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      ‘A Crisis Coming’: The Twin Threats to American Democracy

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      The United States has experienced deep political turmoil several times before over the past century. The Great Depression caused Americans to doubt the country’s economic system. World War II and the Cold War presented threats from global totalitarian movements. The 1960s and ’70s were marred by assassinations, riots, a losing war and a disgraced president.These earlier periods were each more alarming in some ways than anything that has happened in the United States recently. Yet during each of those previous times of tumult, the basic dynamics of American democracy held firm. Candidates who won the most votes were able to take power and attempt to address the country’s problems.The current period is different. As a result, the United States today finds itself in a situation with little historical precedent. American democracy is facing two distinct threats, which together represent the most serious challenge to the country’s governing ideals in decades.The first threat is acute: a growing movement inside one of the country’s two major parties — the Republican Party — to refuse to accept defeat in an election.The violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress, meant to prevent the certification of President Biden’s election, was the clearest manifestation of this movement, but it has continued since then. Hundreds of elected Republican officials around the country falsely claim that the 2020 election was rigged. Some of them are running for statewide offices that would oversee future elections, potentially putting them in position to overturn an election in 2024 or beyond.“There is the possibility, for the first time in American history, that a legitimately elected president will not be able to take office,” said Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies democracy.The second threat to democracy is chronic but also growing: The power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion.The run of recent Supreme Court decisions — both sweeping and, according to polls, unpopular — highlight this disconnect. Although the Democratic Party has won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections, a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees seems poised to shape American politics for years, if not decades. And the court is only one of the means through which policy outcomes are becoming less closely tied to the popular will.Two of the past four presidents have taken office despite losing the popular vote. Senators representing a majority of Americans are often unable to pass bills, partly because of the increasing use of the filibuster. Even the House, intended as the branch of the government that most reflects the popular will, does not always do so, because of the way districts are drawn.“We are far and away the most countermajoritarian democracy in the world,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and a co-author of the book “How Democracies Die,” with Daniel Ziblatt.The causes of the twin threats to democracy are complex and debated among scholars.The chronic threats to democracy generally spring from enduring features of American government, some written into the Constitution. But they did not conflict with majority opinion to the same degree in past decades. One reason is that more populous states, whose residents receive less power because of the Senate and the Electoral College, have grown so much larger than small states.The acute threats to democracy — and the rise of authoritarian sentiment, or at least the acceptance of it, among many voters — have different causes. They partly reflect frustration over nearly a half-century of slow-growing living standards for the American working class and middle class. They also reflect cultural fears, especially among white people, that the United States is being transformed into a new country, more racially diverse and less religious, with rapidly changing attitudes toward gender, language and more.The attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was the clearest manifestation of the growing movement in the Republican Party to refuse to accept defeat in an election.Ashley Gilbertson for The New York TimesThe economic frustrations and cultural fears have combined to create a chasm in American political life, between prosperous, diverse major metropolitan areas and more traditional, religious and economically struggling smaller cities and rural areas. The first category is increasingly liberal and Democratic, the second increasingly conservative and Republican.The political contest between the two can feel existential to people in both camps, with disagreements over nearly every prominent issue. “When we’re voting, we’re not just voting for a set of policies but for what we think makes us Americans and who we are as a people,” Lilliana Mason, a political scientist and the author of “Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity,” said. “If our party loses the election, then all of these parts of us feel like losers.”These sharp disagreements have led many Americans to doubt the country’s system of government. In a recent poll by Quinnipiac University, 69 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of Republicans said that democracy was “in danger of collapse.” Of course, the two sides have very different opinions about the nature of the threat.Many Democrats share the concerns of historians and scholars who study democracy, pointing to the possibility of overturned election results and the deterioration of majority rule. “Equality and democracy are under assault,” President Biden said in a speech