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      Win or Lose, Bolsonaro Has Destroyed Trust in Brazil’s Elections

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      President Jair Bolsonaro has attacked Brazil’s electronic voting system. Now, ahead of Sunday’s elections, many of his supporters believe there will be fraud.DUQUE DE CAXIAS, Brazil — For many supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro, Sunday’s presidential election in Brazil can have just two possible outcomes: They celebrate or they take to the streets.That is because, they say, his defeat can only mean the vote was rigged.“There’s a lot of fraud,” said Kátia de Lima, 47, a store clerk at a rally for Mr. Bolsonaro this month. “It’s proven.”At the same rally north of Rio de Janeiro, Paulo Roberto, 55, a government worker, said, “Anyone who votes for Bolsonaro is worried about the voting machines.”And Fabrício Frieber, a lawyer from the state of Bahia, added, “Bolsonaro has been warning us.”Throughout his presidency, Mr. Bolsonaro has methodically questioned and criticized the security of Brazil’s electronic voting system, despite the lack of credible evidence of a problem. Now, at the end of his first term, it is clear that his attacks have had an effect: Much of Brazil’s electorate has lost faith in the integrity of their nation’s elections.Three out of four of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters trust Brazil’s voting system only a little or not at all, according to multiple polls over the past several months, including one last week. And in interviews with more than 40 of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters in recent months, nearly all said they were worried about election rigging and were prepared to protest if he loses.Those doubts have undermined one of the world’s largest democracies and are likely to end up as one of Mr. Bolsonaro’s most pernicious legacies — part of a global trend of lies and conspiracy theories, often stoked by populist leaders and amplified by the internet, that are threatening democratic norms in the United States and across the world.Inspectors from Brazil’s electoral court testing electronic voting machines in São Paulo. The machines are not connected to the internet, significantly reducing the chances of a hack.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesNow, on Sunday, Brazil could see how far those doubts about its elections go.Polls show that the race between Mr. Bolsonaro, the far-right incumbent, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former leftist president, is close. Yet Mr. Bolsonaro has suggested that, if he loses, he may not accept the results.“Elections that you can’t audit? That’s not an election. It’s fraud,” Mr. Bolsonaro told reporters in July, citing a common claim about Brazil’s election system. “I’ll hand over power — in a clean election.”If Mr. Bolsonaro is defeated and seeks to hold on to power, it appears that Brazil’s democratic institutions are prepared to resist. But it also appears that some of his supporters are prepared to fight.“If our president isn’t elected, everyone goes to Brasília,” said Rogério Ramos, 40, owner of an automotive electronics shop, referring to the nation’s capital. “We shut down Congress, just like in ’64.”In 1964, a military coup led to a violent, 21-year dictatorship in Brazil.Rogério Ramos in his self-driving car with other Bolsonaro supporters after a rally in Rio de Janeiro.Maria Magdalena Arrellaga for The New York TimesMany such warnings are likely off-the-cuff comments, rather than organized plans for violence. Law-enforcement officials have not warned of any threat by groups in the event of Mr. Bolsonaro’s defeat.But Brazil’s Supreme Court and electoral court have increased security, and the military is preparing in case there is unrest after the election, according to two senior military officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private plans. The president or the courts could call on the military to try to control violent crowds.Government officials, judges, journalists and much of the Brazilian public are worried about a scenario that resembles Jan. 6, 2021, when thousands of people stormed the U.S. Capitol in a bid to overturn the election results after former President Donald J. Trump repeatedly denied his loss.Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Bolsonaro spent much of their administrations warning that the establishment was plotting against them. Mr. Trump railed against the “deep state,” while Mr. Bolsonaro has accused some of the judges who oversee Brazil’s Supreme Court and the country’s electoral court of trying to rig the election.Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters focus their attention on a series of anecdotal apparent abnormalities in the voting process and results, as well as many conspiracy theories.Maria Magdalena Arrellaga for The New York TimesMr. Bolsonaro has also questioned the security of Brazil’s electronic voting machines since 2015, after a center-right presidential candidate disputed a narrow loss. Then a congressman, Mr. Bolsonaro began a crusade that the voting machines were vulnerable to fraud because they are not backed up by paper ballots..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.Mr. Bolsonaro is right that Brazil’s voting system is unique. It is the only country in the world to use a fully digital system, with no paper backups.Computer-security experts who study the system say its design indeed makes it difficult to audit an election. But they also say the system has numerous layers of security to prevent fraud or errors, including fingerprint readers, tests of hundreds of machines on Election Day, outside experts’ inspection of the source code and the fact that the machines do not connect to the internet, significantly reducing the chances of a hack.Since Brazil began using electronic voting machines in 1996, there has been no evidence that they have been used for fraud. Instead, the machines helped eliminate the fraud that once afflicted Brazil’s elections in the age of paper ballots.But those facts have not mattered much to Mr. Bolsonaro or many of the more than 50 million Brazilians who voted for him in the first election round. In interviews, Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters instead focused their attention on a series of anecdotal apparent abnormalities in the voting process and results, as well as many conspiracy theories: machines steal votes from Mr. Bolsonaro; machines come preloaded with votes; some machines are planted fakes; officials manipulate vote tallies; and the vote results show suspicious patterns.In past elections, Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters have gone to the polls searching for some irregularity to film and spread as further evidence of fraud.Maria Magdalena Arrellaga for The New York TimesOne man interviewed by The New York Times played a video he received on WhatsApp that said Mr. Bolsonaro had visited Russia this year to get President Vladimir V. Putin’s help in fighting the Brazilian left’s plans to steal Sunday’s election.As in the United States and elsewhere, social media has helped polarize the population and enabled widespread doubts about the elections.Most of the Brazilian public used to gather around a single television channel, TV Globo. Now, Brazilians are splintered across the endless media landscape of the internet, often in bubbles with like-minded people that entrench pre-existing views, said Francisco Brito Cruz, director of the InternetLab, a research institute in São Paulo.The public itself has even become part of the media, creating and sharing memes and videos, including about the voting machines. In past elections, Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters have gone to the polls searching for some irregularity to film and spread as further evidence of fraud.“They’re on a wild good chase, trying to find where the poll worker is manipulating things, where they’re having problems,” Mr. Brito Cruz said. “They have convinced themselves, right?”Most of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters said in interviews that they do not trust mainstream news outlets, which Mr. Bolsonaro has attacked as dishonest, and instead rely on news from a wide variety of sources on their phones, including social-media posts and messages they receive in groups on WhatsApp and Telegram.