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      As Populists Decline, the Center-Left Sees Hints of a Comeback

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      A long-struggling political faction has seen surprising gains this year, in part because of changes wrought by the pandemic. Can it hold on to them?A style of politics long considered in decline is experiencing something of a reprieve, even seeing glimmers of a possible return.The gray-suited technocrats of the center-left are once more a serious force, at the expense of both the establishment conservatism that prevailed among Western democracies for much of the 21st century, and the right-wing populism that arose in backlash to the status quo.This month alone, center-left parties have taken power in Norway and appear on the verge of doing the same in Germany. They hold the White House, share power in Italy and lead a newly credible opposition movement in authoritarian-leaning Hungary.Calling it a comeback would be premature, analysts warn. Center-left gains are uneven and fragile. And they may be due less to any groundswell of enthusiasm than to short-term political tailwinds, largely a result of the coronavirus pandemic.Canada, where the center-left has faced a battle to hold onto power in Monday’s election, may best encapsulate the trend. The forces boosting center-lefts globally have nudged the Liberals’ poll numbers there from poor to middling — a fitting metaphor for the movement’s prospects. Still, even modest gains among Western democracies could give a long-struggling political wing the chance to redeem itself with voters.And it would counteract a dominant trend of the past decade: the rise in ethno-nationalism and strongman politics of the new populist right.“People have been writing for several years now about how the Social Democrats are going to die out for good, and now here they are, they’re the leading party,” said Brett Meyer, who researches political trends at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, referring to the center-left’s sudden rise in Germany.“That’s been an enormous surprise,” he added.A Test of Covid PoliticsIf Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, keeps his job, it may be due in large part to political changes brought about by the pandemic.Mr. Trudeau’s decision to call an election just two years after the last vote proved unpopular, initially sinking his party’s poll numbers into second place. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a campaign stop on Friday in Windsor, Ontario.Carlos Osorio/ReutersBut a few factors hinting at wider trends have since tightened the race.Mr. Trudeau was expected to lose support to the left-wing New Democratic Party. But that party, after years of growth amid global polarization to the left- and right-wing margins, has stalled in its rise. This fits with voters worldwide tilting toward establishment parties in response to the uncertainty of the pandemic.Two political scientists, James Bisbee and Dan Honig, identified this change by analyzing dozens of primaries and races. The pandemic, they found, boosted mainstream candidates, at the expense of political outsiders, by a sometimes-decisive 2 to 15 percentage points. They call this effect a “flight to safety.”Other research suggests that the nature of a pandemic leads voters to crave strong institutions, forceful government actions and social unity in response.Those preferences naturally privilege the agendas of left-wing parties. That may be why, even as Canadians express weariness with Mr. Trudeau and disapproval of some of his choices, they remain drawn to the policies that his party represents.But Mr. Trudeau’s luckiest stroke may be how the pandemic is dividing the political right.In the 2010s, right-wing coalitions broadly unified over identity issues like immigration. But pandemic-related questions — whether to mandate vaccines, when to impose lockdowns, how forcefully to intervene in the economy — have split moderates from the activist base.Canada’s Conservative Party, led by Erin O’Toole, has tacked left on climate and social issues. But Mr. O’Toole’s ambiguity on pandemic issues might have allowed the anti-vaccine-mandate People’s Party to siphon off votes. And it has opened him to attack from the left, with Mr. Trudeau challenging him to disavow anti-lockdown activists.Canada’s opposition Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole and his wife, Rebecca, arriving for a campaign event on Friday in London, Ontario.Blair Gable/ReutersPolls worldwide also show lopsided support for vaccine mandates, greater welfare spending and other pandemic policies that fit better with the agendas of the left than the right — and that left-wing parties can more safely embrace without risking backlash from their base.Canada is representative in another way, experts say. It shows that, while the pandemic might give the center-left an assist, it is not always enough to ensure victory. Though this year’s Dutch elections saw centrist and left-wing gains, the center-right remains firmly in power in the Netherlands. And polls in France suggest that next year’s elections will split between the centrist incumbent and the far-right Marine Le Pen. The center-left, all but obliterated in 2017, is considered unlikely to soon recover.