this month in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. “We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise.”Many Republicans have defended their increasingly aggressive tactics by saying they are trying to protect American values. In some cases, these claims rely on falsehoods — about election fraud, Mr. Biden’s supposed “socialism,” Barack Obama’s birthplace, and more.In others, they are rooted in anxiety over real developments, including illegal immigration and “cancel culture.” Some on the left now consider widely held opinions among conservative and moderate Americans — on abortion, policing, affirmative action, Covid-19 and other subjects — to be so objectionable that they cannot be debated. In the view of many conservatives and some experts, this intolerance is stifling open debate at the heart of the American political system.The divergent sense of crisis on left and right can itself weaken democracy, and it has been exacerbated by technology.Conspiracy theories and outright lies have a long American history, dating to the personal attacks that were a staple of the partisan press during the 18th century. In the mid-20th century, tens of thousands of Americans joined the John Birch Society, a far-right group that claimed Dwight Eisenhower was a secret Communist.Today, however, falsehoods can spread much more easily, through social media and a fractured news environment. In the 1950s, no major television network spread the lies about Eisenhower. In recent years, the country’s most watched cable channel, Fox News, regularly promoted falsehoods about election results, Mr. Obama’s birthplace and other subjects.These same forces — digital media, cultural change and economic stagnation in affluent countries — help explain why democracy is also struggling in other parts of the world. Only two decades ago, at the turn of the 21st century, democracy was the triumphant form of government around the world, with autocracy in retreat in the former Soviet empire, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, South Korea and elsewhere. Today, the global trend is moving in the other direction.In the late 1990s, 72 countries were democratizing, and only three were growing more authoritarian, according to data from V-Dem, a Swedish institute that monitors democracy. Last year, only 15 countries grew more democratic, while 33 slid toward authoritarianism.Some experts remain hopeful that the growing attention in the United States to democracy’s problems can help avert a constitutional crisis here. Already, Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election failed, partly because of the refusal of many Republican officials to participate, and both federal and state prosecutors are investigating his actions. And while the chronic decline of majority rule will not change anytime soon, it is also part of a larger historical struggle to create a more inclusive American democracy.Still, many experts point out that it still not clear how the country will escape a larger crisis, such as an overturned election, at some point in the coming decade. “This is not politics as usual,” said Carol Anderson, a professor at Emory University and the author of the book, “One Person, No Vote,” about voter suppression. “Be afraid.”The Will of the MajorityDonald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election failed, partly because of the refusal of many Republican officials to participate.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesThe founders did not design the United States to be a pure democracy.They distrusted the classical notion of direct democracy, in which a community came together to vote on each important issue, and believed it would be impractical for a large country. They did not consider many residents of the new country to be citizens who deserved a voice in political affairs, including Natives, enslaved Africans and women. The founders also wanted to constrain the national government from being too powerful, as they believed was the case in Britain. And they had the practical problem of needing to persuade 13 states to forfeit some of their power to a new federal government.Instead of a direct democracy, the founders created a republic, with elected representatives to make decisions, and a multilayered government, in which different branches checked each other. The Constitution also created the Senate, where every state had an equal say, regardless of population.Pointing to this history, some Republican politicians and conservative activists have argued that the founders were comfortable with minority rule. “Of course we’re not a democracy,” Senator Mike Lee of Utah has written.But the historical evidence suggests that the founders believed that majority will — defined as the prevailing view of enfranchised citizens — should generally dictate national policy, as George Thomas of Claremont McKenna College and other constitutional scholars have explained.In the Federalist Papers, James Madison equated “a coalition of a majority of the whole society” with “justice and the general good.” Alexander Hamilton made similar points, describing “representative democracy” as “happy, regular and durable.” It was a radical idea at the time.For most of American history, the idea has prevailed. Even with the existence of the Senate, the Electoral College and the Supreme Court, political power has reflected the views of people who had the right to vote. “To say we’re a republic not a democracy ignores the past 250 years of history,” Mr. Ziblatt, a political scientist at Harvard University, said.Before 2000, only three candidates won the presidency while losing the popular vote (John Quincy Adams, Rutherford Hayes and Benjamin Harrison), and each served only a single term. During