“I look at the things I want to see, and I avoid looking at what they want to show me,” said José Luiz Chaves Fonseca, a turbine engineer for offshore oil platforms who was attending the rally this month north of Rio de Janeiro as a Bolsonaro impersonator. “If everyone thought like this, they wouldn’t be tricked.”“I look at the things I want to see, and I avoid looking at what they want to show me,” said José Luiz Chaves Fonseca, center, who was attending a rally as a Bolsonaro impersonator.Maria Magdalena Arrellaga for The New York TimesMany of the doubts about the election system are rooted in real events, but are twisted and framed as proof of something amiss. Mr. da Silva, for instance, was convicted of corruption charges, which were later nullified, so Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters characterize him as a thief prepared to steal the vote.Hackers infiltrated the computer network of Brazil’s election agency in 2018, and Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters frequently cite the incident as proof of fraud. “If they say that the machines are so impenetrable, then why is someone in prison for breaking into a voting machine?” Alessandra Stoll Ranzni, a designer from São Paulo, said at the Brazilian version of CPAC, the conservative political conference, earlier this year.An investigation showed the hackers were not able to gain access to voting machines or change vote totals.Not all of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters are so skeptical. Vinícius Ramos, 32, a government worker north of Rio de Janeiro, said that he received a degree in a network security and felt differently than many of the people around him at a recent rally.“The Brazilian national voting system is one of the safest in the world,” he said. “Just because I vote for him doesn’t mean that I agree with everything he says.”André Spigariol contributed reporting from Brasília, and María Magdalena Arréllaga from Duque de Caxias, Brazil. More

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      Italy’s Hard Right Feels Vindicated by Giorgia Meloni’s Ascent

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      Long marginalized politically and ostracized socially, the new prime minister’s supporters sense a chance to give a final blow to the stigma and shame of their association with Fascism.ROCCA DI PAPA, Italy — As a young card-carrying member of a party formed from the ashes of Italy’s Fascist party after World War II, Gino Del Nero, 73, recalls being insulted, sidelined and silenced by leftists, as well as by some neighbors and co-workers.But now that Giorgia Meloni, a hard-right political leader, has been sworn in as prime minister of Italy, Mr. Del Nero feels vindicated.“That is over,” he said of the decades where he had to keep his head down. “We are freer now.”The ascent of Ms. Meloni, who leads the most hard-right government since Mussolini, was the final blow to a political taboo for Italy. That has worried critics on the left, who fear that she will initiate an atmosphere of intolerance on social issues and that her nationalist impulses will threaten Italy’s influence in Europe.But to her supporters, it has meant a chance to assert their domination over the mainstream of Italian politics and to shed the shame and stigma of their association with a Fascist movement that took power 100 years ago this week, with Mussolini’s march on Rome, which ushered in two decades of dictatorship that used political violence, introduced racial laws against Jews, allied with Hitler, and disastrously lost a world war.Rocca di Papa, a hilltop village outside Rome where the hard-right Brothers of Italy won 38 percent of the vote in September.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesGino del Nero, 73, who was a member of the post-Fascist Italian Social Movement, recalls being insulted and admonished by leftists in his youth.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesFor her part, Ms. Meloni, the leader of the Brothers of Italy, a party descended from the remnants of that failed experiment, has sought to walk a fine line, repeatedly condemning Fascism, while also nodding to the long years of political exclusion and social ostracism of her supporters and offering them solidarity.In her maiden speech to Parliament as prime minister this week, Ms. Meloni again rejected Fascism and said that the racial laws of 1938 were the lowest point in Italian history. But she also denounced Italy’s postwar years of “criminalization and political violence,” in which she said “innocent boys” had been killed “in the name of antifascism.”The remarks were very much in line with the balancing act that Ms. Meloni executed throughout her campaign before the election in September. On the eve of that vote, she said her victory would not only be “payback for so many people who in this nation had to lower their head for decades,” but also “for all the people who saw it differently from the mainstream and the dominant power system.”They were, she said, “treated as the children of a lesser God.”“Giorgia’s victory closes a circle,” said Italo Bocchino, a former member of Parliament and now the editor in chief of Il Secolo d’Italia, a right-wing newspaper that used to be the party’s in-house organ, and whose readership, he said, has grown by 85 percent in the past year. “Let’s say it’s been like a desert crossing that lasted for 75 years.”A polling station in Garbatella, a traditionally leftist district in Rome where Ms. Meloni grew up and started her political career.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesMs. Meloni, right, taking a selfie with a supporter last month in Rome. Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesBut if her supporters now hope for a long-awaited cultural shift, others are looking on with “critical and concerned awareness,” said Nadia Urbinati, a professor of political theory at Columbia University. Ms. Meloni’s use of the word “nation” instead of “country” or “people” during her maiden speech struck Ms. Urbinati as a possible red flag.Italy’s New Right-Wing GovernmentA Hard-Right Breakthrough: Italy, the birthplace of Fascism, is once again a testing ground for the far right’s advance in Europe after Giorgia Meloni’s election victory in September.New Government Forms: As she takes office, Ms. Meloni faces surging inflation, an energy crisis and increasing pressure to soften Italy’s support for Ukraine.The Coalition’s Linchpin: Ms. Meloni’s turn as prime minister will depend on support from the billionaire media mogul Silvio Berlusconi. So may the health of Italian democracy.Renewed Anxiety: Mr. Berlusconi was caught on tape blaming Ukraine’s president for pushing Russia to invade, raising concerns that Italy could undercut Europe’s unity against Moscow.When the Italian Social Movement was first formed in 1948, its close association with its Fascist forebears repelled many Italians still stinging from the fallout of World War II. Effectively, for nearly a half-century, Italy remained politically split between the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party, leaving little room for the hard right to maneuver in part because of a tacit agreement to keep the right out of government.Political polarization surged among young people during the 1970s and early ’80s, and schools and streets became violent battlefields where the right was vastly outnumbered. Clothing was a political statement then: Members of the left wore parkas, known as an “Eskimo,” and lace-up shoes, and they wore their hair long; members of the right opted for Ray-Ban glasses, leather bomber jackets and camperos, made-in-Italy cowboy-style boots.Members of Gioventù Nazionale, the youth wing of Brothers of Italy, at a rally in September in Rome.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesSimone D’Alpa, 32, one of the leaders of the Rome branch of Gioventù Nazionale, the youth wing of Brothers of Italy, at its headquarters in Rome.