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      How to Watch Election Night Like a Pro

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      Strategists are watching a few East Coast races that could be called early, offering a rough road map to the entire country.Want to know how the story of the 2022 midterms is going to end as soon as possible on election night? Strategists in both parties are zeroing in on a handful of East Coast races that could be called early in the evening, giving us a rough road map to the entire country. (Here’s when to expect the results in every state.)The simplest strategy is to follow three House races in Virginia that will function on Tuesday like a gauge along a flood-prone coastal plain — telling us whether this election will be a red ripple, a red wave, a red tsunami or something closer to a modest blue riptide. Polls close there at 7 p.m. Eastern.Red ripple: The most vulnerable Democrat in Virginia is Representative Elaine Luria, a former Navy commander whose district is the military- and veteran-heavy area around Virginia Beach. Biden won the area by 1.9 percentage points in 2020, but during last year’s race for governor in Virginia, it went Republican by double digits. Watch Virginia Beach County, which swung from a five-point victory for Democrats in 2020 to an eight-point loss a year later.If Luria survives, Democrats will be ecstatic. It might mean that a few Republicans, like Representatives Steve Chabot of Ohio or Don Bacon of Nebraska, are in trouble.Red wave: Next up is Representative Abigail Spanberger, a former C.I.A. officer who faces Yesli Vega, the daughter of Salvadoran refugees. The district includes a mix of suburban and rural areas southwest of Washington. Republicans think they have a shot at ousting Spanberger even though Biden won the area by 6.8 percentage points in 2020.Remember: Rural areas usually count faster, so Spanberger will appear to be way down before the most populous county in her district, Prince William, tallies its votes. Take note of just how easily Republicans are winning in Spanberger’s rural counties. Last year, Glenn Youngkin carried Greene County by 36 percentage points on the way to the governor’s mansion.Red tsunami: If Representative Jennifer Wexton, the Democratic incumbent in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District, loses to Hung Cao, a Navy veteran who is running for office for the first time, Democrats are in for a brutal night. The only remaining question will be just how brutal — Biden won the upscale Virginia exurban area by 18.1 percentage points, though Youngkin closed that gap against Terry McAuliffe in 2021.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Final Landscape: As candidates make their closing arguments, Democrats are bracing for potential losses even in traditionally blue corners of the country as Republicans predict a red wave.The Battle for Congress: With so many races on edge, a range of outcomes is still possible. Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, breaks down four possible scenarios.Voting Worries: Even as voting goes smoothly, fear and suspicion hang over the process, exposing the toll former President Donald J. Trump’s falsehoods have taken on American democracy.If Wexton hangs on but Luria and Spanberger lose, Republicans will still pop the Moët early: Of the 88 House seats deemed even remotely competitive this year, there are 45 more districts where Democrats won a smaller share of the vote in 2020 — 26 of which are currently held by the party.Many or all of them could flip. A suburban Democrat like Representative Angie Craig in Minnesota would need to worry, as would once-comfortable Democratic incumbents in West Coast states like California.Virginia could also provide clues to the national mood of Black voters, whose tepid enthusiasm for Biden has worried Democrats. Sean Trende, a political analyst who served as a special master during Virginia’s redistricting process, suggested looking at the returns in Hampton City and Surry Counties to gain insight into how turnout among Black voters in both urban and rural areas is shaping up.A seven-point swing in Spanberger’s district would also suggest that polls have been overstating Democrats’ support elsewhere. In that scenario, some Democratic governors might fall: Tony Evers in Wisconsin, Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, even Tim Walz in Minnesota. It would signal that Republicans are likely to retake the Senate, where they need to flip just one seat.But, but, but …With apologies to Tip O’Neill, all politics is national now. But local factors — unique demographics, strong and weak candidates, well-run and hapless campaigns — still matter at the margins, where races are often won and lost.There are otherwise vulnerable Democrats like Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and Representative Chris Pappas of New Hampshire who might stave off defeat because they face flawed Republican opponents. In a wave year, though, even those seemingly fortunate Democrats might go down.“If Marcy loses, we lose every single seat Trump won and probably every seat Biden won by 2 or less,” said Brian Stryker, a Democratic pollster at Impact Research. That’s 14 seats.There are also comparatively strong Republican candidates elsewhere along the East Coast like Allan Fung, who could win an open seat in Rhode Island that Biden won by more than 14 points. And if George Logan, a Republican business executive, defeats Representative Jahana Hayes, a Democrat, in staunchly blue northwestern Connecticut, it would suggest that Republicans are persuading Democratic voters to break ranks.What if Luria loses and Spanberger wins, but just barely? Pour yourself a cup of coffee and settle in. Things are going to get interesting.The Senate: Brace for uncertaintyWhile most analysts in both parties expect Republicans to win the House fairly easily, it will probably be much longer before the balance of power in the Senate becomes clear.Polling in most, if not all, of the major competitive Senate races is within the margin of error, suggesting the results could be close in either direction.And because rural counties tend to count the fastest, it might initially look as if Republicans are far ahead in many states until more Democratic votes are tallied in populous urban areas.The Associated Press and the major TV networks use mathematical models to determine the winner before all the votes are in. But this year, a definitive outcome could take days to unfold, Democrats have cautioned leaders of the news media in a recent round of briefings.Supporters of Mehmet Oz, the Republican Senate candidate, at an event on Sunday in Bethlehem, Pa.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesPennsylvania, for one, mandates that in-person ballots be counted before mail-in and absentee votes. If the Senate race there between Mehmet Oz and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman turns out to be as close as the polling indicates, every one of those late-counted votes could matter. In New Hampshire, election officials are warning that a surge of write-in votes could slow the count.In 2020, the Senate special election in Arizona came down to just 78,806 votes, though The A.P. declared Mark Kelly the winner on election night. In Georgia, Jon Ossoff was behind Senator David Perdue by about the same number. But since neither candidate reached 50 percent, they went to a runoff two months later.Democrats did not secure their majority until the runoff contests on Jan. 5, 2021, when both Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, who ran in a special election against Senator Kelly Loeffler, narrowly defeated their Republican opponents.We could be headed for another runoff in Georgia if neither candidate wins an outright majority. And if Democrats win three of the other battleground races elsewhere, control of the Senate will again come down to the Peach State. Can Warnock bank enough votes in the sprawling Atlanta suburbs to offset the rural strength of his rival, Herschel Walker?Counties to watchWhile you’re waiting, here are some places to home in on:New Hampshire: It’s smaller than the other states, and could be the one where we first learn the winner. Here, the county to monitor is Hillsborough, which Hillary Clinton and Senator Maggie Hassan both lost narrowly in 2016. Biden then flipped it convincingly in 2020. Home to Manchester and Nashua