the same period, parties that won repeated elections were able to govern, including the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson’s time, the New Deal Democrats and the Reagan Republicans.The situation has changed in the 21st century. The Democratic Party is in the midst of a historic winning streak. In seven of the past eight presidential elections, stretching back to Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory, the Democratic nominee has won the popular vote. Over more than two centuries of American democracy, no party has previously fared so well over such an extended period.Yet the current period is hardly a dominant Democratic age.What changed? One crucial factor is that, in the past, the parts of the country granted outsize power by the Constitution — less populated states, which tend to be more rural — voted in broadly similar ways as large states and urban areas.This similarity meant that the small-state bonus in the Senate and Electoral College had only a limited effect on national results. Both Democrats and Republicans benefited, and suffered, from the Constitution’s undemocratic features.Democrats sometimes won small states like Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming in the mid-20th century. And California was long a swing state: Between the Great Depression and 2000, Democratic and Republican presidential candidates won it an equal number of times. That the Constitution conferred advantages on residents of small states and disadvantages on Californians did not reliably boost either party.Joe Biden campaigning in Los Angeles in March 2020. He went on to win California in the general election by 29 percentage points.Josh Haner/The New York TimesIn recent decades, Americans have increasingly sorted themselves along ideological lines. Liberals have flocked to large metropolitan areas, which are heavily concentrated in big states like California, while residents of smaller cities and more rural areas have become more conservative.This combination — the Constitution’s structure and the country’s geographic sorting — has created a disconnect between public opinion and election outcomes. It has affected every branch of the federal government: the presidency, Congress and even the Supreme Court.In the past, “the system was still antidemocratic, but it didn’t have a partisan effect,” Mr. Levitsky said. “Now it’s undemocratic and has a partisan effect. It tilts the playing field toward the Republican Party. That’s new in the 21st century.”In presidential elections, the small-state bias is important, but it is not even the main issue. A more subtle factor — the winner-take-all nature of the Electoral College in most states — is. Candidates have never received extra credit for winning state-level landslides. But this feature did not used to matter very much, because landslides were rare in larger states, meaning that relatively few votes were “wasted,” as political scientists say.Today, Democrats dominate a handful of large states, wasting many votes. In 2020, Mr. Biden won California by 29 percentage points; New York by 23 points; and Illinois by 17 points. Four years earlier, Hillary Clinton’s margins were similar.Vote Margins by State in Presidential Elections since 1988 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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      Even When Trump Endorses No One, G.O.P. Voters Go Far to the Right

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      The former president stayed out of New Hampshire’s primaries, but Republicans nominated the candidates for Senate and the House most aligned with his political brand.Republican voters on Tuesday rendered their latest judgment on the tussle between Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell for control of the party: They’re with Trump.In this week’s primary elections in New Hampshire, G.O.P. voters picked three hard-right candidates who have floated baseless theories about problems with the 2020 results — a sign that the election-fraud fever inside the Republican Party has not yet abated, if it ever will.First, in the Senate race against Maggie Hassan, the Democratic incumbent, Granite State Republicans chose Don Bolduc over Chuck Morse, a state lawmaker who had the financial and political backing of the local establishment as well as that of Senator McConnell, the minority leader, and his well-heeled allies.Bolduc, a decorated retired Army general who has avidly promoted Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential results, campaigned as a political outsider who was critical of both parties. He played up his military experience, including a stint fighting in Afghanistan as a “horse soldier” after the Sept. 11 attacks.Morse struggled to navigate the shifting waters of the Republican primary electorate, which, even in famously independent New Hampshire, has moved sharply rightward in recent years.At one point, Morse embraced the label “MAGA Republican” after President Biden’s speech castigating the Trump wing of the party as a threat to democracy. At the same time, Morse sought support from McConnell and Gov. Chris Sununu, a moderate who blasted Bolduc as a “conspiracy theory extremist.”Bolduc hit right back at Sununu, accusing him of sympathizing with the Chinese Communist Party and of being “in business with Saudi Arabian companies that give money to terrorists.”Bolduc also called Sununu, who loudly declared a lack of interest in challenging Hassan late last year, a “globalist world-government guy” — an insult popularized by Stephen Bannon, the recently indicted former Trump aide who frequently promotes aggressive anti-government language on his podcast, “War Room: Pandemic.”On the Saturday before Election Day, Sununu nonetheless said of Bolduc: “I’ll endorse whoever the nominee is and support him. Of course I will, no question.”Sununu won his primary handily. But he is widely seen as having presidential aspirations, and the outcomes of New Hampshire’s other contests this week will inevitably raise questions about that. Namely: Are Republican voters truly looking for someone in the moderate mold he projects?The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.A Fierce Primary Season Ends: Democrats are entering the final sprint to November with more optimism, especially in the Senate. But Republicans are confident they can gain a House majority.Midterm Data: Could the 2020 polling miss repeat itself? Will this election cycle really be different? Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, looks at the data in his new newsletter.Republicans’ Abortion Struggles: Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed nationwide 15-week abortion ban was intended to unite the G.O.P. before the November elections. But it has only exposed the party’s divisions.Democrats’ Dilemma: The party’s candidates have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, while not distancing themselves from President Biden’s base or agenda.In a key House primary, voters backed Karoline Leavitt, a 25-year-old former press assistant in the Trump White House, over Matt Mowers, who served as a political appointee in Trump’s State Department and later as a board member of the International Republican Institute, a pillar of the wheezing internationalist wing of the G.O.P. Leavitt has repeatedly pushed the fiction that Trump was robbed in 2020.And in New Hampshire’s other House district, another right-wing candidate, Robert Burns, won narrowly over George Hansel, the moderate mayor of Keene. Burns said during the campaign that he accepted Biden’s 2020 victory but believed that “a ton” of other elections were stolen that year.Notably, Trump did not endorse a candidate in any of New Hampshire’s Senate or House contests.Kathy Barnette gathered momentum late in Pennsylvania’s Republican primary for Senate but ultimately lost to Dr. Mehmet Oz.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesTuesday’s results recall a revealing moment in the Senate primary in Pennsylvania, when Kathy Barnette, an insurgent candidate seeking to claim Trump’s mantle, said at a debate: “MAGA does not belong to President Trump.”.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.“Our values never, never shifted to President Trump’s values,” she said. “It was President Trump who shifted and aligned with our values.”Like Bolduc, Barnette had the backing of Bannon and other Trump-world celebrities with huge online followings. In her Senate race, Trump had endorsed Dr. Mehmet Oz, the television celebrity, over David McCormick, a former hedge-fund executive who came within just under a thousand of victory.But while Barnette’s shoestring campaign ultimately came up short, she was the one who briefly captured the imagination of the Republican grass roots — the same political forces that powered the primary victory of Doug Mastriano, the far-right G.O.P. nominee for governor in Pennsylvania.You can see that Trump-aligned coalition imposing its will on the political geography of New Hampshire. Morse racked up votes in more heavily populated southern parts of the state near Boston — he ran ahead of Bolduc by roughly 20 percentage points in Portsmouth, for instance — while losing or barely beating his rival in rural areas and towns further upstate.The New York TimesFor the coup de grâce, Bolduc even defeated Morse within the state senator’s own district, which includes the towns of Salem and Pelham.“Donald Trump still has a stranglehold on Republican primary voters, and Governor Sununu’s popularity is nontransferable,” said Joe Caiazzo, who ran presidential campaigns in New Hampshire for Senator Bernie Sanders.He added, “This is a sign that deniers will play an enormous role in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.”What to read tonightMike Lindell, the MyPillow executive and prominent promoter of 2020 election conspiracy theories, had his cellphone seized by federal agents at a Hardee’s restaurant in Minnesota — a clear sign that the Justice Department has intensified its interest in a state case against a Colorado county clerk accused of tampering with voting machines, Charles Homans, Ken Bensinger, Alexandra Berzon and Alan Feuer write.John Durham, the former U.S. attorney assigned by the Justice Department in 2019 to examine the origins of the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, appears to be winding down his three-year inquiry with little fanfare, Katie Benner, Adam Goldman and Charlie Savage report.For more than a decade, Catherine Engelbrecht, a Texas small-business owner turned election-fraud crusader, has sown doubts about ballots and voting. Her patience has paid off, and now she’s seizing the moment, Cecilia Kang writes in a deeply reported profile.Under the new climate and tax law, the federal government will lease hundreds of millions more acres for offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in the next decade, even as it invests $370 billion to move the country away from fossil fuels, Lisa Friedman 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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      Two 25-Year-Olds Could Be Elected to Congress, a Historical Rarity