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesIn those days, said Simone D’Alpa, one of leaders of the Rome branch of Gioventù Nazionale, the youth wing of Brothers of Italy, you could be targeted, even killed, for wearing camperos boots, or for writing essays seen to be too rightward thinking. Ms. Meloni’s victory vindicated those deaths. “We owe it to them,” he said.The tide first turned in the early ’90s, when the party was reborn as National Alliance and softened its tone. Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister at the time, brought it into the center-right coalition, lifting a longstanding taboo. Critics said that Ms. Meloni’s messaging of “vindication, comeback and victimization” was unjustified because members of her party have already been in office.But to supporters, leading the government is another story.Six of Ms. Meloni’s cabinet ministers started their political careers in the Italian Social Movement, the post-Fascist party. Her close ally Ignazio La Russa was elected president of the Senate, the second top institutional office after the president. The right-wing newspaper Libero called his nomination “the definite legitimization not only of a party, but of an entire world,” that for 30 years had been in a “political ghetto.”Ms. Meloni’s supporters also hoped that this legitimization would trickle down to their everyday lives.Maurizio Manzetti, 61, at his restaurant, The Legend, in Ostia, a seaside neighborhood of Rome. The restaurant was vandalized because its décor included Italian flags and photographs of Ms. Meloni.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesA plaque outside an office of the former Italian Social Movement, now a branch of Brothers of Italy, in Rome. When the Italian Social Movement was first formed, its close ties with its Fascist forebears repulsed many Italians.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesTwo years ago, vandals targeted Maurizio Manzetti, a cook in the seaside Roman neighborhood of Ostia, whose restaurant décor includes Italian flags and photographs of Ms. Meloni. They spray-painted “Friend of Giorgia, Fascist” on a wall in front of the eatery and left a bottle that looked like firebomb in front of his door.“As soon as you talked about patriotism, sovreignism and borders they called you a Fascist,” Mr. Manzetti said. “Now the word patriot is not going to be canceled anymore.”Some nationalists said that having a prime minister might also give them a better foothold in public sectors of cultural life that they complain has systematically excluded them.“There’s now a great opportunity on a cultural level,” said Federico Gennaccari, the editor of a Rome-based conservative publishing house. His wish list, for example, would include a new take on the massacre of Italian soldiers and civilians by Yugoslav Communist partisans from 1943 to 1947 in northeastern Italy. For decades, members of the hard right, in a clear example of “whataboutism,” cited that massacre when asked about Fascist complicity in the Holocaust.One series about that massacre that Mr. Gennaccari saw aired by the state broadcaster RAI “didn’t say the word Communist once,” he said.Federico Gennaccari, the editor of a conservative publishing house in Rome.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesA rally commemorating the mass killings of Fascists by Yugoslav Communist partisans during World War II.Matteo Corner/EPA, via ShutterstockOthers, like Gennaro Malgieri, a conservative author and former lawmaker, spoke of a “hegemony of the left” in postwar Italy that had “occupied centers of learning and culture,” keeping the right from making inroads in “publishing, means of mass communication, universities, festivals and positions in cultural institutions.”While Italy is far less sensitive to political correctness than other Western democracies are, Mr. Malgieri said the victory would afford the right more — and vaster — channels from which to critique those positions and affirm a nationalist “way of being Italian” that derived from the country’s Roman, Greek and Judeo-Christian roots.Some Italian historians question the extent to which the right had been truly banished, and whether it was instead simply engaging in politically useful victimization.“The names of people who were discriminated against or exiled because they were right wing don’t come to mind,” said Alberto Mario Banti, a modern history professor at the University of Pisa.The Square Colosseum, an example of Fascist architecture, in Rome’s EUR district.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesOutside a cafe in Rocca di Papa.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesStill, supporters said, Ms. Meloni’s victory was a turning point for them.Mr. Del Nero, from Rocca di Papa, said he hoped that now he could read a right-wing newspaper or book on the subway without eliciting scornful looks.His loyalty to the right had come at a cost, he said, years of being excluded from workers’ union meetings at the hospital where he worked. Colleagues silenced him in discussions. People often dismissed him as a “Fascist.”“It’s a mark we carry inside,” he said. “Now I feel vindicated.”A bus stop and magazine stand in Rocca di Papa. Mr. Del Nero said he hoped that he could now read a right-wing newspaper without eliciting scornful looks.Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times More

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      Northern Ireland Likely to Hold New Election After Failing to Form a Government

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      Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary is expected to announce on Friday that a new election would be held in December after six months of fruitless efforts to convene Parliament.LONDON — Voters in Northern Ireland made history in May when they turned the Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein, into the largest in the North. Now, they are likely to have to go back to the polls after the main pro-unionist party paralyzed the power-sharing government by refusing to take part in it.Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, is expected to announce on Friday that a new election would be held, possibly on Dec. 15, following six months of fruitless efforts to convene the assembly at the Stormont Parliament in Belfast. The deadline for forming a government expired at 12:01 a.m. Friday.It is not the first time that Northern Ireland’s experiment in power sharing has broken down. The assembly was suspended from 2002 to 2007, and again from 2017 to 2020. This time, the prospects for a swift resolution seem bleak, with Northern Ireland caught up in a larger standoff over trade between Britain and the European Union.Sinn Fein’s victory in May was a watershed in Northern Ireland’s politics, elevating a nationalist party that many still associate with paramilitary violence to leadership in the territory. It entitled Sinn Fein to name Michelle O’Neill, its leader, to the post of first minister in the government, reflecting its status as the party with the most seats in the assembly.But on Thursday, the parties failed in a last-gasp effort to elect a speaker of the assembly, which would have cleared the way to appoint ministers to run the government. Ms. O’Neill criticized the unionists for a “failure of leadership,” after they refused to nominate ministers or a speaker.A poster for Michelle O’Neill and Sinn Fein in April in Belfast.