mantenido el control sobre el electorado latino.Han pasado casi dos años desde que Donald Trump logró algunos avances sorpresivos con los electores latinos. Pero según un nuevo sondeo de The New York Times y Siena College, no se han logrado materializar los sueños de los republicanos sobre una importante reorientación de los votantes latinos hacia las posturas de su partido sobre los problemas sociales y la delincuencia.Este sondeo —una de las encuestas no partidistas más grandes relacionadas con los electores latinos desde las elecciones de 2020— reveló que los demócratas habían mantenido un control sobre la mayoría de los electores latinos, motivados en parte por mujeres y por la creencia de que los demócratas seguían siendo el partido de la clase trabajadora. En general, es más probable que los votantes latinos estén de acuerdo con los demócratas en muchos temas: inmigración, política sobre el control de armas, cambio climático. También es más probable que vean a los republicanos como el partido de la élite y como el movimiento que tiene posturas extremas. Además, una mayoría de los electores latinos, el 56 por ciento, piensa votar por los demócratas este otoño, en comparación con el 32 por ciento que pretende votar por los republicanos.Pero en la consulta también se ven señales preocupantes para el futuro del mensaje de los demócratas. Pese a esa cómoda ventaja, el sondeo revela que los demócratas están mucho peor que en los años anteriores a las elecciones de 2020. Parece que los electores latinos más jóvenes, sobre todo los del sur, se están alejando del partido, un cambio que es impulsado por las enormes inquietudes en materia económica. En las elecciones intermedias de este año, deficiencias en el sur y entre los electores de las zonas rurales se podrían interponer en los triunfos importantísimos de Texas y Florida.Anthony Saiz, de 24 años, quien reseña el contenido de una plataforma de redes sociales en Tucson, Arizona, comentó que, para salir adelante, tuvo que aceptar un segundo empleo como pizzero en una cervecería. Saiz votó por Joe Biden en 2020 y se considera demócrata porque creció dentro de una familia demócrata. Pero cree que durante el mandato de Biden el costo de la vida se duplicó, pese a que se mudó a un apartamento más pequeño.“Las decisiones que ha tomado para el país me han puesto en una situación muy difícil”, comentó acerca del presidente.La manera en que voten los latinos será un asunto fundamental en las elecciones de noviembre y para el futuro de la política estadounidense. La participación de los electores latinos es decisiva en la lucha por el control del Congreso y conforman una parte considerable de los votantes —hasta el 20 por ciento— en dos de los estados que más probabilidades tienen de decidir el control del Senado: Arizona y Nevada. Los latinos también representan más del 20 por ciento de los electores registrados en más de una decena de contiendas muy competitivas para la Cámara de Representantes en California, Colorado, Florida y Texas, entre otros estados.Desde hace mucho tiempo, los demócratas han pensado que el creciente electorado latino condenaría a los republicanos, y las posibilidades de que haya un electorado cada vez más diverso han avivado las preocupaciones de los conservadores. Los resultados de las elecciones de 2020 —en las cuales, en comparación con 2016, Trump ganó más o menos unos ocho puntos porcentuales entre los votantes latinos— comenzaron a cambiar el panorama de ambos partidos. La encuesta del Times/Siena revela que siguen arraigadas las creencias y las lealtades históricas con respecto a los temas centrales, aunque hay algunos cambios que llaman mucho la atención.Aunque las mayorías de los votantes hispanos apoyan a los demócratas en temas sociales y culturales, una parte muy considerable sigue teniendo creencias que se alinean con los republicanos: más de una tercera parte de los electores hispanos afirman que están más de acuerdo con el Partido Republicano en los temas relacionados con la delincuencia y la vigilancia policial, y a cuatro de cada diez votantes hispanos les preocupa que el Partido Demócrata haya ido demasiado lejos en materia de raza y género. Los votantes latinos consideran que los problemas económicos son el factor más importante que determinará su voto este año y están divididos de manera uniforme acerca de con qué partido están más de acuerdo en lo que se refiere a la economía.Los electores latinos en Estados Unidos nunca han sido un bloque de votación monolítico y con frecuencia desconciertan a los estrategas políticos que tratan de entender su comportamiento. Los 32 millones de latinos que pueden votar son inmigrantes recientes y ciudadanos de cuarta generación, habitantes de las ciudades y de las zonas rurales, católicos y ateos.Ambos partidos se han llenado de fanfarronerías y han disparado sus expectativas respecto a los votantes latinos, recaudando y gastando millones de dólares para atraer su apoyo, pero hay pocos datos concretos no partidistas que respalden sus especulaciones. La encuesta ofrece una visión de una parte del electorado que muchos estrategas han denominado como el nuevo voto indeciso y cuyas opiniones suelen ser complicadas por las contradicciones entre subgrupos.Para Dani Bernal, una empresaria de Los Ángeles, los temas económicos ocupan un lugar destacado en sus decisiones.Jenna Schoenefeld para The New York TimesDani Bernal, de 35 años, que se dedica al mercadeo digital y es empresaria en Los Ángeles, dijo que alterna entre los candidatos de ambos partidos, en gran parte basándose en sus políticas económicas. Dijo que su madre llegó a Florida desde Bolivia con solo una bolsa de ropa y 500 dólares, y pudo prosperar porque los impuestos eran bajos y el costo de la vida era asequible. Bernal dijo que los temas económicos tienen una gran importancia en sus decisiones.