and their suburbs, it’s the state’s most populous county.Nevada: The state has only two significant urban areas: Clark County, home of Las Vegas and a Democratic stronghold; and Washoe County, home of Reno and a swing region. When Catherine Cortez Masto defeated Joe Heck to win her Senate seat in 2016, she lost every county but Clark — where she bested him by more than 82,000 votes. Two years later, Jacky Rosen won big in Clark County and defeated Senator Dean Heller, the Republican incumbent, in Washoe County, too. If Cortez Masto isn’t running up the score in Vegas, big-time, she probably won’t win.Arizona: Statewide races are won and lost in Maricopa County, which contains Phoenix and 62 percent of the state’s population. In 2020, Kelly won it by around 80,000 votes. The state’s other major population center is deep-blue Tucson, while Mohave, Pinal and Yavapai Counties are typically shades of red. Watch the outcome in State Senate District 4, a swing seat in Paradise Valley, a suburb of Phoenix — the results there could signal larger trends.Pennsylvania: The state’s recent bellwether has been northwestern Erie County, which Biden flipped after Clinton lost it to Donald Trump in 2016. But the suburbs around Philadelphia are where Democratic candidates typically try to run up huge margins over their Republican opponents. Pay attention to blue-collar Bucks County in particular — Oz has campaigned heavily there. Biden won it by 4.4 percentage points in 2020.Ohio: Keep an eye on the returns in Delaware County, a suburb of Columbus that has trended blue in recent years even as the state as a whole has turned deep red. If J.D. Vance wins big here, it’s over. And according to Stryker, the Democratic pollster, if Representative Tim Ryan isn’t within two or three percentage points of Vance in Delaware, “weaker Democratic candidates are probably getting their clocks cleaned in the suburbs.”What to readAs the nation prepares for another Election Day, suspicion and fear have become embedded in the mechanics of American democracy and voter intimidation has crept up to levels not seen for decades, Nick Corasaniti and Charles Homans write.In his newsletter The Tilt, Nate Cohn explores the battle for Congress and lays out four potential scenarios that could unfold tomorrow night.Kate Zernike examines how, while the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade outraged many women and galvanized them heading into the midterms, men remain passive by comparison.Attorney General Merrick Garland has tried to show that the Justice Department can operate above partisanship. But Donald Trump’s apparent plan to make an early announcement of a 2024 presidential bid is testing that approach, Katie Benner writes.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Who Will Win the Battle for Congress? Four Scenarios.

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      Ryan CarlJust about anything is still possible in this year’s midterm elections.Everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a fairly close race for the House to something like a Republican rout is well within the range of realistic possibilities on Tuesday.Why such a wide range? With so many races on edge, it wouldn’t take much for the final outcome to feel very good, or very bad, for either party.In the Senate, the races likeliest to decide control remain exceptionally close, with the poll averages showing essentially a dead-heat in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and even New Hampshire. With just a few lucky breaks, either party could win control.There’s a similar story in the House. While Republicans are plainly favored to win the chamber, dozens of races are tossups. It wouldn’t take much for Democrats to keep the race fairly close, perhaps delaying a call on House control for many hours or perhaps even days. On the other hand, it wouldn’t take much for Republicans to pick up dozens of seats, leaving the impression that 2022 was something like a wave election.There is also the possibility of more surprising outcomes: a true Republican landslide or a Democratic hold on Congress. The polls have been wrong before. The voters, after all, have the final say.Here’s an overview of what might still happen — how it might happen, why so much remains possible, and what signs to look for on election night.Scenario 1: The clear Republican winWith five critical Senate races and dozens of House races looking like tossups, even some random breaks could give Republicans something that feels like a rout: control of the Senate and a big gain in the House.The election could still be fairly close. It might still take days to resolve. But it wouldn’t take much for the final scoreboard to look more like a rout than a close and competitive race.In almost every critical race, the final Times/Siena polls suggested that voters preferred Republican control of Congress and disapproved of President Biden’s performance, but Democrats often had the advantage of incumbency or Republicans had the disadvantage of an unpopular candidate.But Republicans could quickly have a great night if even a small share of voters swallows their doubts about unpopular nominees or discards their warm feelings about longtime Democratic incumbents.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.House Democrats: Several moderates elected in 2018 in conservative-leaning districts are at risk of being swept out. That could cost the Democrats their House majority.A Key Constituency: A caricature of the suburban female voter looms large in American politics. But in battleground regions, many voters don’t fit the stereotype.Crime: In the final stretch of the campaigns, politicians are vowing to crack down on crime. But the offices they are running for generally have little power to make a difference.Abortion: The fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer Democrats a way of energizing voters and holding ground. Now, many worry that focusing on abortion won’t be enough to carry them to victory.Another factor, as always, is turnout, especially in the House races in states with less competitive races at the top of the ticket. It might be enough for Republicans to scratch out a few extra wins.It might take a long time before a clear Republican success becomes a certainty. It might take days before critical races in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nevada are resolved. Georgia might take until December, if no candidate clears the 50 percent necessary to avoid a runoff.But on Tuesday night, the signs of a clear Republican win might still start to pile up. Republicans would quickly register comfortable wins in North Carolina, Florida and Ohio. New Hampshire might be close, even if the Democrats pull it out. Wisconsin would be in the Republican column by bedtime. A series of crucial House districts in the Southeast, like North Carolina’s 13th and Virginia’s Second, might swing into the Republican column. The odds of Democrats holding on in the pivotal but slower-counting states would start to look pretty bleak.Scenario 2: The feels-like-a-win for DemocratsDemocrats cling to a five-seat majority in the House, but if they get a few breaks, the night still might leave them with a lot to feel good about — even if the scoreboard still shows the Republicans gaining seats and taking the House. It might even feel like a Democratic win, given how the polls have trended toward Republicans in recent weeks.This feels-like-a-win mainly comes down to holding control of the Senate. To hold the chamber, the party will probably need to win three of the four most critical races: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.Democrats would start to feel a lot better if they could add a few more feel-good wins to the ledger, like beating “stop the steal” Republican candidates for governor in Pennsylvania and Arizona, or a victory for abortion rights in Michigan. It might just be enough for Democrats to take a glass-half-full perspective on the 2022 election, provided the party also holds down its House losses and can save face by avoiding embarrassingly close races in blue states and districts, like for governor of New York or for the Senate from Washington.The Democratic path to an acceptable night counts on voters who will back the candidate they know and like most, even if they don’t love the idea of having Democrats control the Senate. Staving off embarrassment will also require Democrats to turn out in states