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesPolitical analysts predicted that Sinn Fein could expand its two-seat advantage over its main rival — the Democratic Unionist Party, or D.U.P. — by drawing voters who are frustrated by the breakdown of the government and blame the D.U.P., which has refused to take part until Britain overhauls the trade arrangements for Northern Ireland.More on the Political Turmoil in BritainMaking History: Rishi Sunak is the first person of color and the first Hindu to become prime minister of Britain — a milestone for a nation that is more and more ethnically diverse but also roiled by occasional anti-immigrant fervor.A Breakthrough, With Privilege: While Mr. Sunak’s rise to prime minister is a significant moment for Britain’s Indian diaspora, his immense wealth has made him less relatable to many.Economic Challenges: Mr. Sunak already has experience steering Britain’s public finances as chancellor of the Exchequer. That won’t make tackling the current crisis any easier.Political Primaries: Are primary elections of British leaders driving Britain’s dysfunction? The rise and fall of Liz Truss offers some lessons.But the Democratic Unionists might pick up a seat or two as well by consolidating the unionist vote. These people favor the North remaining part of the United Kingdom but had split their votes between three competing unionist parties. The D.U.P.’s attacks on the trade rules, known as the Northern Ireland Protocol, have united and hardened opposition to it within the unionist population.Adding to the anger, Sinn Fein officials have said that because of the changed political landscape, the Irish Republic should have a consultative role in running Northern Ireland, along with Britain, if the deadlock over a power-sharing government cannot be broken. The British government said it was not considering “joint authority” over the North, though it is wary of a return to direct rule.While the D.U.P. is unlikely to overtake Sinn Fein, analysts said, it may shore up what had been an eroding position. That would vindicate the party’s hard-line strategy, analysts said, and give it little incentive to return to government if Britain struck a compromise with the European Union on the protocol.“Strong unionists are very united on the idea that the protocol must be scrapped,” said Katy Hayward, a professor of political sociology at Queen’s University, Belfast. “My worry is that even if the U.K. and E.U. come up with an agreement on the protocol, it will be very difficult for that agreement to satisfy the unionists.Jeffrey Donaldson, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, on Thursday at the Stormont Parliament in Belfast.Charles McQuillan/Getty ImagesMr. Heaton-Harris, who was reappointed Northern Ireland secretary this week by Britain’s new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has said he would prefer to call a new election rather than try to delay it or pass legislation in the British Parliament.It was shaping up as an early foreign policy headache for Mr. Sunak, who has spoken of wanting to reset relations between Britain and the European Union. Tensions over trade in Northern Ireland have simmered since the Brexit referendum in 2016 and rose significantly in June after his predecessor, Liz Truss, who was foreign secretary at the time, introduced legislation that would unilaterally overturn parts of the protocol. Boris Johnson, who was then prime minister, regularly reinforced that position.Though Mr. Sunak said he was committed to getting that bill through Parliament, some analysts said they believed he would take a more pragmatic approach with Brussels, calculating that Britain cannot afford a trade war with the European Union at a time when its economy is grappling with double-digit inflation and a looming recession.The result of a painstaking negotiation between London and Brussels, the protocol was meant to account for the hybrid status of Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom but shares an open border with neighboring Ireland, a member of the European Union. To keep that border open, Mr. Johnson had accepted checks on goods flowing from mainland Britain to Northern Ireland.Unionists complain that the checks have added onerous layers of bureaucracy to trade and driven a wedge between the North and the rest of the United Kingdom. For months, Britain has tried to renegotiate the rules with European officials to make them less cumbersome. But unionists want the protocol essentially swept away, which Brussels is certain to reject on the grounds that it would threaten the single market.Belfast in April. Sinn Fein favors the unification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland.Andrew Testa for The New York Times“The D.U.P. and Sinn Fein should both gain seats” in the next election, said David Campbell, the chairman of the Loyalist Communities Council, which represents pro-union paramilitary groups that vehemently oppose the protocol. “Hard to tell which comes out on top. The real problem is how to resolve problems after.”For Sinn Fein, which favors the unification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland, the paralysis confronts it with a decision: whether to give up on power sharing, which was enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of sectarian violence, and focus its energies on uniting North and South.“If the sense is the D.U.P. is against the Good Friday Agreement,” Professor Hayward said, “there is a certain rationale for the Sinn Fein to go for their alternative.” More

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      Two Futures Face Off in Brazil

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      Rachelle Bonja and Liz O. Baylen and Chelsea Daniel, Dan Powell and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherVoters in Brazil on Sunday will choose between two larger-than-life, populist candidates in a presidential race that is widely seen as the nation’s — and Latin America’s — most important election in decades.Who are the candidates, and why is the future of Brazilian democracy also on the ballot?On today’s episodeJack Nicas, the Brazil bureau chief for The New York Times.Voters in Brazil on Sunday will choose between two candidates who have very different visions for the country.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesBackground readingThe contest — a matchup between Brazil’s two biggest political heavyweights — could swing either way and promises to prolong what has already been a bruising battle that has polarized the nation and tested the strength of its democracy.For the past decade, Brazil has lurched from one crisis to the next. Brazilians will decide between two men who are deeply tied to its tumultuous past.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Jack Nicas contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Sofia Milan, Ben Calhoun and Susan Lee.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Desiree Ibekwe, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello and Nell Gallogly. More

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      The Rising Tide of Global Sadness

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      Taylor Swift was quite the romantic when she burst on the scene in 2006. She sang about the ecstasies of young love and the heartbreak of it. But her mood has hardened as her star has risen. Her excellent new album, Midnights, plays upon a string of negative emotions — anxiety, restlessness, exhaustion and occasionally anger.“I don’t dress for women,” she sings at one point, “I don’t dress for men/Lately I’ve been dressing for revenge.”It turns out Swift is part of a larger trend. The researchers Charlotte Brand, Alberto Acerbi and Alex Mesoudi analyzed more than 150,000 pop songs released between 1965 and 2015. Over that time, the appearance of the word “love” in top-100 hits roughly halved. Meanwhile, the number of times such songs contained negative emotion words, like “hate” rose sharply.Pop music isn’t the only thing that has gotten a lot harsher. David Rozado, Ruth Hughes and Jamin Halberstadt analyzed 23 million headlines published between 2000 and 2019 by 47 different news outlets popular in the United States. The headlines, too, grew significantly more negative, with a greater proportion of headlines denoting anger, fear, disgust and sadness. Headlines in left-leaning media got a lot more negative, but headlines in right-leaning publications got even more negative than that.The negativity in the culture reflects the negativity in real life. The General Social Survey asks people to rate their happiness levels. Between 1990 and 2018 the share of Americans who put themselves in the lowest happiness category increased by more than 50 percent. And that was before the pandemic.The really bad news is abroad. Each year Gallup surveys roughly 150,000 people in over 140 countries about their emotional lives. Experiences of negative emotions — related to stress, sadness, anger, worry and physical pain — hit a record high last year.Gallup asks people in this survey to rate their lives on a scale from zero to 10, with zero meaning you’re living your worst possible