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      Generation Z has been pushing for more political power since its first members came of age in 2015. This year, it has its first opportunity to enter the halls of Congress — and, as the dust clears from a long primary season, two candidates are poised to take advantage.Karoline Leavitt won the Republican primary in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District on Tuesday, less than a month after turning 25, the constitutional minimum age to serve in the House. She is an underdog in the general election, facing a Democratic incumbent, Representative Chris Pappas. But the district is roughly evenly divided between the parties and the race is competitive.Even if Ms. Leavitt loses in November, the next Congress is virtually guaranteed to include a member of Generation Z: Maxwell Alejandro Frost, also 25, who won the Democratic primary last month for an open House seat in Florida’s solidly blue 10th Congressional District.Either of them, if elected, would be the youngest sitting member of Congress. If both are elected, the distinction will go to Ms. Leavitt, who is about seven months younger.But neither would be the youngest person ever elected to Congress.That record, unlikely ever to be broken, belongs to William C.C. Claiborne, who was 22 when he was elected to the House from Tennessee in 1797, according to congressional records. (There is some dispute in other sources about his exact age, but no dispute that he was younger than 25.) The age requirement was no different then: The Constitution said House members had to be at least 25, and Mr. Claiborne wasn’t. But the House chose to seat Mr. Claiborne anyway.A handful of 24-year-olds were seated in the 1800s, too, according to congressional records, as were some people who turned 25 less than a month before being sworn in.In modern times, however, it is rare for a 25-year-old to be elected to the House.Representative Madison Cawthorn, Republican of North Carolina, managed it in 2020; if elected this year, Ms. Leavitt would be less than a month younger than Mr. Cawthorn was when he was elected. Before Mr. Cawthorn, the last 25-year-old to serve in the House was Thomas Downey, a New York Democrat elected in 1974.Generation Z leans strongly toward Democrats, but its members are not an ideological monolith, as evidenced by the political leanings of Ms. Leavitt and Mr. Frost.Mr. Frost is a progressive Democrat who supports Medicare for all, abortion rights and stricter gun laws. “I come from a generation that has gone through more mass-shooting drills than fire drills,” he told The New York Times in an interview after his primary victory, adding that he believed his generation had “a natural sense of seeing the world through the eyes of the most vulnerable.”Ms. Leavitt, whose campaign did not respond to an interview request, is a right-wing Republican who worked as a press aide for former President Donald J. Trump. She supports a “zero tolerance” policy against illegal immigration and opposes abortion and gun control. More

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      Robert Burns, Right-Wing Republican, Wins House Primary in New Hampshire

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      Robert Burns, a right-wing candidate aligned with former President Donald J. Trump, won Tuesday’s Republican primary in New Hampshire’s Second Congressional District, according to The Associated Press.He defeated six other Republicans, including George Hansel, a more moderate candidate who may have had a better chance of defeating the Democratic incumbent, Representative Ann McLane Kuster, in November. As of midday Wednesday, when the race was called, Mr. Burns was leading by more than 1,500 votes.The district — which includes the state’s second- and third-largest cities, Nashua and Concord, as well as large rural areas of western and northern New Hampshire — is competitive but leans toward Democrats.Mr. Burns, a local businessman and former treasurer of Hillsborough County, N.H., campaigned on ending economic reliance on China and on an array of conservative red-meat issues, including opposition to gun control, to pandemic mitigation measures and to the purported teaching of critical race theory.He won the primary despite raising less than half as much money as Mr. Hansel, according to Federal Election Commission filings.Mr. Burns may have benefited from more than $90,000 in spending by a Democratic political action committee, the latest example of a risky Democratic strategy to help far-right Republicans win primaries in the hopes that they will be easier to beat in the general election.A 30-second advertisement from the group, Democrats Serve, featured a clip of Mr. Burns calling himself “the only pro-Trump, unapologetic conservative” in the race. It was framed as an attack: “If we send Bob Burns, the ‘unapologetic conservative,’ to Congress, New Hampshire is going to get burned,” it said.But an array of Democratic organizations — outside groups as well as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s House campaign arm — have run similar ads elsewhere to try to make opponents they view as weaker seem more attractive to conservative primary voters.Mr. Burns’s main opponent, Mr. Hansel, is the mayor of Keene and was endorsed by Chris Sununu, New Hampshire’s popular Republican governor. Mr. Hansel ran as the sort of moderate Republican who has traditionally done well in New England, allowing the party to retain a modicum of power even in very blue states. But this year’s primaries have shown that Republican voters’ appetite for such candidates has fallen.Mr. Hansel focused heavily on inflation and described himself as pro-choice — something that could have been an asset in the general election, given the backlash to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but that was a liability in a Republican primary. Mr. Burns, by contrast, has said he would support federal legislation to ban abortion after cardiac activity is detectable in the embryo or fetus, which is before many women know they are pregnant.In addition to Mr. Burns and Mr. Hansel, the primary in the Second District included Lily Tang Williams — a libertarian-leaning Republican who made her personal experience as a Chinese immigrant a centerpiece of her campaign — and four lesser-known candidates. More