far removed from the national spotlight — the states where the Senate isn’t at stake, where abortion is not on the ballot, and where no stop-the-steal candidate has a realistic chance of winning statewide.It will take a long time before it becomes clear that Democrats are on track for a feels-like-a-win. There’s a distinct chance that none of the key Senate races will be called on election night. Democrats will start to feel optimistic on Tuesday night if they can stay close in states like Ohio, Wisconsin and North Carolina, and hold the key East Coast House races.They might even get outright excited if Mark Kelly opens up a wide lead in Arizona’s increasingly Democratic early mail vote.Scenario 3: The Republican landslideIf the polls underestimate the Republicans again, the result of this year’s midterms won’t just feel like a Republican landslide — it will be a Republican landslide.A “red wave” election would not be a surprise; nor would it be hard to explain. President Biden’s approval ratings are stuck in the low 40s, a figure as low or lower than Donald J. Trump’s approval ratings in 2018, Bill Clinton’s in 1994 and Barack Obama’s in 2010. In each case, the party out of power gained 40 or more House seats and won the House national popular vote by around seven percentage points or more. With Republicans making steady gains in the polls, it does not take any great imagination to see them stretching out a more decisive lead.It’s tempting to think a decisive Republican victory isn’t possible in such a polarized country, especially because Democrats have won the national vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. But just last November, Republicans won the Virginia governor’s race by two percentage points — exactly the kind of showing that would be equivalent to a red wave nationwide.The red wave doesn’t necessarily require the surveys to be systematically biased in the same ways they were two years ago, though that very well might happen. It may require only that undecided voters decide, as they often have, to use their vote as a check on the party of the president, regardless of their feelings about individual Democratic incumbents. Or maybe it would just take an unexpectedly strong Republican turnout on Election Day, while young, Black and Hispanic voters stay home in greater numbers than they did in 2018.On Tuesday night, if Republicans are headed for a landslide, the signs would be obvious from the start. Not only would Senator Marco Rubio and Gov. Ron DeSantis cruise to victory in Florida, where votes are counted quickly, but safe Democratic House incumbents in South Florida — even the well-known former Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz — might find themselves in surprisingly close races. Farther north, Republicans would easily flip the key tossup districts in Virginia and North Carolina, but also advance even further into blue territory — flipping Virginia’s Seventh, held by Abigail Spanberger, while endangering the next tier of safer Democratic incumbents, like Jennifer Wexton. The Senate races in North Carolina and Ohio would not be close.It might still be a long time until we see a call in the Senate, but in this scenario Herschel Walker would have a chance to clear the 50 percent necessary to win outright and avoid a runoff in Georgia. A Republican win in the Senate race in New Hampshire would seal the deal.Scenario 4: A Democratic surpriseA surprising Democratic night — a hold in the House and the Senate — is unlikely. With polls trending toward Republicans, the outcome feels even harder to imagine than the word “unlikely” suggests.But it does remain within the realm of possibility: Democrats are still within striking distance of a good night. Unlike in previous cycles, they remain competitive in enough races to win control of the House. And not only do Democrats remain competitive in the race for the Senate, but they also have upside potential for a good night: Upsets remain possible in states like Wisconsin, Ohio and North Carolina, even if Republicans are plainly favored.By any historical perspective, it would be hard to explain if the Democrats managed to hold both chambers of Congress. No president with an approval rating under 50 percent has seen his party gain House seats in a midterm election, dating to the dawn of modern polling. But this is not exactly an ordinary moment in American history. Partisan polarization is extreme. Many Democratic voters perceive that democracy is under threat. Others are furious about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. In another midterm election, these voters might have stayed home. This cycle, they may well vote. And a critical sliver of voters dissatisfied with Mr. Biden and Democrats might feel they have no choice but to vote against Republicans.Democratic strength among highly educated voters would most likely be a critical part of any upset. Not only are these voters well represented in key battleground districts, but they’re also likelier to make up a larger share of the electorate in a low-turnout midterm election. It’s a tendency that might cut against the usual pattern for the president’s party to suffer from low turnout. At the same time, Democrats would need relatively disaffected elements of their party’s base — Black, Hispanic and young voters — to come home down the stretch.The possibility of the polls erring in this way might also seem hard to imagine. After all, polls have underestimated Republicans in recent cycles. But historically, there isn’t much of a relationship between polling error in one election and the next. The pollsters who did poorly either adjust or drop out. The pollsters who did well one year feel emboldened the next. And that does seem to be happening this cycle.The traditional pollsters who underestimated Republicans the most in 2020 have significantly reduced their polling this cycle or stopped altogether. Other pollsters are doing everything they can to ensure a more Republican-leaning sample, including by means that would have been scorned a few years ago. And then there’s the flood of state polls by Republican firms, showing eye-popping results like a Republican lead for New York governor.All of this may add up to far more accurate polling averages than in 2020. But if pollsters overcorrect — or if the balance of pollsters has shifted too far toward the Republican-leaning outfits — there would be a chance that the polls underestimate Democrats.Indeed, many traditional polls still show signs of Democratic strength. To take one recent example: Marist College released polls showing Democrats ahead in Pennsylvania and Arizona, and leading among registered voters in Georgia. Siena College showed Democrats faring quite well in several critical House races in New York State that one might have thought were leaning toward Republicans in this national environment.On Tuesday night, if Democrats are on track to greatly exceed expectations, the signs would show up pretty early. The Senate races in North Carolina, Wisconsin and Ohio will all largely be decided on election night. If Democrats remain highly competitive in all three or even win one, it will be a clear sign that this isn’t the simple Republican win that analysts long expected. More

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      What’s at Stake in These Elections