“Estoy registrada como republicana, pero soy exactamente igual que Florida: voy de un lado a otro”, dijo.Los republicanos están teniendo un mejor desempeño con los votantes latinos que viven en el sur, una zona que incluye estados como Florida y Texas, donde los republicanos han logrado victorias importantes en las elecciones recientes con los votantes latinos. En el sur, 46 por ciento de los electores latinos dicen que piensan votar por los demócratas, mientras que el 45 por ciento afirman que planean votar por los republicanos. Por el contrario, en otras zonas del país, los demócratas tienen del 62 al 24 por ciento entre los electores latinos.Es posible que una brecha generacional también lleve a los republicanos a obtener más triunfos. La encuesta reveló que los demócratas gozaban de un gran respaldo sobre todo entre los electores latinos de mayor edad, pero el 46 por ciento de los votantes menores de 30 años apoyan el manejo de la economía por parte de los republicanos, en comparación con el 43 por ciento que están a favor de los demócratas.Los republicanos también tienen fuerza entre los varones latinos, quienes apoyan más a los demócratas en las elecciones intermedias, pero, por un margen de cinco puntos, dicen que votarían por Trump si volviera a contender en 2024. Parece que los varones jóvenes, sobre todo, están dando un giro hacia los republicanos. Son un importante punto débil para los demócratas quienes, con los varones menores de 45 años, mantienen una ventaja de solo cuatro puntos en las elecciones intermedias.La encuesta del Times/Siena ofrece una visión de los votantes latinos que tradicionalmente han apoyado a los demócratas en el pasado pero que planean votar a los republicanos este otoño: son desproporcionadamente votantes sin título universitario que se centran en la economía, y es más probable que sean jóvenes, hombres y nacidos en Estados Unidos, pero que viven en zonas con gran presencia de hispanos.La inmigración sigue siendo un tema primordial para los electores latinos, y ambos partidos tienen un atractivo particular. Mientras que los demócratas han presionado para reformar el sistema de inmigración legal y ofrecen una vía para que muchos inmigrantes que viven de manera ilegal en el país obtengan la ciudadanía, los republicanos se han enfocado en tomar medidas enérgicas contra la inmigración ilegal y en usar la política fronteriza para impulsar sus bases.Los demócratas conservan una gran ventaja en el tema de la inmigración legal y el 55 por ciento de los electores latinos afirman estar de acuerdo con este partido, en comparación con el 29 por ciento que dicen estar de acuerdo con los republicanos. Pero el Partido Republicano ha avanzado cuando ha acentuado la retórica y la política antiinmigración: 37 por ciento de los electores latinos apoyan las posturas de los republicanos con respecto a la inmigración ilegal. Y aproximadamente una tercera parte de estos respalda la construcción de un muro en la frontera entre México y Estados Unidos.Amelia Alonso Tarancón, de 69 años, quien emigró de Cuba hace 14 años y ahora vive en las afueras de Fort Lauderdale, Florida, quiere que el Congreso le proporcione estatus legal a los trabajadores que viven en el país de manera ilegal y que han estado ahí durante décadas. Pero concuerda con los republicanos en sus posturas radicales contra la inmigración ilegal. Esta idea la motivó a votar por Trump, pese a que es una demócrata registrada.Amelia Alonso Tarancón, que vive cerca de Fort Lauderdale, Florida, no se considera demócrata ni republicana.Saul Martinez para The New York Times“Sé que este país es un país de inmigrantes, pero deben migrar de forma legal”, dijo. Pero Alonso Tarancón dijo que ya no apoyaba al expresidente después de que se negó a entregar la presidencia, impulsó el ataque al Capitolio de Estados Unidos y “se llevó todos esos documentos” a Mar-a-Lago.“No me considero ni demócrata ni republicana, ahora mismo estoy en espera hasta las próximas elecciones”, dijo.En su esfuerzo por atraer nuevos votantes, los republicanos han criticado con frecuencia a los demócratas por ser demasiado “concienciados” o woke. Esa acusación resuena entre muchos votantes hispanos porque el 40 por ciento dice que el partido ha ido demasiado lejos al impulsar una ideología “concienciada” en materia de raza y género. Pero hay una clara división: el 37 por ciento opina lo contrario y dice que el partido no ha ido lo suficientemente lejos. Y casi uno de cada cinco votantes hispanos encuestados dijo que no sabía si los demócratas eran demasiado woke, un término que no se puede traducir fácilmente al español.En lo que se refiere a muchos temas sociales y culturales, los electores latinos siguen estando alineados con el Partido Republicano.La mayoría, un 58 por ciento, tiene una buena opinión del movimiento “Las vidas negras importan”, mientras que el 45 por ciento también apoyan el movimiento “Las vidas azules importan”, el cual defiende al personal de la policía. Una mayoría cree que el aborto debe ser legal en casi todos los casos; incluso entre los latinos republicanos, cuatro de cada diez personas rechazan la decisión de la Corte Suprema de anular la sentencia del caso Roe contra Wade. El apoyo a “Las vidas negras importan” y