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      How Fierce Primaries, Abortion and Inflation Transformed the 2022 Map

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      A grueling primary season riven by Republican infighting and the interventions of former President Donald J. Trump finally ended on Tuesday with a slate of G.O.P. candidates that has raised Democratic hopes of preserving Senate control and a political atmosphere that has changed strikingly over the past six months.Republicans still have the environment they wanted when the primaries began in Texas in March: high inflation, economic uncertainty, an unpopular president and the perception that violent crime is on the rise. But since then, Democrats have found strong themes they can run on: the fate of legal abortion and, to a larger extent than they might have imagined, the future of democracy and the rule of law.As the last primary voters went to the polls in New Hampshire, Delaware and Rhode Island, Tuesday provided the perfect split screen for the coming general election.The government’s official report on inflation made clear that Democrats are by no means out of the woods. Hours after its release, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, introduced legislation to ban abortion nationwide after 15 weeks of pregnancy, effectively spreading the abortion question from red and purple states to blue states that may have felt insulated since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.Those issues and the re-emergence of Mr. Trump as a headline-grabbing political figure have raised the stakes ahead of an Election Day that will determine not only which party will lead Congress but also which one will control statehouses, governorships and top election posts from Pennsylvania to Arizona, from Wisconsin to Florida, ahead of the 2024 presidential contest.“As a forecaster, I prefer it when all the signs are one way or the other,” joked J. Miles Coleman, a congressional election analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. That is not the case in 2022.Don Bolduc cheered with supporters during his campaign watch party. John Tully for The New York TimesThe final day of primaries put an exclamation point on the season. Republican voters in New Hampshire were deciding whether to nominate Don Bolduc, a retired general and Trump-style candidate who denies the legitimacy of the 2020 election, or a more mainstream Republican, Chuck Morse, the State Senate president, to take on Senator Maggie Hassan. Early Wednesday, the race had not been called, but Mr. Bolduc held a narrow lead and Mr. Morse wrote on Twitter that “we’ve come up short” and that he had called his opponent and “wished him the best.” Democrats had considered Mr. Bolduc by far the easier candidate for Ms. Hassan, once seen as one of the party’s most vulnerable incumbents.Two right-wing House candidates in the state also showed strength in their primaries. Karoline Leavitt, a 25-year-old former assistant in Mr. Trump’s White House press office, beat Matt Mowers, a onetime colleague in the former president’s administration. And Robert Burns, a Trump-aligned candidate, was locked in an undecided race early Wednesday against George Hansel, a more moderate rival seen as a more formidable challenger to the Democratic incumbent.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.A Fierce Primary Season Ends: Democrats are entering the final sprint to November with more optimism, especially in the Senate. But Republicans are confident they can gain a House majority.Midterm Data: Could the 2020 polling miss repeat itself? Will this election cycle really be different? Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, looks at the data in his new newsletter.Republicans’ Abortion Struggles: Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed nationwide 15-week abortion ban was intended to unite the G.O.P. before the November elections. But it has only exposed the party’s divisions.Democrats’ Dilemma: The party’s candidates have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, while not distancing themselves from President Biden’s base or agenda.In Senate races beyond New Hampshire, a series of stumbling Republican candidates — including Herschel Walker in Georgia, Blake Masters in Arizona, Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and J.D. Vance in Ohio — made it through their primaries this year with the backing of Mr. Trump, keeping the race for the chamber competitive.Meantime, Democratic candidates like Cheri Beasley in North Carolina, Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin and Representative Val Demings in Florida have proved resilient enough to expand the Senate map and stretch a Republican campaign machine that is low on cash.Cheri Beasley, the Democratic nominee for Senate in North Carolina, is in an unexpectedly tight race against Representative Ted Budd, a Republican.Travis Dove for The New York Times“On the whole, Republicans have nominated far stronger candidates in swing seats for the House than in swing states for the Senate,” said David Wasserman, a congressional analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.But in House races, candidate quality tends to matter less. In election years past, House control has sloshed back and forth with larger political currents because House candidates are less familiar to voters than their Senate counterparts. The Democratic 31-seat wave — described by George W. Bush as a “thumping” — in 2006 was followed by what Barack Obama called a “shellacking” in 2010, a 63-seat gain. Eight years later, the Democrats were back with a 41-seat romp.Voters tend to pull the lever based on the party that House candidates represent, not on distinctive policies or personalities they embody.Both parties probably missed some opportunities with their House candidates, or at least made Election Day more competitive than it needed to be..