life and 10 meaning you’re living your best. Sixteen years ago, only 1.6 percent of people worldwide rated their life as a zero. As of last year, the share of people reporting the worst possible lives has more than quadrupled. The unhappiest people are even unhappier. In 2006, the bottom fifth of the population gave themselves an average score of 2.5. Fifteen years later, that average score in the bottom quintile had dropped to 1.2.In an interview, Jon Clifton, the C.E.O. of Gallup, told me that in 2021 21 percent of the people in India gave themselves a zero rating. He said negative emotions are rising in India and China, Brazil and Mexico and many other nations. A lot of people are pretty miserable at work. In the most recent survey Gallup found that 20 percent of all people are thriving at work, 62 percent are indifferent on the job and 18 percent are miserable.Part of the problem is declining community. The polls imply that almost two billion people are so unhappy where they live they would not recommend their community to a friend. This is especially true in China and India.Part of the problem is hunger. In 2014, 22.6 percent of the world faced moderate or severe food insecurity. By 2020, 30.4 percent of the world did.Part of the problem is an increase in physical misery. In 2006, 30 percent of people who rated their lives the worst said they experienced daily pain. Last year, 45 percent of those people said they live with daily pain. Before the pandemic, the experience of living with pain increased across all age groups.A lot of those numbers surprised me. Places like China and India have gotten much richer. But development does not necessarily lead to gains in well-being, in part because development is often accompanied by widening inequality. This is one of the core points Clifton makes in his book “Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It.” We conventionally use G.D.P. and other material measures to evaluate how nations are doing. But these are often deeply flawed measures of how actual people are experiencing their lives.Misery influences politics. James Carville famously said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” But that’s too narrow. Often it’s human flourishing, stupid, including community cohesion, a sense of being respected, social connection. George Ward of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has argued that subjective measures of well-being are more predictive of some election outcomes than economic measures. Measures of well-being dropped in Tunisia and Egypt before the Arab uprisings. Well-being dropped in Britain before the Brexit vote. Counties in the United States that saw the largest gain in voting Republican for president between the 2012 election and Donald Trump’s election in 2016 were also the counties where people rated their lives the worst.If misery levels keep rising, what can we expect in the future? Well, rising levels of populism for one. And second, greater civil unrest across the board. Clifton noted that according to the Global Peace Index, civic discontent — riots, strikes, anti-government demonstrations — increased by 244 percent from 2011 to 2019.We live in a world of widening emotional inequality. The top 20 percent of the world is experiencing highest level of happiness and well-being since Gallup began measuring these things. The bottom 20 percent is experiencing the worst. It’s a fundamentally unjust and unstable situation. The emotional health of the world is shattering.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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      Your Friday Briefing: The U.S. Economy Grew, Slowly

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      Plus the war in Ukraine may boost clean energy and investigations into Chinese outposts overseas.Quarterly changes in gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation.By The New York TimesU.S. economy grows, but slowlyThe U.S. economy grew slowly over the summer, adding to fears of a looming recession while simultaneously keeping alive the hope that one might be avoided.Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, increased by 0.6 percent after six months of decline, slightly exceeding forecasters’ expectations. That suggests that a path to “soft landing,” in which policymakers cool off red-hot demand without snuffing out the recovery entirely, remains open, but narrow.There are still plenty of economic headwinds. Consumer spending slowed as inflation cut into households’ buying power, and mortgage rates rose to the highest level since 2002, leading to a steep contraction in the housing sector. Big tech companies like Meta and Microsoft, which are usually two drivers of U.S. growth, are also signaling that tough times might be ahead amid inflation.In Europe: The European Central Bank raised interest rates again. In just three months, the bank has raised rates at the fastest pace in its history.Ripple effects: Interest rate increases by the U.S. Federal Reserve have hurt other currencies — including those of Japan, China and India — by making it harder for foreign borrowers with debt in U.S. dollars to repay their loans.Quotable: “Ignore the headline number — growth rates are slowing,” Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist for Bank of America, said. “It wouldn’t take much further slowing from here to tip the economy into a recession.”Europe has seen an uptick in coal use as countries scramble to replace lost Russian gas.Martin Meissner/Associated PressThe war in Ukraine may boost clean energyIn response to natural gas shortages caused by the war in Ukraine, some countries are burning more coal. In the short term, European leaders looking for alternatives to Russian gas are turning to Africa to drill for more fossil fuels.But the International Energy Agency said yesterday that the war could speed up the shift to clean energy rather than slowing it down. One major reason is that soaring fossil fuel prices have led to a wider embrace of wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear power plants, hydrogen fuels, electric vehicles and electric heat pumps.The State of the WarFears of Escalation: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia repeated the unfounded claim that Ukraine was preparing to explode a so-called dirty bomb, as concerns rose in the West that the Kremlin was seeking a pretext to escalate the war.The Looming Fight for Kherson: As Russian forces pillage the occupied southern port city and pressure residents to leave for Russia, a nearby hydroelectric dam has emerged as a linchpin in what is shaping up to be the site of the next major battle in Ukraine.A Coalition Under Strain: President Biden is facing new challenges keeping together the bipartisan, multinational coalition supporting Ukraine, which has shown recent signs of fraying with the approach of U.S. midterm elections and a cold European winter.Anti-Drone Warfare: Since Russia began terrorizing Ukrainian cities in recent weeks with Iranian-made drones, Ukraine has turned its focus to an intense counter-drone strategy. The hastily assembled effort has been surprisingly successful.The I.E.A. said global investment in clean energy is now expected to rise to more than $2 trillion annually by 2030 from $1.3 trillion in 2022.Still, the shift is not happening fast enough to avoid dangerous levels of global warming. The agency said that for things to change, governments would have to take much stronger action to reduce their emissions over the next few years.Notable: A climate protester glued his head to “Girl With a Pearl Earring,” a painting by Johannes Vermeer, at a museum in The Hague.Beyond catastrophe: In The Times Magazine, David Wallace-Wells argues that while there’s plenty of bad climate news, thanks to real progress, the world is headed toward a less apocalyptic future.From Opinion: The runoff election in Brazil on Sunday will determine the fate of the Amazon rainforest and Earth’s future.