al derecho al aborto es impulsado principalmente por los jóvenes. Al preguntarles con quién están más de acuerdo en el caso de la política sobre el control de armas, el 49 por ciento dijo que con los demócratas, mientras que el 34 por ciento afirmó que con los republicanos.En repetidas ocasiones, los republicanos que intentan ganarse a los electores latinos han descrito a los demócratas como elitistas y alejados de la realidad, pero la encuesta indica que esta estrategia está teniendo un éxito limitado.Casi seis de cada 10 votantes latinos siguen viendo al Partido Demócrata como el partido de la clase trabajadora. Aunque los republicanos blancos se consideran de modo uniforme como el partido de la clase trabajadora, incluso algunos republicanos latinos creen que esa es una característica de los demócratas. Además, en la encuesta no se obtuvieron pruebas de que los republicanos estuvieran teniendo un mejor desempeño entre la población latina sin estudios universitarios ni entre los latinos de las zonas rurales, dos grupos demográficos fundamentales a los que han querido acercarse. Uno de cada cuatro votantes latinos de las zonas rurales sigue sin decidir por quién votar en noviembre.Los demócratas han sido criticados con contundencia por su aceptación del término Latinx, que tiene el propósito de ser más inclusivo que las palabras “latino” y “latina”, las cuales marcan el género. Encuestas anteriores han revelado que solo una pequeña minoría de votantes latinos prefieren ese término. Pero la encuesta indicaba que Latinx no es, en absoluto, el tema más polarizador; solo el 18 por ciento señaló que ese término le parecía ofensivo.La encuesta del Times/Siena, realizada a 1399 votantes registrados en todo el país, incluida una sobremuestra de 522 votantes hispanos, se llevó a cabo por teléfono con operadores en directo del 6 al 14 de septiembre de 2022. El margen de error de muestreo es de más o menos 3,6 puntos porcentuales para la muestra completa y de 5,9 puntos porcentuales entre los votantes hispanos. Las tabulaciones cruzadas y la metodología están disponibles para todos los votantes registrados y para los votantes hispanos.Nate Cohn More

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      You Cannot Be Too Cynical About Trump (or His Imitators)

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. Any plans to hop a flight to Martha’s Vineyard?Gail Collins: Gee, Bret, I think the Vineyard folks have had enough unexpected guests for a while. But I really was impressed by how gracious they were to the immigrant families that Gov. Ron DeSantis shipped there.Bret: It’s a shame for the Venezuelan migrants that they weren’t on the Vineyard for long, because the community there is extraordinarily generous.Gail: As opposed to DeSantis and his slimy attempt to score political points with the right wing.Bret: It was definitely a stunt, but it was a politically effective one.Gail: Are you still open to the idea of him as a possible president?Bret: All depends on the opponent. If you were a Republican primary voter and your choice was between Donald Trump and DeSantis, who would choose? No fair to answer “Canada” or “euthanasia.”Gail: Exactly why I’m never going to be a Republican primary voter. And I don’t believe there’s a Democrat with an infinitesimal possibility of nomination I wouldn’t prefer to DeSantis.Bret: No fair avoiding the question! I’m no longer a registered Republican, but I’d root for DeSantis over Trump in a primary, and I’d vote for DeSantis over, say, Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom in a general election, though I hope that’s not the choice I would have to make. I’d also love to see a candidate who believes we need more immigrants in this country and is serious about effective border enforcement.Gail: About immigration. The Republicans are clearly planning to make that a big issue — certainly Trump loves to howl about it. But let me begin with one bottom line: The United States has an aging population that can’t possibly fill all the job openings it already has. The hospitality sector has been, on average, half a million people short every month for months; the food services industry alone is around 1.4 million people short.Bret: Total agreement on this one. We don’t just need immigrants to fill jobs — we also need their ambition, entrepreneurialism, work ethic, cultural creativity, strong family values and non-entitled attitudes. Unfortunately the Biden administration is screwing this up by pretending that we aren’t seeing a tidal wave of border migrants, and that it’s not a massive burden on the social services of border states.Mystifying to me why the administration can’t get this one right. Democrats are even losing Hispanic voters over the issue. What gives?Gail: No modern president has been able to get a real grip on the border immigration crisis — don’t even know if you can call it a crisis since it’s been going on for so long.Bret: There’s never been perfect border control, but there’s been better and worse. What we now have is unmistakably worse and a lot of liberals are deluding themselves if they think there’s nothing amiss when U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports a 250 percent increase in migrant encounters around Yuma.Gail: You have waves of folks fleeing from disaster back home — these days, particularly Venezuelans.Bret: Ah yes, Venezuela. Chesa Boudin’s idea of a workers’ paradise. Sorry, go on ….Gail: Many of them have endured terrible treks by foot, sometimes with children. If they present