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.For Republicans, flawed House primary winners include Sandy Smith, who is running in a competitive, open seat in northeastern North Carolina and has been accused of domestic violence; J.R. Majewski, a bombastic conspiracy theorist challenging Representative Marcy Kaptur in a Northwest Ohio district newly drawn to favor Republicans; and John Gibbs, a former Trump administration aide who once baselessly accused Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, of taking part in a “satanic ritual,” then went on to defeat a moderate incumbent, Representative Peter Meijer. Mr. Gibbs must now try to capture a Democratic-leaning district around Grand Rapids, Mich.John Gibbs, a Republican House candidate in Michigan, claimed that the 2020 election results had anomalies that were “simply mathematically impossible.”Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesRepresentative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia was once considered one of the most endangered Democrats, but missteps by her Republican opponent, Yesli Vega, have put her on more solid ground.Chris Taylor, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s House campaign arm, laid it on thick as the primary season drew to a close, mocking what he called House Republicans’ “motley crew of MAGA extremists” and “long roster of anti-choice and scandal-prone candidates,” while praising his party’s “all-star class of candidates.”But Democrats are on the defensive in a handful of districts. Republicans are already attacking Jamie McLeod-Skinner, a liberal Democrat who won a primary in Oregon against the more moderate Representative Kurt Schrader and now confronts blowback from years of sometimes unruly protests in nearby Portland. Redistricting turned Representative Steve Chabot, a veteran Republican, vulnerable in Cincinnati, but his challenger, Greg Landsman, a city councilman, has faced attacks over his legislation to redirect $200,000 from the city’s Police Department to an independent board responsible for fielding complaints against police officers.Representative Mike Garcia of California should be one of the most vulnerable Republicans up for re-election, but Democratic voters in northern Los Angeles County opted to nominate Christy Smith, who has already lost to Mr. Garcia twice.Jamie McLeod-Skinner defeated a centrist Democrat in the primary for a House seat in Oregon, but now faces attacks from the right over unruly protests in the city.Thomas Patterson for The New York TimesMichigan’s 10th Congressional District, which was redrawn to lean Republican, has such a weak Democratic candidate that the party has all but ceded it. And in a newly drawn South Texas district, designed to be evenly split between the parties, Democrats nominated a liberal political newcomer and flea market owner, Michelle Vallejo, and the seat now leans Republican.Republicans can also brag of the most racially diverse slate of House candidates they have ever fielded, including 29 Hispanic contenders, 26 Black candidates, six Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders, and three Native Americans. Mr. Wasserman calculated that 61 percent of Republican candidates in swing districts were women, people of color and military veterans. Many of those veterans hail from special forces and have remarkable biographies.“House Republicans have an all-star cast of candidates running to protect the American dream and deliver the type of common-sense policies Democrats have failed to achieve,” said Michael McAdams, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm for House Republicans.Come November, those individual stories may matter little.With only a five-vote swing standing in the way of a Republican majority, the G.O.P. is still favored to take control of the House, but how big a majority the party enjoys will most likely be determined more by the larger political issues — inflation, economics, abortion and democracy — than by the candidates themselves.The Senate may be different, and past could be prologue. In 2010, as the effects of the financial crash lingered and the Tea Party movement energized conservatives, Republicans stormed into the majority in the House, then held it in 2012. But Republicans could not take the Senate until 2014, in part because of poor candidates chosen in the primaries: Christine O’Donnell of Delaware and Sharron Angle of Nevada in 2010, and Richard E. Mourdock of Indiana and Todd Akin of Missouri in 2012.Pressed by Mr. Trump, Republicans may well have outdone themselves in 2022. Mr. Walker, a former football star with no political experience, has struggled in his challenge to Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, once seen as perhaps the most vulnerable Democrat up for re-election. With the political wind at his face, another freshman Democrat, Mark Kelly of Arizona, has benefited greatly from Mr. Masters’s inexperience and a past replete with oddball views. Mr. Trump liked the celebrity of Dr. Oz but overlooked the potency of attacks over his wealth and his lack of connection to Pennsylvania.Blake Masters, the Republican nominee for Senate in Arizona, supports militarizing the border — but in 2006, he wrote that “‘unrestricted’ immigration is the only choice” for a libertarian-minded voter.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesAnd though Mr. Vance’s memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” focused on his childhood in working-class Ohio, the candidate, a Trump favorite, has so far failed to open a clear lead in a state that Mr. Trump won in 2020 by eight percentage points.Mr. Coleman, the election analyst, noted that in 2010, everything would have had to go the Republicans’ way if they were to dig themselves out of a nine-seat hole in the Senate. In November, they need a single seat to take control.“This time, it could be more frustrating because they’re right there,” Mr. Coleman said. “They’re at the end zone.” More