“It is such a brazen escalation and violation of territorial sovereignty,” said a member of a rights group.Bart Maat/EPA, via ShutterstockChina’s offshore police stationsThe Dutch government is investigating reports that Chinese law enforcement agencies are illegally operating offices in the Netherlands to police Chinese citizens overseas.The recent reports, which come from the news media and a human rights group, add to a growing body of evidence that suggests that Beijing surveils Chinese nationals from overseas outposts. The authorities in Canada are investigating similar operations there, and a rights group said that there are dozens of surveillance outfits around the world — including in New York, Paris, London, Madrid and Toronto.China said that the operations, which it described as “service stations” meant to help Chinese citizens with administrative tasks like passport renewals, also have the aim of “resolutely cracking down on all kinds of illegal and criminal activities related to overseas Chinese people.”Reaction: China’s Embassy in the Netherlands said it was “not aware” of and “not involved” with the offices. According to the Vienna Convention, an international pact that both China and the Netherlands signed, administrative matters are to be handled by consulates.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificFoxconn is now making the new iPhone 14.Gilles Sabrie for The New York TimesA Covid outbreak in China forced workers at a major iPhone manufacturing plant into quarantine right before an expected holiday buying surge.An Australian judge ordered a new trial of a former parliamentary staff member accused of raping a colleague in the Parliament House, after a juror brought a research article on sexual assault cases into the jury room.Around the WorldThe deal has stirred fierce debate in Israel: Some view it as an achievement; others see it as a dangerous capitulation.Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIsrael and Lebanon, which are technically still at war, signed a maritime agreement regulating their rights to gas reserves at sea.Brazil’s presidential runoff is Sunday. Many fear that President Jair Bolsonaro, who spent months building the myth of a stolen election, may not accept defeat.The War in UkraineVladimir Putin, Russia’s president, used an annual foreign policy speech to try to appeal to conservatives in the U.S. and Europe.Fearing aggression from Belarus, Ukraine said it had increased its troop presence in the north.Russian loyalists stole the bones of Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin from Ukraine. Potemkin is an inspiration to Putin: He persuaded Catherine the Great, his lover, to annex Crimea in 1783.The Week in CultureSkechers said it escorted Kanye West, now known as Ye, from its Los Angeles offices after he showed up there unannounced. Many wonder whether his music can withstand the backlash to his recent string of offensive outbursts.A memoir by Prince Harry is due in January. Some royal experts say the project is fraught with risk for him.A Morning Read“We should lead this world,” Wang Xiaodong once said.Gilles Sabrié for The New York TimesWang Xiaodong was once called the standard-bearer of Chinese nationalism.Now, he warns that the movement he helped to ignite nearly 35 years ago has gone too far. “I’ve been called nationalism’s godfather,” he told my colleague Vivian Wang. “I created them. But I never told them to be this crazy.”SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAA demonstration in Addis Ababa in support of Ethiopia’s armed forces last weekend.Amanuel Sileshi/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHigh-stakes talks on EthiopiaAfter nearly two years of civil war, representatives from the Ethiopian government and rebel forces in the country’s Tigray region began holding formal peace talks this week.The failure of the talks could exacerbate a conflict that began when fighting broke out after a contested election, and in which thousands have been killed and millions have been displaced.Little has emerged so far from the negotiations, which are being held in South Africa and mediated by former African leaders on behalf of the African Union. Tigrayans in exile have said they have little hope that the talks will end the fighting.“Ethiopia faces multiple challenges including major climatic stresses, an economy in deep distress, partly due to the war, and a number of other rebellions,” Murithi Mutiga, the Africa program director at the International Crisis Group, said.“It can’t afford a years’ long war on its borders,” he added. “A collapse in the talks will mean even more carnage in a war that’s already one of the world’s deadliest.”— Lynsey Chutel, reporter based in JohannesburgPLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookJohnny Miller for The New York TimesIf you have leftover rice, put it to good use in this crispy rice salad with halloumi and ginger-lime vinaigrette.What to ReadSome standout newly published books include “The Rebel and the Kingdom,” about a secret mission to overthrow the North Korean government.What to Watch“All That Breathes,” a subtle, poetic documentary, follows three men trying to rehabilitate New Delhi’s birds of prey.TravelHow to spend 36 hours in Sydney.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and here’s a clue: Get older (three letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. Vivian Nereim will be our new Gulf bureau chief, becoming the first Times correspondent to lead a bureau in Saudi Arabia.The latest episode of “The Daily” is on the midterm elections in New York. Lynsey Chutel wrote today’s Spotlight on Africa. You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      Iraqi Parliament Approves New Government After Yearlong Delay

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      The installation of a new prime minister and cabinet ends a long-running political deadlock, but perpetuates a system plagued by corruption and dysfunction.Iraq’s Parliament approved a new government on Thursday that was more than a year in the making but that perpetuates an almost two-decade-old political system that has been blamed for endemic corruption and dysfunction since being ushered in after the U.S.-led invasion.The new prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, presented his list of cabinet ministers to Parliament more than a year after elections last October that were meant to produce a new, reformist government in response to sweeping protests.The new government embodies a system put in place after the 2003 invasion, which allots key roles for specific sects and ethnic groups, and allocates government ministries to the most powerful political parties, which have routinely used those ministries to enrich themselves.The parties once again negotiated among themselves to divide up important posts, and once again Nouri al-Maliki, a former prime minister, played a prominent role in the process. Lawmakers approved Mr. Sudani and his cabinet choices in a closed session.The new cabinet retains the Kurdish politician Fuad Hussein as foreign minister but replaces 16 of the 21 cabinet members named so far. At least two positions were left unfilled, including for the environment ministry, which would have a key role in combating climate change.The influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, an Iraqi nationalist who has resisted Iranian influence, emerged from elections last year with the biggest single bloc in Parliament. But after months of negotiations failed to form a coalition government, he ordered the resignation of his 73 members and in August announced he was withdrawing entirely from politics.Mr. Sadr’s withdrawal opened the way for a rival political bloc made up mostly of Iran-backed Shiite parties to take control in a coalition with Kurdish and Sunni political parties. The bloc includes Mr. Sadr’s archrival, Mr. Maliki, who was backed by the United States in his first term as prime minister, and was blamed in his second term for sectarian policies that fueled the rise of the Islamic State.Nouri al-Maliki, a former prime minister, has remained a power broker within the Iraqi government.Hadi Mizban/Associated PressParliament earlier this month elected Abdul Latif Rashid as president, as part of a power-sharing agreement among the parties to make Mr. Sudani, a former human rights and labor minister, the new prime minister. That voting took place just after rockets targeted the green zone and central Baghdad, in a sign of Iraq’s continued security instability.On Thursday, as he presented his cabinet nominees to Parliament, Mr. Sudani pledged to fight corruption that has devastated the country, work to repair ties with the government of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq, and build an economy that would create jobs and improve public services.