“Can you say that the period over the last 18 months is one of social democratic revival?” Pippa Norris, a Harvard University scholar of party politics, said. “Well, it depends on the election you’re looking at.”While such a trend might become clear in retrospect, she added, for now, “What we’ve got is realignment and volatility.”The Populist Stall-OutThat realignment is taking at least one clear form. The once-formidable right-wing populist wave has, for the moment, stalled — and may even be slightly reversing.The movement’s rise has been slowing since late 2018, when its leaders faced a series of setbacks in Europe and the Americas. Its challenges have since deepened.Half of Europe’s right-wing populist parties saw their support decline under the pandemic, though often by small amounts, according to a study by Cas Mudde and Jakub Wondreys at the University of Georgia. Only one in six gained support.“It is possible that Covid-19 may have exposed the soft underbelly of populist politics,” Vittorio Bufacchi, a scholar at the University College Cork, wrote last year.The populists who indulged anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine sentiments suffered the most in polls, such as Donald J. Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.Most populists initially defied their anti-institution, anti-expert brands, pushing for forceful government interventions and deference to scientists, Dr. Meyer found. It was another sign of circumstances favoring left-leaning politics.But many have since reverted to form. Populists typically rely on distrust of institutions and social division to rule, making those habits hard to break.Right-wing populist governments in Poland, Hungary and Slovenia face sliding poll numbers and rising opposition movements, often led by the center-left.Signs outside of an advance polling station in Burnaby, British Columbia.Jennifer Gauthier/ReutersPopulists are faring little better in opposition. Ms. Le Pen’s far-right party faced setbacks in French regional elections this summer. Alternative for Germany, once seen as the vanguard of the new far-right, has been stuck or backsliding in polls. After championing anti-lockdown sentiment, it suffered losses even in its homeland, Saxony.This presents a challenge for center-right parties, too. For much of the 2010s, they found success by co-opting nationalist sentiment. But this was easier when identity issues dominated politics. It has become a political albatross, at least for now.The Flight to SafetyThe center-left has benefited from all these trends, but it’s not clear how long it will continue to, scholars say.“There are short-term forces that always move parties up and down,” Dr. Norris said.The conditions that drove the breakdown of establishment parties in recent decades still hold, she added. This remains an era of unstable coalitions and shifting electorates, which only momentarily favor the brand of politics that it previously almost killed.“If parties in the center-left do capitalize on that, which is plausible given the pandemic and the role of government in that,” she said, “they can’t necessarily consolidate that.”“Can you win on it? You can. But can you maintain it?” More

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      How Russian Officials 'Manage' Elections With Deceitful Tactics

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      The Russian authorities have used a variety of deceitful tactics to try to manufacture a big victory in parliamentary elections this weekend. Here’s how they do it.MOSCOW — Russia stages local and national elections like clockwork in accordance with its post-Soviet Constitution, but the results are nearly always the same: sweeping victories for President Vladimir V. Putin and the politicians and parties loyal to him.In the parliamentary elections that begin on Friday and run through Sunday, there is little question that his governing United Russia party will win. For the Kremlin, which hopes to mobilize support for government policies and reinforce its legitimacy, the trick is to win handily while maintaining the plausibility of a contested outcome.Here are several ways that the Kremlin tries to create the illusion of democratic choice while making sure it comes out on top.Duplicate CandidatesAmong the candidates voters will choose from in one St. Petersburg district are three men named Boris Vishnevsky, only one of whom is the real opposition politician.Registering multiple candidates with the same or similar names as an opposition candidate is a tried-and-true Russian electoral tactic. Candidates with identical or similar names are registered in 24 of the 225 single-district races in this week’s election — about 10 percent of all races, the newspaper Kommersant reported.Russia by no means has a monopoly on this ploy: It was used in a Florida State Senate race in 2020 — successfully, at least until the scam was uncovered.In the case of the multiple Boris Vishnevskys, the doubles also assumed the appearance of the real opposition candidate, with the same salt-and-pepper beards, thinning hair and plain, button-down shirts.