themselves at the border, their claims have to be processed, which can take a lot of time. The procedure is really a mess, and meanwhile there’s the choice between letting them live miserably in makeshift camps or providing them, and especially their children, with the services they need.Like his predecessors, Biden’s has been trying to get the system improved, but the legal issues plus the politics make it almost impossible.If these folks make their way into the country illegally, with luck they’ll get settled and work out their immigration problems later. But of course they can also wind up homeless and drift into crime. The border state residents have to bear most of the burden just because of their location, so you can see why they’d resent that.Bret: We obviously should be compassionate to refugees fleeing persecution, kids especially. But Biden has also turned the United States into a magnet for migration in a way that communities are simply unprepared to handle. Our compassion as a country has to be proportionate to our means, not our wishes.Gail: One thing we clearly need is revised immigration law that takes all this into consideration and provides economic support to the communities where these folks wind up. But I’ve noticed a certain lack of enthusiasm among congressional Republicans for that idea.Bret: There used to be Republicans — Ronald Reagan, both Presidents Bush, and John McCain among them — who were eager to pass comprehensive immigration reform and were stymied by restrictionists on both sides of the aisle, including Bernie Sanders. Now we’ve got an immigration debate in Congress that might as well be described as the heartless against the clueless.Switching subjects, Gail, our colleague David Brooks had a terrific column last week on why all the attempts to defeat Trump thus far have failed. Any theories of your own?Gail: Trump’s recent triumphs have been pretty much within his own party. Let’s see what happens when the candidates he endorsed for Senate, like that crazy guy in Arizona, actually have to run in an election against a non-crazy Democrat like Mark Kelly.Bret: Don’t be shocked if the crazy guy wins. Last poll I checked had him within two points.Gail: But in the bigger picture, we’re living in a new internet-oriented world where old political virtues like making reasonable deals with the other side have been wiped away. Too boring.Bret: Trump intuitively understands entertainment the way no other politician has since maybe Ronald Reagan. But Reagan was a romantic whereas Trump is a cynic, which makes him particularly potent in a cynical age.Gail: It’s scary how well Trump fits into that new world. No real ideas maybe, but he’s colorful, a good ranter and not constrained by any sense of obligation to be rational. Have to admit my greatest hope for the total scuttling of Trump’s political career is the New York attorney general’s attempt to pull the cover off his finances.How about you?Bret: I tend to think that all of these legal attacks on Trump do more to help than hurt him. He’s a Nietzschean figure in that sense: that which does not kill him makes him stronger. Unless he is tried in a courtroom somewhere in the West Village, there is no jury in the United States that is going to hand down a unanimous verdict against him. What these potential prosecutions mainly do is keep him in the spotlight, which is right where he likes to be, with something like the color of martyrdom, at least to his supporters.Gail: My dream has never been Trump in behind bars — you’re right, he’d become a triple martyr — but Trump in bankruptcy court and then sending out Truth Social memes from a motel in New Jersey? That speaks to me.But go on …Bret: Trump is what a friend of mine calls a “rage funnel.” It’s a funnel for a very specific type of rage — the rage of feeling looked down upon. And I don’t think that ends until the culture of liberal condescension that people like Hillary Clinton typified turns into a culture of understanding and empathy for his voters.Gail: Hillary was over-blamed on that front, thanks to one dumb comment. But you’ve got a very important point and from now on when I see The Donald I’m going to see him as a funnel-head.Bret: Coneheads!Gail: On a totally different subject — you’re my trusted interpreter of sane Republicanism. Can you interpret what Lindsey Graham is up to with his bill creating a national ban on abortion? At a time when many of the G.O.P. Senate candidates seem to be scrubbing all abortion references off their websites?Bret: You can’t interpret stupid, Gail.The bill isn’t just dead on arrival with every single Democrat. It’s D.O.A. for many Republicans, too. The whole point of overturning Roe v. Wade was to let the states decide for themselves what limits to set on abortion. So much for federalism. And, as you point out, the proposal just plays into Democratic hands at a time when pro-choice voters are exceptionally motivated to go to the polls.Gail: Yippee!Bret: That being said, it isn’t such a bad thing that the G.O.P. keep fumbling the politics of the midterm, because the last thing the country needs is yet another crop of Trumpy Republicans in Congress. So I say, go Lindsey!Gail: Wow, so you’re hoping for a Democratic-controlled Congress as well as a Democratic-controlled White House?Bret: Which Bolshevik was the one who said “the worse, the better”? That’s kind of my attitude here. It’s not that I relish the idea of continued Democratic control. Far from it. But then I look at the alternative.Gail, we’ve dwelled on a lot of negatives, which I guess is what you get these days when you talk about politics. Can I end with a brief tribute to the greatness of Roger Federer, who announced last week that he was retiring from the professional tennis circuit? There are some athletes who personify everything that’s perfect not just about a sport but about sportsmanship itself: Jesse Owens, Ted Williams, Althea Gibson, Pelé, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. Roger was that for 24 years on the court and off.Gail: That’s what I’ve come to appreciate about sports. They do bring us all together, even when we’re rooting for different players.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Majority of Latino Voters Out of G.O.P.’s Reach, New Poll Shows