“Corruption that has affected all aspects of life is more deadly than the corona pandemic and has been the cause of many economic problems, weakening the state’s authority, increasing poverty, unemployment and poor public services,” he told Parliament. He did not set out specific measures his government planned to take.Iraq has become one of the most corrupt and nontransparent countries in the world, according to independent watchdog groups. In the most recent scandal, $2.5 billion has gone missing from government funds in a scheme involving tax checks issued to companies submitting fake documents. The Interior Ministry this week said it had arrested a key suspect as he tried to flee the country.The endemic corruption and lack of basic public services and jobs sparked protests three years ago that led to the resignation of the government and the holding of early elections last year. Security forces that included Iran-backed militia fighters responded to the protests by killing hundreds of unarmed demonstrators.In Parliament on Thursday, one of the political leaders to emerge from the protest movement, Alaa al-Rikabi, was ejected from the session for disrupting proceedings by objecting to the system by which the ministers were chosen.Some analysts said Mr. Sudani stood little chance of carrying out the sweeping reforms he promised on Thursday.A photo released by the Iraqi government shows Parliament Speaker Muhammad al-Halbousi on Thursday announcing the vote approving Iraq’s new government.Iraqi Parliament“At the end of the day, even if he’s 100 percent committed to fighting corruption, his constituency is not the Iraqis calling for anti-corruption, his constituency is the parties that put him in power,” said Renad Mansour, director of the Iraq Initiative program at Chatham House, a policy research center.Sajad Jiyad, an Iraq-based fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, said the cabinet, with some technocrats among the political appointees, might find it easier than the previous government to enact programs.Mr. Sudani, a former mayor and provincial governor in southern Iraq before he entered federal politics, is an experienced politician and a former member of Mr. Maliki’s Dawa party. Every previous prime minister since the U.S. invasion had lived in exile when Saddam Hussein held power and then had returned after he was toppled, but Mr. Sudani remained in Iraq.His predecessor as prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, is a former intelligence chief who took office in 2020 with a pledge to hold early elections, which took place last year. Mr. Sudani said he would also aim to hold elections within the next year.Although Mr. Sadr is not in government, he remains a potent political force with the power to mobilize supporters in the streets and create instability for any government. He has been clear that he expects early elections.“Having elections within a year is ambitious and obviously unlikely to happen, but I think that condition is in there as a way of placating Sadr,” said Mr. Jiyad.Nermeen al-Mufti and More

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      As J.D. Vance Courts Ohio, His Fealty to Trump Proves Double-Edged

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      MIDDLETOWN, Ohio — Blue jeans evoked his hardscrabble upbringing, and a crisp dress shirt conveyed his success as a Yale Law School graduate, venture capitalist and best-selling memoirist — with the open collar signaling that he was still just J.D., who happens to be the Ohio Republican candidate for the Senate.This was the J.D. Vance uniform as he spoke one October Saturday to Republican campaign volunteers gathered in a Cincinnati office, near a portrait of a brow-knitted Donald J. Trump. Mr. Vance reassured those about to go door-to-door that at least they wouldn’t encounter his grandmother, the fierce Mamaw, who once told a Marine recruiter that if he put one foot on her property, “I’ll blow it off.”The crowd laughed in recognition, so famous is the tale of how Mamaw’s life lessons about loyalty, education and self-esteem helped Mr. Vance to overcome a poor, dysfunctional childhood. He would repeat the story at another event two hours later.The weekend of campaigning came a month after Mr. Trump told a packed rally in Youngstown that Mr. Vance was a suck-up. “J.D. is kissing my ass he wants my support so much,” the former president had said — while Mr. Vance, Marine Corps veteran and Mamaw’s grandson, stood by.It was just one moment in Mr. Vance’s contentious race against his Democratic opponent, Representative Tim Ryan. And the reliably impolitic Mr. Trump delights in diminishing candidates aching for his benediction, especially one who once asserted that he was unfit for office — who once, in fact, wondered whether he might be America’s Hitler — but who, since entering politics, has demonstrated fervent fealty.“The best president of my lifetime,” Mr. Vance has maintained.Still, the kisses-my-ass tag has followed Mr. Vance like a yippy dog ever since, with Mr. Ryan gleefully invoking it again in their second debate last week. When Mr. Vance maintained that Mr. Trump’s comment was a “joke” that riffed on what he called without explication a “false” New York Times article — about the reluctance of some Republicans to have the former president campaign for them — one of the moderators sought clarification.“So I get this straight,” said Bertram de Souza, a local journalist. “When the former president said, ‘J.D. is kissing my ass because he wants my support,’ you took that as a joke?”“I know the president very well, and he was joking about a New York Times story,” Mr. Vance said. “That’s all he was doing. I didn’t take offense to it.”Supporters of J.D. Vance packed a campaign event in Beavercreek on Tuesday.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesBeyond reflecting a Republican Party utterly beholden to Mr. Trump, the moment highlighted the stark transformation of Mamaw’s centrist grandson into a Trump loyalist whose raw, combative style — he is fond of the term “scumbags” — has him well positioned to become the next senator from Ohio.This remarkable evolution has not gone unnoticed in Middletown, the distressed Rust Belt city where he grew up.Nancy Nix, 53, a prominent local Republican and the treasurer for Butler County, which includes most of Middletown, said that Mr. Vance’s conservative outsider persona resonates in a state that is red “and becoming redder.” She said that his down-to-earth manner and Ivy League intellect appeals to many voters, boding well for a bright political future.“I don’t know if his ambition knows any bounds,” Ms. Nix said.But others say his ambition comes at a cost. Ami Vitori, 48, a fourth-generation Middletonian who knows Mr. Vance, said that while she disagrees with most of his positions, he is a “good dude” whose about-face support of Mr. Trump smacks of cold political calculation.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz clashed in one of the most closely watched debates of the midterm campaign. Here are five takeaways.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.“He’s an opportunist,” she said. “He knows what he has to do to win, but I think, deep down, he hates it.”Rodney Muterspaw, 52, a Middletown councilman and former police chief, said he was a fan of Mr. Vance, who once endorsed his self-published police memoir. Still, he expressed surprise at Mr. Vance’s reaction to Mr. Trump’s supposed joke.“That’s just not the Middletown way,” said Mr. Muterspaw. “If someone calls you out like that, there’s going to be a very candid, not-so-nice response. I’m sure you’d hear some four-letter words there.”A cardboard cutout of former President Donald J. Trump in a Vance campaign office in Cincinnati.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesA volunteer holds campaign materials before a canvassing event in Cincinnati.