“This is political manipulation,” the real Mr. Vishnevsky, a career politician and member of the Yabloko political party, said in a telephone interview. He said the others had legally changed their names this year and had probably mimicked his appearance with makeup or digitally altered photographs.An election poster with three similarly styled candidates, shown on the cellphone of the real Boris Vishnevsky, a politician running for St Petersburg’s Legislative Assembly.Anton Vaganov/ReutersFake Political PartiesUnlike other authoritarian countries like Saudi Arabia and China, Russia has a multiparty political system that was entrenched when Mr. Putin came to power in 1999.To deal with this, the Kremlin has hit on two strategies: fake political parties and several quasi-independent parties that it calls the “systemic opposition.”After the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny was poisoned in an assassination attempt a year ago, a party popped up that aimed to appeal to the discontented young professionals who form his base of support. The party, called New People, mimics many of his anticorruption messages but supports the continuation of Mr. Putin’s rule.Parties making up the systemic opposition are more established and enduring than the out-and-out fakes. This grouping, which emerged in the mid-2000s under what was called “managed democracy,” includes the Communist Party and the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party. They participate in elections ostensibly as opposition groups, but once elected they vote in lock step with the United Russia party, creating a rubber-stamp Parliament.Until last year, these parties coexisted with the “non-systemic” opposition that Mr. Navalny leads, and called for Mr. Putin’s removal from power. But over the past year, in anticipation of the coming elections, the government has cracked down sharply on the legitimate opposition, sending most of its leaders, including Mr. Navalny, to jail or into exile.Supporters of the Liberal Democratic Party at a meeting in Moscow on Monday.Valery SharifulinTASS, via Getty ImagesCrossing Off NamesIf more subtle methods aren’t enough, there is the blunt instrument of knocking candidates off the ballot.This summer, the authorities barred the vast majority of candidates — 163 out of 174 — who had applied to run for Parliament as independents. They accused them of things like keeping foreign bank accounts or faking signatures needed to get on the ballot.Laws permitting such abusive practices have expanded over the years, beginning with Mr. Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012 after a four-year hiatus as prime minister.A law allowing the designation of nongovernmental groups as “performing the function of a foreign agent” was passed in 2012 and then expanded in 2017 to cover news media organizations. Its application this summer squelched independent news outlets like Meduza, Proyekt and Dozhd television. A 2015 amendment to the law had allowed groups to be designated “undesirable organizations,” with additional restrictions.This year, Mr. Putin expanded Russia’s strict anti-extremism legislation, first enacted as counterterrorism measures, to apply to opposition political figures in Mr. Navalny’s organization.Aleksey A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, at a court hearing in January. He has since been sent to a penal colony.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times‘Walking-Around Money’Following a practice once widespread in the United States of buying voters’ loyalty by offering “walking-around money,” the Russian government typically offers one-off payments to soldiers, public sector workers and retirees a few weeks before the election.This year, members of the security services received 15,000 rubles, about $205, and retirees and parents of school-age children 10,000 rubles. The series of presidential orders behind them, signed in July and August, specified payments in September — on the eve of the vote.The payouts have been glorified in pro-government campaign advertising. One ad, narrated by the girlfriend of a soldier, says that, “After our president signed a decree on one-time payments to soldiers, cadets and police officers, I feel confident about my future.”In Moscow in June. The Kremlin provides “walking-around money” to many voters — one-time payments aimed at buying allegiance.