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      A New York Times/Siena College poll found Democrats faring far worse than they have in the past with Hispanic voters. But overall, the party has maintained a hold on the Latino electorate.It has been nearly two years since Donald Trump made surprising gains with Hispanic voters. But Republican dreams of a major realignment of Latino voters drawn to G.O.P. stances on crime and social issues have failed to materialize, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.The poll — one of the largest nonpartisan surveys of Latino voters since the 2020 election — found that Democrats had maintained a grip on the majority of Latino voters, driven in part by women and the belief that Democrats remained the party of the working class. Overall, Hispanic voters are more likely to agree with Democrats on many issues — immigration, gun policy, climate. They are also more likely to see Republicans as the party of the elite and as holding extreme views. And a majority of Hispanic voters, 56 percent, plan to vote for Democrats this fall, compared with 32 percent for Republicans.But the survey also shows worrying signs for the future of the Democratic message. Despite that comfortable lead, the poll finds Democrats faring far worse than they did in the years before the 2020 election. Younger male Hispanic voters, especially those in the South, appear to be drifting away from the party, a shift that is propelled by deep economic concerns. Weaknesses in the South and among rural voters could stand in the way of crucial wins in Texas and Florida in this year’s midterms.Anthony Saiz, 24, who reviews content for a social media platform in Tucson, Ariz., said he had to take on a second job baking pizzas at a beer garden to make ends meet. Mr. Saiz voted for President Biden in 2020 and considers himself a Democrat because he grew up in a Democratic household. But under Mr. Biden, he said, the cost of living seemed to have doubled for him even as he moved into a smaller apartment.“The choices he has been making for the country have been putting me in a bad spot,” he said of Mr. Biden.How Latinos will vote is a crucial question in the November elections and for the future of American politics. Hispanic voters are playing a pivotal role in the battle over control of Congress, making up a significant slice of voters — as high as 20 percent — in two of the states likeliest to determine control of the Senate, Arizona and Nevada. Latinos also make up more than 20 percent of registered voters in more than a dozen highly competitive House races in California, Colorado, Florida and Texas, among other states.Democrats have long assumed that the growing Latino electorate would doom Republicans, and the prospect of an increasingly diverse electorate has fueled anxieties among conservatives. The 2020 election results — in which Mr. Trump gained an estimated eight percentage points among Hispanic voters compared to 2016 — began changing both parties’ outlooks. The Times/Siena poll shows that historic allegiances and beliefs on core issues remain entrenched, though some shifts are striking.While majorities of Hispanic voters side with Democrats on social and cultural issues, sizable shares hold beliefs aligned with Republicans: More than a third of Hispanic voters say they agree more with the G.O.P. on crime and policing, and four out of 10 Hispanic voters have concerns that the Democratic Party has gone too far on race and gender. Hispanic voters view economic issues as the most important factor determining their vote this year and are evenly split on which party they agree with more on the economy.Who Do You Agree More With on the Following Issues?Among Hispanic voters

      Based on responses from 522 Hispanic voters in a New York Times/Siena College poll of 1,399 registered voters nationwide from Sept. 6 to 14, 2022. Does not include a small percentage of respondents who said they agreed with both parties, who said they didn’t know or who refused to answer.By The New York TimesHispanic voters in America have never been a unified voting bloc and have frequently puzzled political strategists who try to understand their behavior. The 32 million Latinos eligible to vote are recent immigrants and fourth-generation citizens, city dwellers and rural ranchers, Catholics and atheists.Both parties have been full of bluster and soaring expectations for Latino voters, raising and spending millions of dollars to attract their support, but there has been little concrete nonpartisan data to back up their speculation. The survey offers insights into a portion of the electorate that many strategists have called the new swing vote and whose views are often complicated by contradictions among subgroups.For Dani Bernal, an entrepreneur in Los Angeles, economic issues loom large in her decisions.