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      Leavitt Upsets Mowers, Winning New Hampshire House G.O.P. Primary

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      Karoline Leavitt, a 25-year-old hard-right Republican who served as an assistant in President Donald J. Trump’s White House press office, won her party’s nomination on Tuesday for New Hampshire’s First Congressional District, according to The Associated Press. The race had devolved into a nasty battle with Matt Mowers, a former Trump administration colleague, over who carried the mantle of Trumpism.“Unfortunately, tonight’s results did not go our way,” Mr. Mowers wrote in a concession statement on Twitter at 11:25 p.m.Ms. Leavitt’s upset victory means she will face off in November against Representative Chris Pappas, a two-term Democratic congressman representing the highly competitive district in the eastern and southern parts of the state. Mr. Pappas is one of the most vulnerable Democrats this cycle, with his re-election race considered a tossup. If she wins, Ms. Leavitt would be among the youngest people ever elected to Congress. The Constitution requires House members to be at least 25 years old to serve. Ms. Leavitt turned 25 last month.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.A Fierce Primary Season Ends: Democrats are entering the final sprint to November with more optimism, especially in the Senate. But Republicans are confident they can gain a House majority.Midterm Data: Could the 2020 polling miss repeat itself? Will this election cycle really be different? Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, looks at the data in his new newsletter.Republicans’ Abortion Struggles: Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed nationwide 15-week abortion ban was intended to unite the G.O.P. before the November elections. But it has only exposed the party’s divisions.Democrats’ Dilemma: The party’s candidates have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, while not distancing themselves from President Biden’s base or agenda.Ms. Leavitt defeated Mr. Mowers, 33, a veteran of Mr. Trump’s State Department and of his 2016 campaign, who entered the race a year ago as the presumed Republican front-runner and benefited from an infusion of cash from an outside PAC aligned with Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican from California and minority leader, who is campaigning to become speaker.The candidates have few discernible differences on policy, and the race ultimately turned less on any ideological divide than on style and tone. It divided the House Republican leadership, exposing lingering rifts inside the party over Mr. Trump’s influence.Ms. Leavitt, who adopted Mr. Trump’s brash style and taste for inflammatory statements, was backed by a host of hard-right Republicans in Congress, most notably Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 Republican, who has also styled herself in the former president’s image. In her campaign, Ms. Leavitt unequivocally repeated Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.Ms. Leavitt leaned into the attacks and the money pouring into the district to defeat her, positioning herself as the America First candidate fighting “the swamp” and claiming that if “establishment Republicans” were spending so much to defeat her then “I must be doing something right.” Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, also elevated her as the anti-establishment candidate in the race.The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Mr. McCarthy, spent more than $1.3 million supporting Mr. Mowers. Another super PAC that supports moderate Republicans, Defending Main Street, spent over $1.2 million to attack Ms. Leavitt.Ms. Leavitt’s come-from-behind victory was also a win for Ms. Stefanik, who harbors ambitions to rise in the party. Her outside group E-Pac, which supports conservative female candidates, spent the legal maximum, $10,000, supporting Ms. Leavitt’s campaign. Ms. Stefanik also served as an informal adviser to Ms. Leavitt, who previously worked as her communications director.If Republicans win back control of the House of Representatives and Ms. Leavitt wins her seat in November, she could be a wild card for Mr. McCarthy in the mold of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and other hard-right lawmakers who have sometimes proved a thorn in the minority leader’s side.But Ms. Leavitt enters the general election bruised by the bitter primary. Mr. Mowers’s campaign operated a website branding her “fake MAGA Karoline.” It accused her of having “never held a real job outside the swamp,” attending private school in Massachusetts and being registered to vote from the “penthouse” apartment where she lived in Washington before moving back to New Hampshire to run for office. And Ms. Leavitt’s brash style may make for an easier target for Democrats in a general election.“I think she is more beatable because Democrats can portray her as an inexperienced ideologue,” said David Wasserman, an election expert with the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter that analyzes elections. More