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      Midterm elections in the United States are often presented as a referendum on the party in power, and that message appears to be resonating this fall. But voters need to consider the intentions of the party that hopes to regain power, too, and what each vote they cast will mean for the future of this country.Eight Republican senators and 139 Republican representatives sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election on the basis of spurious allegations of voter fraud and other irregularities. Many of them are likely to win re-election, and they may be joined by new members who also have expressed baseless doubts about the integrity of the 2020 election. Their presence in Congress poses a danger to democracy, one that should be on the mind of every voter casting a ballot this Election Day.It will also be the first time that the U.S. electoral machinery will be tested in a national election after two years of lawsuits, conspiracy theories, election “audits” and all manner of interference by believers in Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. That test comes alongside the embrace of violent extremism by a small but growing faction of the Republican Party.The greatest danger to election integrity may, in fact, come from the results of state and local races that will determine who actually conducts the election and counts the votes in 2024. In the weeks that followed the 2020 election, Mr. Trump and his supporters saw their efforts to deny the election results and prove rampant voter fraud thwarted by two things: first, their inability to produce credible evidence that such fraud had occurred and, second, an election infrastructure that was defended by honorable public servants who refused to accept specious claims of wrongdoing.Over the past two years, Republicans in dozens of states have tried to dismantle that infrastructure piece by piece, particularly by filling key positions with Trump sympathizers. As this board wrote in September, “Rather than threatening election officials, they will be the election officials — the poll workers and county commissioners and secretaries of state responsible for overseeing the casting, counting and certifying of votes.” Many of those positions are being contested this week.With Mr. Trump said to be readying his bid to return to the White House, this board urges American voters to consider how important each vote cast on Election Day, at every level of government, will be. Even if the member of Congress in your district has refused to accept Mr. Trump’s lies about this election, there are other races on the ballot in many states for offices — including secretary of state, attorney general and governor — that will play crucial roles in overseeing and certifying the 2024 presidential election.Still, with that election two years away, many voters say they are more concerned with the present threats to their livelihoods than with the equally serious but less visible threat to democracy. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that “more than a third of independent voters and a smaller but noteworthy contingent of Democrats said they were open to supporting candidates who reject the legitimacy of the 2020 election, as they assigned greater urgency to their concerns about the economy than to fears about the fate of the country’s political system.”Indeed, voters have good reason to look at the current moment and wonder whether the Biden administration and congressional Democrats are doing enough to meet it. High inflation is making it harder for Americans to afford what they need and want. Overall crime has risen, causing people to fear for their safety. The federal government is struggling to enforce the nation’s immigration laws. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and America’s increasingly tense relations with China are undermining global peace and prosperity.Republicans have presented these midterm elections as a referendum on Democratic leadership, and that message appears to be resonating.But voters need to consider the intentions of the party that hopes to regain power, too.Republicans have offered few specific plans for addressing issues like inflation, immigration and crime — and even if they win control of Congress, they are unlikely to win enough seats to shift federal policy significantly over the next two years.A Republican-controlled Senate would, however, be able to block President Biden from filling vacancies on the federal bench and on the Supreme Court. It would become more difficult to obtain confirmations for executive branch officials, as well.Republican candidates have also pledged to devote significant time and energy to investigating the Biden administration. “I don’t think Joe Biden and his handlers are exactly eager to sign Republican legislation into law, so our hearings are going to be the most important thing that we can have,” Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado told a recent rally.In addition to that spectacle, Republicans are threatening to stage another showdown over federal spending.At some point in the next year, the government is expected to hit the limit of its authorized borrowing capacity, or debt ceiling. To meet the commitments Congress already has authorized, it will need to raise that limit. This ought to be a matter of basic housekeeping, because failing to pay the nation’s bills would risk a global financial crisis. But debt ceiling votes have instead become recurring opportunities for extortion.This board has called for Congress to eliminate the debt ceiling, replacing it with a common-sense law that says the government can borrow whatever is necessary to provide for the spending authorized by Congress. There is no public benefit in requiring what amounts to a second vote on spending decisions. But for now, the ceiling endures, and Republicans have made clear that if they win control of Congress, they intend to use it as a bargaining chip with the White House to advance their party’s fiscal goals.One priority on that list is cutting taxes. Republicans already are preparing to move forward with legislation to extend the 2017 tax cuts for individuals, which mostly benefit wealthy households, while eliminating some of the offsetting increases in corporate taxation — a plan that is not easily reconciled with the party’s stated concerns about inflation or the rising federal debt.Republican proposals would also make it more difficult for the Internal Revenue Service to prevent wealthy Americans from cheating on their taxes. Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, who is in position to become speaker if Republicans win a majority, has said the “first bill” that would pass under his leadership would reverse an $80 billion funding increase for the I.R.S. Congress approved that funding in August so the I.R.S. can crack down on rampant tax fraud by high-income households.Some senior Republicans have called for repealing another key piece of the August legislation, known as the Inflation Reduction Act: a measure that limits drug costs for seniors on Medicare, including a $35 monthly cap on payments for insulin.Republicans also have floated plans to roll back more firmly established benefits. The Republican Study Committee, a conservative policy working group whose membership includes more than half of the current crop of House Republicans, published a budget plan in June calling for Congress to gradually increase the retirement age for full Social Security benefits to 70 to check the rising cost of the program. The plan also would increase the age of eligibility for Medicare.Democrats could make it more difficult for Republicans to pursue these goals by raising the debt limit or changing the rules in the weeks between the election and the end of the year.Democrats have largely failed to connect with voters’ concerns about inflation and public safety during this campaign season. They have struggled to communicate their tangible achievements, including a big boost in funding for local law enforcement and bipartisan gun safety legislation, a historic federal investment in developing clean and low-cost sources of energy to confront climate change and the cost of living, and a breakthrough measure to bring down the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare recipients.Undoubtedly, there is more work to be done on these and other issues, including the health of the economy and the broken state of immigration policy. Voters need to decide which party they trust to do that work.But the 2022 elections are also an opportunity for every American to do their part in defending the integrity of American elections. The task of safeguarding our democracy does not end with one election, and it requires all of us to play a role. Our nation’s governance depends on it.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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      Democrats Promote Tough-on-Crime Credentials as Party Plays Defense