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesNot-so-secret BallotsRussia allows online voting, and numerous companies have arranged for employees to vote on computers set up by the human resources departments.Critics say this intimidates voters by potentially making their choices known to their bosses.Regulating the InternetThis summer, the authorities banned about four dozen websites affiliated with Mr. Navalny’s movement that were promoting his voting guide for the elections. The strategy, which he calls smart voting, essentially involves having opposition voters coalesce around the strongest anti-Kremin candidate in each race.On Friday, those plans were derailed as the remaining app the Navalny forces planned to use was deleted from the Google and Apple app stores after the Kremlin threatened their employees in Russia with arrest.Earlier, the Russian authorities had tried subtler approaches. Recently, for example, a company in southern Russia that sells wool registered “smart voting” as a commercial trademark.It then sued Google and Yandex, a Russian search engine, charging that they had violated its trademark rights and demanding that they block sites showing Mr. Navalny’s voting guides. A Russian court quickly ruled in the company’s favor.Opposition CountermovesA high-stakes cat-and-mouse game has sprung up as the “non-systemic” opposition has sought to subvert the government’s tactics.Opposition candidates who are in jail or prohibited by court rulings from attending public events have appeared instead as life-size cardboard cutouts. One jailed candidate, Andrei Pivovarov, has run entirely as a cardboard cutout propped up in his campaign office in the southern city of Krasnodar.Barred from attending public events, Andrei Pivovarov is campaigning as a cardboard cutout in Krasnodar.Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Navalny’s group had said that it expected its “smart voting” strategy to win a seat in Parliament for at least one opposition politician, and possibly as many as 20.Now, with the deletion of the app from the Google and Apple stores, that goal would seem to be unattainable, keeping alive the Kremlin’s dubious record in elections: Since 2016, no members of the “non-systemic” opposition have served in the 450-seat body.Alina Lobzina contributed reporting. More

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      Don’t Let Trump Steal the Show With ‘Stop the Steal’

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      You cannot actually debunk Republican accusations of voter fraud. You can show they aren’t true (and they aren’t), but that has no bearing on the belief itself.“Voter fraud” is not a factual claim subject to testing and objective analysis as much as it’s a statement of ideology, a belief about the way the world works. In practice, to accuse Democrats of voter fraud is to say that Democratic voters are not legitimate political actors; that their votes do not count the same as those of “the people” (that is, the Republican electorate); and that Democratic officials, elected with those illegitimate votes, have no rightful claim to power.In a sense, one should take accusations of voter fraud seriously but not literally, as apologists for Donald Trump once said of the former president. These accusations, the more florid the better, tell the audience that the speaker is aligned with Trump and that he or she supported his attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election. They also tell the audience that the speaker will do anything necessary to “stop the steal,” which is to say anything to stop a Republican from losing an election and, barring that, anything to delegitimize the Democrat who won.In the last days of the California recall election that ended this week, for example, the leading Republican candidate, Larry Elder, urged his supporters to report fraud using a website that claimed to have “detected fraud” in the results. “Statistical analyses used to detect fraud in elections held in 3rd-world nations (such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran) have detected fraud in California resulting in Governor Gavin Newsom being reinstated as governor,” the site read. Elder himself told Fox News that the 2020 election was “full of shenanigans.”“My fear is they’re going to try that in this election right here,” he said.Never mind that the results had not yet come in at the time Elder promoted this website, or that he was a long shot to begin with. The last Republican to win statewide high office in California was Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006, when he ran successfully for re-election after winning the 2003 recall vote against the Democrat Gray Davis. Newsom, a Democrat, won his 2018 race for governor by nearly 24 points. Elder was not doomed to lose, but the idea that the election was rigged — that he was robbed of victory by mass cheating and fraud — was ridiculous. But again, the point of voter fraud accusations isn’t to describe reality; the point is to express a belief, in this case, the belief that Newsom and his supporters are illegitimate.There are other candidates running for office making similar claims. Adam Laxalt, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination in Nevada’s U.S. Senate race, has promised to “file lawsuits early” in order to “tighten up the