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesDani Bernal, 35, a digital marketer and entrepreneur in Los Angeles, said she switched back and forth between candidates from both parties, in large part based on their economic policies. Her mother, she said, had arrived in Florida from Bolivia with only a bag of clothes and $500 to her name, and had been able to thrive there because taxes were low and the cost of living had been affordable. Economic issues loom large in her decisions, Ms. Bernal said.“I am registered as a Republican, but I am exactly like Florida: I swing back and forth,” she said.Republicans are performing best with Hispanic voters who live in the South, a region that includes Florida and Texas, where Republicans have notched significant wins with Latino voters in recent elections. In the South, 46 percent of Latino voters say they plan to vote for Democrats, while 45 percent say they plan to vote for Republicans. By contrast, Democrats lead 62 to 24 among Hispanic voters in other parts of the country.How this poll captured Latino sentiment on election issues. We spoke with 522 Hispanic voters, more than four times as many as in our last survey — a method pollsters call an oversample. Here’s how that works.A generation gap could also lead to more Republican gains. Democrats, the poll found, were benefiting from particularly high support among older Latino voters. But voters under 30 favor Republicans’ handling of the economy by 46 percent, compared with 43 percent who favor Democrats.Republicans also have strength among Latino men, who favor Democrats in the midterm election but who say, by a five-point margin, that they would vote for Mr. Trump if he were to run again in 2024. Young men in particular appear to be shifting toward Republicans. They are a key vulnerability for Democrats, who maintain just a four-point edge in the midterms among men younger than 45.The Times/Siena poll provides a glimpse of Latino voters who have traditionally supported Democrats in the past but plan to vote for Republicans this fall: They are disproportionately voters without college degrees who are focused on the economy, and they are more likely to be young, male and born in the United States but living in heavily Hispanic areas.Immigration remains a key issue for Hispanic voters, and both parties have a particular appeal. While Democrats have pushed for overhauling the legal immigration system and providing a path to citizenship for many undocumented immigrants, Republicans have focused on cracking down on illegal immigration and using border politics to galvanize their base.Democrats maintain a significant advantage on the issue of legal immigration, with 55 percent of Hispanic voters saying they agree with the party, compared with 29 percent who say they agree with Republicans. But the G.O.P. has made inroads as it has stepped up anti-immigration rhetoric and policy: 37 percent of Latino voters favor Republicans’ views on illegal immigration. And roughly a third support a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.Amelia Alonso Tarancon, 69, who emigrated from Cuba 14 years ago and now lives outside Fort Lauderdale, Fla., wants Congress to offer legal status to undocumented workers who have been in the country for decades. But she agrees with Republicans on their hard-line views against illegal immigration. The issue motivated her to vote for Mr. Trump, though she is a registered Democrat.Amelia Alonso Tarancon, who lives near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., does not consider herself a Democrat or a Republican.Saul Martinez for The New York Times“I know this country is a country of immigrants, but they should immigrate in a legal way,” she said. But Ms. Alonso Tarancon said she no longer supported the former president after he refused to hand over the presidency, fueled the attack on the U.S. Capitol and “took all those documents” to Mar-a-Lago.“I don’t consider myself a Democrat or Republican — I am on standby right now until the next election,” she said.In their effort to attract new voters, Republicans have frequently criticized Democrats as being too “woke.” The accusation resonates with many Hispanic voters, with 40 percent saying that the party has gone too far in pushing a “woke” ideology on race and gender. But there is a clear split: 37 percent take the opposite view and say the party has not gone far enough. And nearly one in five Hispanic voters surveyed said they didn’t know whether Democrats were too woke — a term that cannot be easily translated into Spanish.On many social and cultural issues, Hispanic voters remain aligned with the Democratic Party.The majority, 58 percent, have a favorable view of the Black Lives Matter movement, while 45 percent say the same about the Blue Lives Matter movement, which defends law enforcement personnel. A majority believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases; even among Republican Hispanics, four in 10 oppose the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Support for Black Lives Matter and abortion rights is propelled largely by young people. When asked whom they agreed with more on gun policy, 49 percent said Democrats, while 34 percent said Republicans.Republicans attempting to court Latino voters have repeatedly painted Democrats as elitist and out of touch, but the poll suggests that strategy is having limited success.Nearly six in 10 Hispanic voters continue to see the Democrats