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      With sheriffs vouching for them and a flood of ads proclaiming their support for the police, Democrats are shoring up their public safety bona fides. Still, some worry it’s too late.In the final stretch of the midterm campaigns, Democrats are straining to defend themselves against a barrage of crime-focused attacks from Republicans, forcefully highlighting their public safety credentials amid signs that G.O.P. messaging on the issue may be more potent than usual in some critical races this year.Democrats have enlisted sheriffs to vouch for them, have outspent Republicans on ads that use the word “police” in the month of October, and have been using the kind of tough-on-crime language that many on the left seemed to reject not long ago — even as some Democrats worry that efforts to inoculate the party on a complex and emotional issue are falling short.Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, who is being criticized over a 2018 video in which he called ending cash bail a “top priority,” aired an ad in which an officer declared him a “tough-on-crime” lawmaker who confronted those “who wanted to defund the police.”Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada has long highlighted her pro-law enforcement credentials, including with an ad featuring a police chief praising her record of being “tough on crime.”And Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, whose history on criminal justice issues is being denounced by Republicans, sounded pro-law enforcement notes at a senior center on Friday as he discussed his tenure as the mayor of Braddock, Pa., saying he “was proud to work with our police departments, and funding the police.”Nationwide, Democrats spent more money last month on ads that used the word “police” than Republicans did, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. But heavy Republican spending on crime ads earlier this year has helped define the final weeks of the campaign in states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.Cheri Beasley, the Democratic nominee for Senate in North Carolina, has highlighted supporters with law enforcement backgrounds in her campaign.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesNational crime trends are mixed and complex, and Republicans have often reached for arguments about crime or border security, with varying results. Some party strategists doubt the issue will be decisive this year, with many Americans far more focused on economic matters.But a Gallup survey released late last month found that “Americans are more likely now than at any time over the past five decades to say there is more crime in their local area than there was a year ago.”The issue, fanned and sometimes distorted by conservative news outlets, has been especially pronounced in liberal-leaning states, including New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Wisconsin, where big cities have struggled with concerns about violence and quality of life over the last few years. But the topic is at play in many tight Senate, House and governors’ races.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Biden’s Speech: In a prime-time address, President Biden denounced Republicans who deny the legitimacy of elections, warning that the country’s democratic traditions are on the line.State Supreme Court Races: The traditionally overlooked contests have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic pollster, said the most effective responses had come from candidates who formulated a message on crime early.“Too many Democrats waited until the attacks on crime happened,” she said. “We’re never going to win on crime. We just have to answer it strongly enough to be able to pivot back to other issues to show we’re in touch.”Some Democrats fear that their party has fallen short. In an article on Thursday for The American Prospect, a liberal magazine, Stanley B. Greenberg, a longtime Democratic pollster, warned that the party was still struggling with a branding problem, even though many Democrats distanced themselves long ago from the “defund the police” movement that gained traction after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.Billboards in Philadelphia attacked Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, over his record on crime.Michelle Gustafson for The New York TimesMr. Fetterman said that during his tenure as the mayor of Braddock, Pa., he had been “proud to work with our police departments, and funding the police.”Ruth Fremson/The New York Times“‘Defund’ is a very small segment” of the party, Mr. Greenberg said in an interview. “But the whole party owns it.”Steven Law, the chief executive of the Senate Leadership Fund, the leading super PAC for Senate Republicans, said concerns about public safety contributed to the idea that the country is going in the wrong direction — a problem for the party in power.“Crime has an outsized ability to define Democrats as being liberal instead of moderates, more than any other issue,” he added.Democratic officials have tried to address the issue head-on. The party’s Senate campaign arm encouraged candidates to challenge Republicans over opposing measures that would combat gun violence, a committee aide said, and to use law enforcement officials in their advertising.“It’s not just trying to be more Republican than the Republicans,” said Aimee Allison, the founder of She the People, a political advocacy group focused on women of color. “People are interested in how to make communities safer.”And a memo this spring from the Democratic House campaign arm laid out a guide, advising candidates to reject the notion of defunding the police, to highlight law enforcement funding they had secured and to rely on members of law enforcement to endorse their records. It also urged Democrats to “stand up for racial justice.”“In 2020, the Republican lies were so outrageous, some candidates thought they could ignore them,” Mr. Maloney, the chairman of the House Democratic campaign arm, said. “In 2022, we know better.”It is evident that many Democrats are following aspects of that playbook, while also slamming Republicans over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — another issue the memo noted.Representative Tim Ryan, Democrat of Ohio, who is facing a difficult Senate race, has claimed credit for helping to obtain federal funding for state law enforcement. He has also criticized his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, over sympathetic statements he made toward rioters at the Capitol, where about 140 police officers were injured.Over the summer, Mr. Ryan ran an ad in which a sheriff called the claim that Democrats want to defund the police “ridiculous” and said he “trusts Tim Ryan to keep our community safe.”Representative Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Democrat in Virginia, made national headlines two years ago for her critique of her party on a leaked post-election call, which included concerns about the “defund the police” movement.This year, Ms. Spanberger said in an interview, Democrats could point to votes serving as “proof points” that they are serious about crime.“We’re appropriating significant money to local police departments,” she said.Representative Tim Ryan, Democrat of Ohio, who is facing a difficult Senate race, has claimed credit for helping to obtain federal funding for state law enforcement. Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesJ.D. Vance, Mr. Ryan’s Republican opponent, has made sympathetic statements toward rioters who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesIn one of Ms. Spanberger’s television ads, a Republican police chief endorsed her while criticizing her opponent, Yesli Vega, for “defending” rioters who attacked the Capitol. Ms. Vega, an auxiliary deputy with the Prince William County Sheriff’s Office, called the rioters “a group of Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.”In Pennsylvania, the Fetterman campaign said it had put out 16 ads mentioning crime or public safety, including at least one featuring the sheriff of suburban Montgomery County, who vouched for Mr. Fetterman.This week, a Monmouth University poll showed that voters trusted both Mr. Fetterman and Mehmet Oz, his Republican rival, equally when it came to handling crime. The poll also noted that Mr. Fetterman’s edge on the issue had evaporated. Mr. Fetterman has defended himself primarily by pointing to his tenure as the mayor of Braddock, outside Pittsburgh, where for five years a scourge of murders came to a stop.The issue has also played a prominent role in other Senate races, including in Wisconsin and, to some degree, North Carolina.Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin and Cheri Beasley in North Carolina, the first Black woman to serve as chief justice of the State Supreme Court, have also showcased supporters with law enforcement backgrounds in their campaigns.In Wisconsin, mail advertising from Republicans has darkened Mr. Barnes’s skin, one stark example of the ways attacks on crime can propel issues of race to the forefront.Representative Mark Pocan, Democrat of Wisconsin, said: “Clearly, the message was not just one of crime. It was one of racism.” And, like other Democrats, he alluded to the Capitol riot.“They claim to back the blue, and in reality, they’re backing the coup,” he said. “You can’t pretend to support law enforcement, but then selectively decide which law enforcement that you’re going to protect.”Jon Hurdle contributed reporting from Harrisburg, Pa. More