election.” Laxalt co-chaired Trump’s 2020 campaign in the state and supported the effort to overturn the results. “There’s no question that, unfortunately, a lot of the lawsuits and a lot of the attention spent on Election Day operations just came too late,” he said in a recent interview.Trump endorsed Laxalt this summer, praising his commitment to the voter fraud narrative. “He fought valiantly against the Election Fraud, which took place in Nevada,” said Trump in a statement. “He is strong on Secure Borders and defending America against the Radical Left. Adam has my Complete and Total Endorsement!”This isn’t just rhetoric either. The ideological belief in voter fraud is driving actual efforts to delegitimize Democratic Party victories and tilt the electoral playing field in favor of Republican candidates. In Florida, for instance, a member of the state House of Representatives introduced a draft bill that would require an Arizona-style election audit in the state’s largest (and most heavily Democratic) counties.In Georgia, a Trump-backed candidate for secretary of state, Jody Hice, is running on a promise to do what the incumbent Brad Raffensperger wouldn’t: subvert the election for Trump’s benefit should the former president make another bid for the White House. “If elected, I will instill confidence in our election process by upholding the Georgia Constitution, enforcing meaningful reform and aggressively pursuing those who commit voter fraud,” Hice said in a statement announcing his candidacy in March. As a congressman, he voted against certifying the 2020 election in January and, the following month, told a group of conservative activists, “What happened this past election was solely because of a horrible secretary of state and horrible decisions that he made.”There is also the question of Republican voters themselves. According to a Monmouth University poll taken in June, nearly one-third of Americans believe that Joe Biden’s victory was the result of fraud, including 63 percent of Republicans. If Republican politicians keep pushing the voter fraud narrative, it is as much because Republican voters want to hear it as it is because those politicians are themselves true believers.If this voter fraud ideology were just a matter of bad information, it would be straightforward (if not exactly easy) to fix. But as the legal scholar Ned Foley has argued, the assertion of fraud — the falsification of reality in support of narrow political goals — is more akin to McCarthyism. It cannot be reasoned with, only defeated.The problem is that to break the hold of this ideology on Republican voters, you need Republican politicians to lead the charge. A Margaret Chase Smith, for example. But as long as Trump controls the party faithful — as long as he is, essentially, the center of a cult of personality — those voices, if they even exist, won’t say in public what they almost certainly say behind closed doors.It is up to Democrats, then, to at least safety-proof our electoral system against another attempt to “stop the steal.” The Senate filibuster makes that a long shot as well, even as centrist Democrats like Joe Manchin insist that there’s a compromise to strike with Republicans. Let’s hope he’s right because at this stage of the game, it is the only move left to play.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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      From TV to the French Presidency? Éric Zemmour Eyes Trump's Path

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      Éric Zemmour, a writer and TV celebrity known for his far-right nationalism, dominates political talk in France as he weighs a run for president.PARIS — France’s election season began in force this week, with candidates for the presidency launching their bids or holding campaign-style events. But the person who stole the show was not a candidate, or even a politician, but a right-wing writer and TV star channeling Donald J. Trump.Éric Zemmour became one of France’s top TV celebrities through his punditry on CNews, a Fox News-like channel, even as he was sanctioned twice for inciting racial hatred. This week he dominated news-media coverage in the kickoff to elections next April.A poll released Wednesday shows him rising among potential voters, beating out declared candidates like the mayor of Paris. While his share would appear to put the presidency out of reach, he could disrupt the long-anticipated scenario of a duel between President Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally.In a well-orchestrated blitz that blurred the lines between media and politics, Mr. Zemmour, 63, one of France’s best-selling writers, released a new book Thursday titled “France Has Not Said Its Last Word Yet,” with a cover showing him standing with arms crossed in front of the French flag.In a brief telephone interview, Mr. Zemmour said that the cover had been modeled after Mr. Trump’s “Great Again,” the 2015 book that outlined his political agenda ahead of his election victory the following year, and that showed Mr. Trump in front of the American flag.The cover, Mr. Zemmour said, was not the only way Mr. Trump had inspired him. While Mr. Zemmour coyly deflected longstanding rumors of a possible candidacy, this month he has sent stronger signals that he may follow Mr. Trump in a leap from television to politics.