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesMr. Vance spent this mid-October weekend plowing friendly ground. He began at the Hamilton County Republican headquarters in Cincinnati, where the nearly all-white crowd prepared to go door-knocking in a city that is 40 percent Black. After that he headed to an office park on the city’s suburban fringe, then on to a parking lot in the town of Lebanon, for more of the same.Tall, with gray flecking his brown beard, Mr. Vance has the campaign vibe of an easygoing, hyper-smart soccer dad. His go-to themes adhere to the 2022 Republican script that Democrats are to blame for every ill known to society, beginning with inflation.The Democrats are a “total disaster” who need to be sent a message, he said at one stop: “That if you declare war on our police officers, if you declare war on our energy industry, if you drive up the cost of everything and if you open up the southern border, we’re not going to take it anymore. We’re going to send you home and make you get a real job.”But Mr. Vance’s mild manner tends to mask the far-right influences that course through his positions, and which do not always jibe with the J.D. Vance presented in his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”Earlier this year, on the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Mr. Vance tweeted a link to an organization seeking support for people indicted in the attack — many of them charged with assaulting the police — followed by another tweet calling some of those being held “political prisoners.”He has said that he condemns the Jan. 6 violence, but that Democrats have overemphasized the attack on the Capitol, and the media’s “obsession” with the riot comes “while people can’t afford the cost of groceries.”J.D. Vance at an event in Cincinnati this month as he campaigned for the Senate.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesDuring the Ohio primary a few months later, Mr. Vance said, “I say it all the time: I think the election was stolen from Trump.”His campaign did not respond to repeated questions asking whether he believed that President Biden was legitimately elected.In his memoir, Mr. Vance lamented a “deep skepticism” of society’s institutions that he said was caused by a mistrust of the media and reflected by several conspiracy theories. These included that the government “played a role” in the Sept. 11 attacks and that the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre in Newtown, Conn., was part of a federal plot to build support for gun control.Both theories were promoted by the far-right provocateur Alex Jones, whom Mr. Vance mentioned in his book. But by the time he announced his candidacy last year, Mr. Vance seemed to have become more accepting of the Alex Jones brand.In September 2021, close to the 20th anniversary of 9/11, he called Mr. Jones “a far more reputable source of information than Rachel Maddow.”He followed up by telling Fox News Radio that while Mr. Jones says “some crazy stuff” — such as asserting that the slaughter of 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook was a hoax — he also occasionally says “things that I think are interesting.”Mr. Vance declined to be interviewed for this article.J.D. Vance with supporters in Lebanon, Ohio, this month.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesOn Sunday afternoon, Mr. Vance donned a Cincinnati Bengals sweatshirt for the annual Darke County G.O.P. Hog Roast on the county fairgrounds in rural Greenville, where the compact is: Listen to some speeches, then line up for free hamburgers and hot dogs.“God, Guns & Trump” and “Trump 2024: Take America Back” banners hung on the walls, a young woman sang “God Bless the U.S.A.” and a signed copy of “Hillbilly Elegy” was being raffled off at the front table.Mr. Vance’s memoir described his family’s struggles with low-paying jobs, alcoholism, drug addiction and abuse — a self-destructive cycle he managed to escape through the tough love of his foul-mouthed, big-hearted Mamaw. He presented his “hillbilly” experiences as a reflection of a failed social system that discourages personal responsibility and feeds resentment against the government.The book was both celebrated as a primer for why Mr. Trump won the 2016 election and derided as an overgeneralization of poor white culture. Reception was also mixed in Middletown, population 50,000, where the book is set.Some residents, like Ms. Vitori, who bought and transformed the old J.C. Penney building into a boutique hotel and restaurant several years ago, said that the book, while vividly evoking Mr. Vance’s childhood, painted Middletown’s struggles with such a broad brush that it impeded ongoing efforts to revitalize the city.Ms. Vitori, a former member of the City Council, said that she confronted Mr. Vance, who seemed genuinely interested in helping his hometown. But nothing came of their discussions, she said.“Most people here either feel that he’s a good kid or that ‘He doesn’t represent me,’” Ms. Vitori said. “Very few people are rah-rah.”Kelly Cuvar, 43, a Democrat who works as a fund-raiser for congressional candidates and splits her time between Middletown and Washington, said that she also experienced childhood poverty while attending Middletown schools. But, she said, she came away with entirely different lessons.J.D. Vance in Columbus, Ohio.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesVance supporters at a campaign event in Delaware, Ohio.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Vance “has this idea that he did this himself and got himself out of poverty, the whole bootstrap thing,” Ms. Cuvar said. By contrast, she said, she was well aware of the safety net, “however flimsy,” that had helped her escape poverty, and felt “pure bafflement” that Mr. Vance’s takeaway was so different.“Sadness as well,” she added.Mr. Muterspaw, the former police chief, said the Middletown depicted by Mr. Vance is the same that he knew as a child growing up in difficult circumstances. He said that much of the lingering resentment of Mr. Vance centers more on his harsh past criticisms of Mr. Trump.Even when Mr. Vance apologized, he said, some people “did not forgive him.”But these same people will still flock to vote for Mr. Vance, Mr. Muterspaw said. He’s a Republican, he has Mr. Trump’s endorsement — and his political flip-flop is immaterial now that he’s ended up in the former president’s good graces.“It’s a politically strategic move,” Mr. Muterspaw said. “And I think it’s going to pay off for him.”Ms. Nix, 54, the Butler County treasurer, agreed that Mr. Vance needed Mr. Trump’s blessing, although she called the former president’s kiss-my-ass comment at the Youngstown rally “very sad.”As for how Mr. Vance handled what many saw as a public humiliation, she said: “That’s a tough pill to swallow. But he wants to win.”Commercials for J.D. Vance being shown in the Delaware County Republican Headquarters.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe many speeches at the Darke County hog roast finally ended, and a local official shouted, “Who’s hungry?” He began calling out table numbers to ensure an orderly procession to the promised food.Mr. Vance shook hands, smiled for photographs and paused for a few questions from local reporters. He said he expected to win the race “pretty comfortably,” no matter that polls suggest a neck-and-neck sprint.“Ohio polls always, always have missed big, and they’ve always missed a lot of Republican support,” he said. “I think we have a lot of work to do, but I feel very, very good about where we are.”Mr. Vance worked his way slowly toward the exit, past his raffle-worthy memoir, out into the warm autumn evening. Soon he was behind the wheel of a white S.U.V., his wife, Usha, by his side, their three children nestled in the back.Looking exhausted, the would-be senator from Ohio waved to a few campaign aides as he drove away, his many written and spoken words rattling behind like tin cans tied to the rear bumper — including what he told NBC News last year while seeking Mr. Trump’s endorsement.“My intuition with Trump — it’s interesting,” Mr. Vance had said. “I think that he gets a certain kick out of people kissing his ass. But I also think he thinks that people who kiss his ass all the time are weak.”Kirsten Noyes contributed research. More