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      Moderate House Democrats Are at Risk, Putting the Majority Up for Grabs

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      Several Democrats elected in 2018 with an anti-Trump message in conservative-leaning districts are centering their closing argument on protecting democracy as they try to buck national trends.NORFOLK, Va. — In her final campaign ad, Representative Elaine Luria, a Democrat and Navy veteran who sits on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, practically dares her constituents to replace her in Congress with her Republican opponent, who has refused to condemn former President Donald J. Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.Representative Abigail Spanberger, a former C.I.A. officer, has blanketed her central Virginia district with ads portraying her challenger as a supporter of the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.In Michigan, Representative Elissa Slotkin, herself a former C.I.A. analyst, has been campaigning with Representative Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican who is the vice chairwoman of the Jan. 6 committee and has made combating threats to democracy the focus of her final year in Congress.The three Democrats, all of whom are in difficult re-election races in swing districts with conservative leanings, are at risk of being swept out in next week’s midterm elections, possibly costing Democrats the House majority.They are part of a class of moderates — many of them women with national security credentials who ran for Congress to counter the threat they saw from Mr. Trump — who flipped Republican districts in the 2018 election, delivering Democrats the House majority. Now they are centering their closing campaign argument on protecting democracy.For two election cycles, these Democrats have largely managed to buck Republican attempts to brand them as liberal puppets of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but the challenge has grown steeper in 2022.President Biden’s popularity has sagged. State redistricting has shifted some of their districts, including Ms. Luria’s on the eastern shore of Virginia, to include higher percentages of conservatives. And polls indicate that the issues at the top of mind for voters across the political spectrum are inflation and the economy, even though they overwhelmingly believe that American democracy is under threat.“This is the first time they’ve had to run in a hostile political environment,” David Wasserman, the House editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said of the group. “The class of 2018 — we’re going to see some losses this year. But it’s remarkable that many of them are doing as well as they are given the president’s approval rating.”A dozen of Ms. Luria’s 2018 classmates lost their bids for re-election in 2020, and as many as a dozen more are at risk of being swept out next week. Two of them — Representatives Cindy Axne of Iowa and Tom Malinowski of New Jersey — are behind in the polls, and analysts believe more are headed for defeat.But these frontline Democrats believe if anyone can buck the national trends, it is them.“It’s a lot of pressure,” Ms. Luria said of holding onto a pivotal seat. A recent poll from Christopher Newport University showed her tied with her Republican opponent, Jen A. Kiggans.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Biden’s Speech: In a prime-time address, President Biden denounced Republicans who deny the legitimacy of elections, warning that the country’s democratic traditions are on the line.State Supreme Court Races: The traditionally overlooked contests have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.As they battle for political survival, they have worked to dramatize the stakes for voters.“I believe that our democracy is the ultimate kitchen table issue,” Ms. Slotkin said during a sold-out event with Ms. Cheney in East Lansing. “It’s not even the kitchen table; our democracy is the foundation of the home in which the kitchen table sits.”Ms. Luria has campaigned on her reputation as one of the most bipartisan members of Congress, and her record of using her perch on the Armed Services Committee to secure tens of millions of shipbuilding dollars for her district.On a recent Tuesday, as she walked through the Dante Valve manufacturing plant in Norfolk, a small business where workers build key parts for submarines, executives said her support for the Navy fleet had proved “critical” for providing steady paychecks in a town where the economy is inextricably tied to the U.S. military.Republican strategists concede that this group of Democrats has proved tough to knock off, having built brands in their districts that outperform the typical Democrat. Their internal polling shows some of them outperforming Mr. Biden by double digits in favorability.To counter the Democrats’ national security credentials, Republicans have recruited military and law enforcement veterans of their own.Ms. Slotkin is facing off against Tom Barrett, a state senator and Army veteran who served in Iraq.“I have no idea if I’m going to win my election — it’s going to be a nail biter,” she said recently.Ms. Spanberger, who has frequently criticized her party’s leadership, is also in a close race with Yesli Vega, a law enforcement officer.Ms. Luria won election to Congress in 2018 as part of a wave of Democrats who flipped Republican districts and turned the House blue.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesMs. Luria’s challenger, Ms. Kiggans, is also a Navy veteran and has run a campaign focused on pocketbook issues.“They talk to me about the gas prices that are too much even this past week,” Ms. Kiggans said of voters during a recent debate. “They talk to me about their grocery prices. They talk to me about their savings account. People don’t have as much as they used to in their savings account.”She has also tried to tarnish Ms. Luria’s independent credentials, portraying her as a stooge of Ms. Pelosi.Ms. Luria has not allowed the attacks to go unanswered. She has repeatedly cast Ms. Kiggans, who opposes abortion rights and has dodged questions about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, as an extremist and an election denier.“If standing up for what’s right means losing an election, so be it,” Ms. Luria says in her recent ad, adding: “If you believe the 2020 election was stolen, I’m definitely not your candidate.”Jen A. Kiggans is running to take Ms. Luria’s seat.Kristen Zeis for The New York TimesMs. Kiggans answered this line of argument with an ad of her own, in which she is shown sitting at a kitchen table and surrounded by family photographs, and declares that she is no “extremist.”Interactions between the two candidates have been testy.“She’s an election denier,” Ms. Luria said of Ms. Kiggans, with a note of contempt in her voice. “She has never clearly said in public that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.”Ms. Kiggans shot back at a recent debate, while not specifically denying the charge: “Shame on you for attacking my character as a fellow female Naval officer.”One reason some of the swing-state Democrats remain competitive in their races, despite the national headwinds, is their ability to raise enormous sums of money.Ms. Luria, for instance, has posted some of the highest fund-raising totals this cycle, raking in three times as much as her challenger in the most recent quarter.But national Republicans are working to counter that cash advantage, with political action committees pumping huge amounts of money into districts to prop up challengers, including about $5 million to aid Ms. Kiggans.