“Obviously, there are common points,” Mr. Zemmour said. “In other words, someone who is completely from outside the party system, who never had a political career and who, furthermore, understood that the major concerns of the working class are immigration and trade.”In France’s two-round presidential election, the two top vote-getters in the first round meet in a runoff. Mr. Macron has aggressively courted the traditional, more moderate right in a strategy to produce a final showdown with Ms. Le Pen, whom he beat in 2017. But the presence of Mr. Zemmour, with his appeal across the right side of France’s political spectrum, could upset that calculus.Supporters of Mr. Zemmour have put up posters all over France, like these in Paris, urging him to run for president.Olivier Morin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“French politics has become totally unpredictable,” said Nicolas Lebourg, a political scientist specializing in the right and far-right.“In this extremely fluid context, things could end with the election of a Republican president after Macron is defeated because Zemmour picks up a few points,” Mr. Lebourg added, referring to the Republicans, the party of the traditional right.The poll released Wednesday showed 10 percent of voters supporting Mr. Zemmour in the first round of the election, up from 7 percent a week earlier and 5 percent in July. He is one of the few candidates registering in the double digits, outscoring some from France’s established parties, including the Socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo.According to a poll published on Monday, Mr. Zemmour is one of the few candidates to draw support from both the French traditional right and far-right — a point he underscored in the interview, saying that the far-right National Rally “puts off the French bourgeoisie,” while the Republicans “have only an extremely aging constituency and don’t connect with the young or the working class.”The poll also showed he is strong with the working class, men and young voters.“His straight talk appeals a lot to a generation that has been very disappointed by politicians’ lies and that is very mistrustful of the media,” said François de Voyer, a host and financial supporter of Black Book, a seven-month-old YouTube channel that has featured long interviews with Mr. Zemmour and other personalities, mostly from the right and far right. He said Mr. Zemmour gives the impression of “never hiding what he thinks, even if it means making controversial remarks,” adding, “I think it has the effect of creating trust.”Still, a run by Mr. Zemmour — whose hard-line views on immigration, Islam’s place in France and national identity are regarded as being to the right of Ms. Le Pen — would immediately inject into the election some of the most explosive issues in an increasingly polarized society.The Grand Mosque of Paris. Mr. Zemmour has said that Islam doesn’t share France’s core values. Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesA longtime journalist for the conservative daily Le Figaro, Mr. Zemmour became a best-selling author in the past decade with books that described a France in decline, under threat from what he claimed was an Islam that doesn’t share France’s core values. His celebrity and influence rose to another level after he became the star of CNews in 2019, where, each evening in prime time, he expounded on his ideas to hundreds of thousands of viewers.He has portrayed himself as a truth-teller in a news media dominated by politically correct, left-leaning journalists. He has railed against the immigration of Muslim Africans, invoking the existential threat of a great replacement — a loaded term that even Ms. Le Pen has avoided — that will overwhelm France’s more established white and Christian population.Over the weekend, Mr. Zemmour said that, if he were president, he would ban “non-French” first names like Mohammed and Kevin, because they created obstacles to an assimilation process that used to turn immigrants into what he considered real French people.These kinds of comments have occasionally drawn the attention of French authorities. In May, the government broadcast regulator fined CNews 200,000 euros, about $236,000, for speech inciting racial hatred. On his show in September 2020, Mr. Zemmour had said that unaccompanied foreign minors should be expelled from France, calling them “thieves,” “killers” and “rapists.”Some presidential candidates from the Republicans dismissed Mr. Zemmour’s challenge. Xavier Bertrand, the leader of a region in northern France, said that Mr. Zemmour was a “great divider.” Valérie Pécresse, the head of the Paris region, said that he offered “no genuine proposals.”Mr. Lebourg, the political scientist, said that Mr. Zemmour’s “ethnic nationalism” was rooted in the ideology of the National Front of the 1990s, the predecessor to the National Rally that was led by Ms. Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. More than any other individual, Mr. Zemmour succeeded over the years in imposing his vision on politicians in the traditional right, Mr. Lebourg said.Supporters say that is why Mr. Zemmour is the only candidate who can appeal to both the traditional right and far right.Mr. Zemmour signing copies of his book “The French Suicide” in 2015.Sebastien Salom-Gomis/Sipa, via Associated Press“Éric Zemmour opened the eyes of a certain number of people, including in my political family,” said Antoine Diers, a spokesman for Friends of Éric Zemmour, a group that is raising funds for a potential presidential bid. Mr. Diers is also a member of the Republicans and an official at the city hall of Plessis-Robinson, a suburb south of Paris.Because of Mr. Zemmour’s influence, Mr. Diers said, candidates of his party “finally take positions on immigration, on questions of identity and French culture.”Arno Humbert, another member of Friends of Éric Zemmour, said he left Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally in June after more than a decade, disillusioned by her efforts to widen her appeal by toning down her party’s positions in a strategy of “de-demonizing.”Mr. Zemmour was forced off the air on Monday after the government regulator ordered a limit on his broadcast time because he could be considered a player in national politics. He and his supporters were quick to cry censorship.Asked whether the decision would ultimately help him by burnishing his image as a truth teller among his supporters, he said, “Of course.”“It was a blessing in disguise,” he said.Léontine Gallois More

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      Apple and Google Remove ‘Navalny’ Voting App in Russia

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      The app, from the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, vanished from online stores as polls opened in the parliamentary election it was designed to sway.MOSCOW — An app designed by Russian activists to coordinate protest voting in this weekend’s elections disappeared from the Google and Apple app stores in the country on Friday, a major blow to the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny and allies who hoped to subvert the commanding position of President Vladimir V. Putin’s governing party.Google removed the app Friday morning after the Russian authorities issued a direct threat of criminal prosecution against the company’s staff in the country, naming specific individuals, according to a person familiar with the company’s decision. The move comes one day after a Russian lawmaker raised the prospect of retribution against employees of the two technology companies, saying they would be “punished.”The person declined to be identified for fear of angering the Russian government.On Friday Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said, “That app is illegal” when asked about it on his regular call with journalists. “Both platforms have been notified and in accordance with the law they made these decisions, as it seems,’’ he said.Apple did not respond to requests for comment about the availability of the Navalny app in its store.The app disappeared just as voting got underway in the three-day parliamentary election, in which Mr. Navalny’s team was hoping to use its app — called “Navalny” — to consolidate the opposition vote in each of Russia’s 225 electoral districts.“Removing the Navalny app from stores is a shameful act of political censorship,” an aide to Mr. Navalny, Ivan Zhdanov, said on Twitter. “Russia’s authoritarian government and propaganda will be thrilled.”A polling station in Vladivostok, in eastern Russia, on Friday as voting in the parliamentary election began.Pavel Korolyov/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMaintaining open, uncensored access to their services, especially in authoritarian countries, is becoming one of the most vexing challenges for American tech companies like Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter. In countries such as India, Myanmar and Turkey, the authorities are increasingly pressuring the companies to censor certain political speech, or ordering internet outages to block access to the web.Civil society groups have warned that forcing the companies to conform to a patchwork of laws and regulations risks creating a more fractured internet, where the products and services available to people will depend on where they are.The threat to prosecute local employees is an escalation by the Kremlin as it seeks to induce Western tech giants to fall in line with a broader internet crackdown. The country’s internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, has repeatedly demanded that the companies remove certain content, on pain of fines or restrictions on access to their products. The government says that American internet companies