as the party of the working class. While white Republicans uniformly see themselves as the working-class party, even some Hispanic Republicans believe that mantle belongs to Democrats. And there was no evidence in the poll that Republicans were performing any stronger among non-college-educated Latinos or among Hispanics who lived in rural areas, two key demographic groups they have focused on for outreach. One in four Hispanic voters in rural areas remain undecided about who they will vote for in November.Democrats have been roundly criticized for their embrace of the term Latinx, which is meant to be more inclusive than the gendered words Latino and Latina. Previous surveys have shown only a small minority of Hispanic voters prefer the term. But the poll suggests that Latinx is hardly the most polarizing issue; just 18 percent said they found the term offensive.The Times/Siena survey of 1,399 registered voters nationwide, including an oversample of 522 Hispanic voters, was conducted by telephone using live operators from Sept. 6 to Sept. 14, 2022. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points for the full sample and 5.9 percentage points among Hispanic voters. Cross-tabs and methodology are available for all registered voters and for Hispanic voters.Nate Cohn More

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      Democrats Buoyed by Abortion and Trump, Times/Siena Poll Finds

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      Even as they struggle to persuade voters that they should be trusted on the economy, Democrats remain unexpectedly competitive in the battle for Congress as the sprint to November’s midterm election begins, a New York Times/Siena College poll has found.The surprising Democratic strength has been bolstered by falling gas prices and President Biden’s success at breaking through legislative gridlock in Washington to pass his agenda. That shift in political momentum has helped boost, in just two months, the president’s approval rating by nine percentage points and doubled the share of Americans who believe the country is on the right track.But Democrats are also benefiting from factors over which they had little control: the public outcry in response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of federal abortion rights and the return of former President Donald J. Trump to an attention-commanding presence on the national stage.Changes in Voter Sentiment More

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      Why Is There Still No Strategy to Defeat Donald Trump?

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      One of the stunning facts of the age is the continued prominence of Donald Trump. His candidates did well in the G.O.P. primaries this year. He won more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016. His favorability ratings within his party have been high and basically unchanged since late 2016. In a range of polls, some have actually shown Trump leading President Biden in a race for re-election in 2024.His prominence is astounding because over the past seven years the American establishment has spent enormous amounts of energy trying to discredit him.Those of us in this establishment correctly identified Trump as a grave threat to American democracy. The task before us was clear. We were never going to shake the hard-core MAGA folks. The job was to peel away independents and those Republicans offended by and exhausted by his antics.Many strategies were deployed in order to discredit Trump. There was the immorality strategy: Thousands of articles were written detailing his lies and peccadilloes. There was the impeachment strategy: Investigations were launched into his various scandals and outrages. There was the exposure strategy: Scores of books were written exposing how shambolic and ineffective the Trump White House really was.The net effect of these strategies has been to sell a lot of books and subscriptions and to make anti-Trumpists feel good. But this entire barrage of invective has not discredited Trump among the people who will very likely play the most determinant role. It has probably pulled some college-educated Republicans into the Democratic ranks and pushed some working-class voters over to the Republican side.The barrage has probably solidified Trump’s hold on his party. Republicans see themselves at war with the progressive coastal elites. If those elites are dumping on Trump, he must be their guy.A couple weeks ago, Biden gave a speech in Philadelphia, declaring the MAGA movement a threat to democracy. The speech said a lot of true things about that movement, but there was an implied confession: We have no strategy. Denouncing Trump and discrediting Trump are two different tasks. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned, denunciation may be morally necessary, but it doesn’t achieve the goal the denouncers think it does.Some commentators argued that Biden’s strategy in the speech was to make Trump the central issue of the 2022 midterms; both Biden and Trump have an interest in making sure that Trump is the sun around which all of American politics revolves.This week, I talked with a Republican who was incensed by Biden’s approach. He is an 82-year-old émigré from Russia who is thinking of supporting Ron DeSantis in the 2024 primaries because he has less baggage. His parents were killed by the Nazis in World War II. “And now Biden’s calling me a fascist?!” he fumed.You would think that those of us in the anti-Trump camp would have at one point stepped back and asked some elemental questions: What are we trying to achieve? Who is the core audience here? Which strategies have worked, and which have not?If those questions were asked, the straightforward conclusion would be that most of what we are doing is not working. The next conclusion might be that there’s a lot of self-indulgence here. We’re doing things that help those of us in the anti-Trump world bond with one another and that help people in the Trump world bond with one another. We’re locking in the political structures that benefit Trump.My core conclusion is that attacking Trump personally doesn’t work. You have to rearrange the underlying situation. We are in the middle of a cultural/economic/partisan/identity war between more progressive people in the metro areas and more conservative people everywhere else. To lead the right in this war, Trump doesn’t have to be honest, moral or competent; he just has to be seen taking the fight to the “elites.”The proper strategy in this situation is to scramble the identity war narrative. That’s what Biden did in 2020. He ran as a middle-class moderate from Scranton. He dodged the culture war issues. That’s what the Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman is trying to do in Pennsylvania.A Democratic candidate who steps outside the culture/identity war narrative is going to have access to the voters who need to be moved. Public voices who don’t seem locked in the insular educated elite worldview are going to be able to reach the people who need to be reached.Trumpists tell themselves that America is being threatened by a radical left putsch that is out to take over the government and undermine the culture. The core challenge now is to show by word and deed that this is a gross exaggeration.Can Trump win again? Absolutely. I’m a DeSantis doubter. I doubt someone so emotionally flat and charmless can win a nomination in the age of intensive media. And then once Trump is nominated, he has some chance of winning, because nobody is executing an effective strategy against him.If that happens, we can at least console ourselves with that Taylor Swift lyric: “I had a marvelous time ruinin’ everything.”What’s at stake for you on Election Day?In the final weeks before the midterm elections, Times Opinion is asking for your help to better understand what motivates each generation to vote. We’ve created a list of some of the biggest problems facing voters right now. Choose the one that matters most to you and tell us why. We plan to publish a selection of responses shortly before Election Day.

      The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Previewing the Next NYT/Siena Poll

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      In our July survey, the president’s approval rating was 33 percent. A lot has changed in the last two months, so will it show up in this week’s survey?It’s a busy week in New York Times election-land — we’re wrapping up our second national poll of the cycle.The last interviews will be complete by the time you read this — the poll is still in the field as I write this — and it should be interesting to see how it contrasts (or doesn’t) with our last poll. In July, in our last survey, President Biden’s approval rating was 33 percent, one of his worst results of the cycle.But a lot has changed in the last few months. Gas prices have plummeted. Mr. Biden’s legislative agenda was suddenly revived. According to FiveThirtyEight, Democrats have gained around a net three percentage points in the generic ballot, while Mr. Biden’s approval rating has risen by five percentage points.This Times/Siena poll also has a twist: a Hispanic “oversample,” which is a fancy way of saying that we surveyed a lot more Hispanic voters than we normally do. We’ll have more on this in coming days.If you’re subscribed to this newsletter — and you should be! — we’ll send you an email with our findings as soon as we get them. We’re probably still a few days from publishing the results, so no need to refresh your inbox just yet.A good analogy to Roe?On Tuesday, I asked whether anyone had a good historical analogy for the way the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade had shaken up this year’s midterm elections — an example in which the party out of power achieved the biggest policy success of a president’s first term.It’s not an exact analogy, but here’s a good answer from Matt Grossmann, a professor at Michigan State University who often has great insights into the dynamics of American electoral politics.His comparison: the backlash against the Republican effort to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998.No, it’s not exactly a policy triumph like the court’s overturning of Roe. But if we think of the impeachment through Congress as something like a legislative initiative, you can see the similarity: Republicans were making a major push to change the status quo in Washington, and a backlash against a Republican-favored initiative became a key point in the election.For Democrats, it’s a pretty favorable analogy: Democrats picked up five seats in 1998, making it the first time the president’s party gained House seats in a midterm since 1934.Is a good poll for Republicans in Wisconsin good news for polls?Yesterday, the venerable Marquette Law School poll found the incumbent Republican senator Ron Johnson leading the Democrat Mandela Barnes by one percentage point among likely voters.Key Findings From the Times/Siena College PollCard 1 of 7The first poll of the midterm cycle. More