“Frontline Democrats promised voters they’d be bipartisan problem solvers, but they came to D.C. and voted in lock step with Nancy Pelosi,” said Michael McAdams, a spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee. “Now their constituents are dealing with record-high prices and soaring violent crime.”For better or worse, Ms. Luria’s image is now bound up in confronting threats to democracy. She sought a seat on the Jan. 6 committee — a move she knew could cost her her seat — calling it an outgrowth of her life’s work serving in the military.Supporters of Ms. Kiggans at a rally in Smithfield, Va.Kristen Zeis for The New York TimesHer supporters have cheered the decision.“The people who serve in our Congress, they were at great risk,” said Melanie Cornelisse, a supporter who was on hand outside a Norfolk television studio for Ms. Luria’s final debate with Ms. Kiggans. “And I think it’s really admirable that she is one of the people who is leading that investigation.”Ms. Luria has posted some of the highest fund-raising totals this cycle, and raised three times as much as her challenger in the most recent quarter. Kristen Zeis for The New York TimesA reporter asked Ms. Luria recently why she had focused so intently on threats to democracy rather than, say, the price of gasoline. Ms. Luria has supported measures to make the nation “energy independent,” through increased use of nuclear and wind energy.But also, as a Navy veteran, Ms. Luria said, she felt she had to be true to herself — and that meant continuing to call out Mr. Trump’s lies.“To me, there’s really two things that keep me up at night: One is China and the other is protecting our democracy and our democratic institutions,” Ms. Luria said. “As a candidate, I’m going to talk about the things that I think are the most important for our future. There’s still a clear and present danger.” More

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      House Candidate Drops Ad in North Carolina After Report of Bullet Hole

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      A Republican congressional candidate in North Carolina criticized his Democratic opponent’s campaign on Friday for showing one of his homes in a TV ad, saying that someone had recently fired a bullet into his parents’ house.The Hickory Police Department confirmed that the parents of the Republican candidate, Pat Harrigan, had reported on Oct. 19 that someone had fired a bullet that put a hole in a window in their home’s laundry room the night before. No one was injured.The police report did not come to light until it was covered in local news reports on Thursday, and the campaign of Mr. Harrigan’s Democratic opponent, Jeff Jackson, took down the ad showing a different Harrigan residence. The ad had been running since Oct. 18, apparently the same date the bullet hole was found.During an appearance Friday morning on “Fox & Friends,” Mr. Harrigan accused Mr. Jackson of “very poor judgment.”“In the era of Steve Scalise and Brett Kavanaugh, and now, Paul Pelosi,” he said. “This is just unbelievable to me.”Mr. Harrigan and Mr. Jackson are running for an open seat representing North Carolina’s 14th Congressional District, which was created after the 2020 census.The ad from the Jackson campaign showed footage of a house on the banks of a lake, where a man in a suit cuts through the waves on a Jet Ski. It said Mr. Harrigan “did so well” as a firearms manufacturer that he was able to purchase the residence and the Jet Ski. It also questioned whether Mr. Harrigan lived in the district.Pat HarriganJeff Jackson“We fully support law enforcement as they investigate this incident and believe any wrongdoing should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Mr. Jackson’s campaign spokesman, Tommy Cromie, said.Mr. Cromie said the ad was pulled out of “an abundance of caution and concern, but, to be clear, the home involved in the incident has never been featured in any of our advertising.”Mr. Harrigan’s parents told the police they found the bullet hole around 10 p.m. on Oct. 18, according to the police report, which was filed the next morning and described the incident as a “shooting (chance of injury) into occupied property.” The last time they could recall having seen the window intact was on Oct. 16, according to the report. The damage was estimated at $500.On Fox News, Mr. Harrigan said his parents were watching television when “a bullet cracks through” their home, 20 feet from his sleeping children, who were spending the night at their grandparents’ home.“This is completely out of the blue,” he added, “particularly for this neighborhood.”The incident in Hickory, about 58 miles northwest of Charlotte, was widely reported by local and national media on Thursday. The Associated Press said the bullet came from “a densely wooded area” and did not wake the children.The type of firearm was not identified, and a police spokeswoman, Kristen Hart, said Friday that the case remained under investigation. She told The Carolina Journal that investigators had found a bullet casing. Reports that the F.B.I. was also investigating could not be confirmed. More

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      The Grass Roots, Part 2

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis moment in politics will be defined by shifts at the grass-roots level. It wasn’t long ago that Democrats used to brag about the coalition they had built — full of young people, minority voters and college-educated women. Today, we talk to members of the Democratic base, many of whom no longer see a clear path forward for the party.Tim Gruber for The New York TimesOn today’s episodeAstead Herndon, host of “The Run-Up,” spoke with voters who had participated in New York Times polling, including Delaney Elliott Miller, Nelson Aquino, Katharine Hinson and Rochelle Nelson.Additional readingIn the final days of the midterm elections, top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s campaign tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Once a G.O.P. stalwart, Representative Liz Cheney has been hitting the trail for Democrats. Her approach is part of a last-ditch push by Republican opponents of former President Donald J. Trump to try to thwart a comeback of his political movement.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Why Election Experts Are So Confused About the 2022 Turnout Mystery

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      It’s a unique midterm year, with a Republican-friendly environment, an abortion ruling energizing Democrats, and increased partisanship in how people cast ballots.WILLOW GROVE, Pa. — It’s the biggest mystery of the midterms: Which groups of voters will turn out in the largest numbers?It’s also, obviously, the most important question of all. Most, if not all, of the big Senate races are within what political pros call the “margin of field” — meaning that a superior turnout operation can mean the difference between winning and losing.“It’s the only thing that matters right now,” said Molly Parzen, the executive director of Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania, an environmental group that is part of a coalition of liberal organizations running get-out-the-vote operations in the state.On a sunny day here in mostly Democratic suburban Philadelphia, I tagged along as Parzen’s group plowed through its file of middle-class voters in the town where Jill Biden spent some of her early years. It’s painstaking work, knocking on doors and gently nudging people to vote for Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman in Pennsylvania’s heated races for governor and Senate.Parzen said the races seemed even tighter to her than the public polls indicated. And the handful of voters in this blue-collar area who indicated that Fetterman wouldn’t win their vote — one older white man, echoing millions of dollars’ worth of negative ads from Republicans, said he wanted to “strangle him with his bare hands” over his perceived views on crime — suggested that the Senate race was worth watching closely.Nationally, we already have some data on the early votes cast so far — nearly 26 million as of Tuesday afternoon — but interpreting what the numbers mean is always something of an art. And this year, it’s more confusing than ever.For instance: Does the relatively low turnout of younger voters so far mean they aren’t enthusiastic about voting? Or does it mean they are reverting to their usual, prepandemic habit of voting on Election Day? Is there some more prosaic explanation, such as that colleges only recently started rolling out drop boxes on campus?Will there indeed be a surge of newly registered voters angered by the Supreme Court’s abortion decision, as some Democrats argue? Have pollsters corrected for the errors they made in 2020, when many of them overestimated Democrats’ eventual support? Or have they overcorrected?Almost universally, strategists confess befuddlement and uncertainty about an election that has shaped up somewhat differently than most, with the issue of abortion rights energizing Democrats and putting Republicans into a defensive crouch in many states.Republicans tend to be more confident that widespread public frustration over inflation will propel them to victory, regardless of the problems that have dogged them, like weak fund-raising and Senate candidates their own leaders have described as low in “quality.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.A Pivotal Test in Pennsylvania: A battle for blue-collar white voters is raging in President Biden’s birthplace, where Democrats have the furthest to fall and the most to gain.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.Democrats in particular are puzzling over the decision Republicans made during the pandemic to demonize mail-in and early voting, after years of dominating the practice in states like Arizona and Florida. In some states, Republican Party officials have quietly sent out mailers or digital ads urging their supporters to vote early, but more prominent Republican politicians dare not amplify those appeals — lest they be on the receiving end of a rocket from Donald Trump.It has often fallen to conservative outside groups, like Turning Point Action, to rally voters. The group, which is run by the controversial pro-Trump activist Charlie Kirk, is holding a get-out-the-vote event on Saturday in Phoenix.“When you’ve convinced your base that it’s a fraudulent method of voting, you have very little room to change their minds this late in the game,” said Tom Bonier, the chief executive of TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm. “There are so many things that can go wrong on Election Day.”Fast-changing campaign innovationsGet-out-the-vote operations became objects of media fascination after Barack Obama’s 2008 victory, which capitalized on new ways of organizing volunteers, sophisticated social-science techniques and innovative social media strategy to run circles around John McCain’s more traditional operation. That led many Democrats to presume that they had an edge over Republicans in the art and science of campaigns — but Trump’s upset defeat in 2016 of Hillary Clinton, whose data and field operations were widely panned afterward by fellow Democrats, upended the conventional wisdom on that score. Fieldwork, never glamorous, has not had the same cachet since.“My assumption on everything is that Republicans are at least as good as Democrats in everything they’re doing,” said David Nickerson, a political scientist who worked on Obama’s campaign and studies turnout.“People adjust to innovations really quickly,” he added, “and if you do find one, it’s not going to last.”In one example that is famous among turnout specialists, George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign was stunned by Al Gore’s closing surge. Four years later, Karl Rove, Bush’s political guru, responded with a “72-hour plan” in the final days of the 2004 campaign that is widely credited for helping defeat John Kerry.But much has changed since the early 2000s, and lessons learned back then might not apply today. As money has flooded into political campaigns, Americans have become inundated with television ads, campaign fliers, social media posts and digital ads.People also follow politics much more closely than they did back then, even if there’s more noise competing for their attention.“It’s like sports now, dude,” said Ian Danley, a Democratic organizer in Arizona.Who’s got the best ground game?Campaigns love to boast about their “ground games,” whether it’s to feed the notebooks of information-hungry reporters or to motivate their own troops.In Arizona’s races this year, for instance, both parties claim to have the superior field operation. Senator Mark Kelly is relying on Mission for Arizona, the Democrats’ statewide coordinated campaign apparatus. That effort began in June 2021, the earliest Democrats have done so in Arizona. Democrats in Arizona also have an independent organizing effort run by a coalition of unions and progressive groups, which has led to occasional tensions.Infighting on the Republican side has made a parallel effort harder. The Republican Governors Association, for instance, has funneled its support for Kari Lake, the party’s nominee for governor, through the Yuma County Republican Party, rather than the state party. And while Kelly’s campaign is stocked with veterans of his 2020 victory, his opponent, Blake Masters, has run a bare-bones operation that has relied heavily on the support of an allied super PAC.“We are running an incredibly lean field operation, and it’s all internal to the campaign,” said Amalia Halikias, the campaign manager for Masters. “We are knocking on doors that often go overlooked: Democrat doors, low-propensity voters and people who have never voted before.”Democrats return to the doorsVeteran operatives say that get-out-the-vote practices like knocking on doors are even more important in midterm elections than they are in presidential campaigns.The reason? Turnout in midterms is usually around 20 percentage points lower than in presidential years, meaning that the tricks and tools campaigns use to persuade, cajole and nudge people to turn in their ballots or head to the polls become more crucial.Door-knocking, for instance, is about three to four times more effective in a midterm election than it is in a presidential election, Nickerson said, because during a presidential year, more voters are paying attention and are already planning to vote.A Democratic Party office in Eau Claire, Wis., after a canvassing event last month.Liam James Doyle for The New York TimesIn 2020, Democrats and their allies mostly stayed away from door-knocking because of the pandemic. They’re back out in force now, though some turnout-focused groups in Georgia have complained that donor fatigue has left them with fewer resources than in 2020.But assuming Democrats can roughly reach parity with Republicans this year, it could help neutralize what was a G.O.P. advantage during Trump’s re-election bid. Face-to face conversations are widely understood to be the most effective way to reach voters.According to Daron Shaw, a former George W. Bush campaign strategist who now studies turnout at the University of Texas, a good rule of thumb is that for campaigns, every 100 face-to-face contacts made are likely to yield 9 votes. In other words, a campaign that contacts 1,000,000 potential voters will nudge 90,000 of them to cast ballots for the candidate in question.Both parties expect the G.O.P. to rely heavily on a surge of Election Day turnout, while Democratic campaigns are furiously banking as many early votes as they can. That approach gives them a tactical advantage, Democrats say: It lets them work through their voter contact files and adjust their targeting on the fly, whereas Republicans in many states will have to trust that their models are accurate.All of these tactical advantages might make a difference only on the margins of a tight Senate or House race, though.Turnout is also driven by big-picture issues and trends, and those are not working in Democrats’ favor. In 2018, it was Democrats angered by Trump’s presidency who swamped Republicans and took back dozens of House seats. This year, Nickerson said, “for Republicans, it’s how mad are you about Biden and the economy?”What to readTop Democrats are openly second-guessing their party’s campaign pitch and tactics, worrying about a failure to coalesce around one effective message for the midterms, Lisa Lerer, Katie Glueck and Reid Epstein report.Representative Liz Cheney and other Republican opponents of Donald Trump are stepping up their efforts to thwart a comeback of his political movement, Jonathan Weisman writes.Adam Laxalt, the Republican nominee for Senate in Nevada, could easily be mistaken as a legacy candidate, with a grandfather who was once a governor and senator in the state. But he has shed much of his political inheritance, positioning himself as a child of the Trump era, Matthew Rosenberg writes.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More