are meddling in Russia’s domestic affairs by allowing anti-Kremlin activists to use their platforms freely; Mr. Navalny’s movement was outlawed as extremist this summer.The Russian government had been increasingly blunt in recent days about its willingness to use threats to prevent the use of the app. “With the participation of Apple and Google, specific crimes are being committed, the scale of which may only increase in the coming days,” Vladimir Dzhabarov, a member of Russia’s upper house of Parliament, said on Thursday. “Individuals contributing to their parent companies’ evasion of responsibility on the territory of the Russian Federation will be punished.”Bailiffs visited Google’s offices earlier this week seeking to enforce court-ordered measures against the protest voting campaign, state media reported.Russian authorities have been pressuring Apple and Google for weeks to remove the Navalny team’s voting app. With Mr. Navalny’s websites blocked inside Russia, the app became a loophole allowing exiled allies of the imprisoned politician to continue to reach a wide audience. Nearly every smartphone runs Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android operating system, making their app stores the key artery for getting any product to the public.The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the American ambassador to Moscow, John J. Sullivan, last week and announced that “American ‘digital giants’” had broken Russian law “in the context of the preparation and conduct of the elections.”“The patience of the Russian side, which for now has refrained from putting up barriers to American business in Russia, is not unlimited,” the Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, Maria V. Zakharova, warned on Thursday.Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, at a court hearing in January.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesThe “Navalny” app is central to a protest-vote strategy that the opposition leader calls “smart voting.” Elections in Russia are not free and fair, but the Kremlin still seeks the sheen of popular legitimacy by holding elections in which a stable of dull parties typically splits the opposition vote.The Navalny strategy, first deployed regionally in 2019, seeks to turn that system of “managed democracy” against Mr. Putin. The goal is to defeat as many candidates representing the governing United Russia party as possible by having all opposition-minded voters in each district pick the same challenger — whether or not they agree with their views. The “Navalny” app coordinates the process, requesting a user’s address and responding with the name of the candidate they should vote for.The Navalny team on Friday said they would seek to get the names of their “smart voting” picks out by alternate methods, such as automated responses in the messaging app Telegram. But they voiced anger at Apple and Google for apparently folding to Kremlin pressure.“This shameful day will long remain in history,” Leonid Volkov, Mr. Navalny’s longtime chief of staff, wrote on his Telegram account.Anton Troianovski More

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      As Germany Election Nears, Merkel Leaves a Strong But Vulnerable Economy

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      Chancellor Angela Merkel steered Europe through crises, and Germany has boomed during her tenure. But she has ducked changes needed to ensure the success lasts, analysts say.During her 16 years as Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel has become an international avatar of calm, reason and democratic values for the way she handled crises that included a near financial meltdown of the eurozone, the arrival of more than a million migrants and a pandemic.Today Germany is an economic colossus, the engine of Europe, enjoying prosperity and near full employment despite the pandemic. But can it last?That is the question looming as Ms. Merkel prepares to leave the political stage after national elections on Sept. 26. There are signs that Germany is economically vulnerable, losing competitiveness and unprepared for a future shaped by technology and the rivalry between the United States and China.During her tenure, economists say, Germany neglected to build world-class digital infrastructure, bungled a hasty exit from nuclear power, and became alarmingly dependent on China as a market for its autos and other exports.The China question is especially complex. Germany’s strong growth during Ms. Merkel’s tenure was largely a result of trade with China, which she helped promote. But, increasingly, China is becoming a competitor in areas like industrial machinery and electric vehicles.Economists say that Germany has not invested enough in education and in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and electric vehicles. Germans pay some of the highest energy prices in the world because Ms. Merkel pushed to close nuclear power plants, without expanding the country’s network of renewable energy sources enough to cover the deficit.Ms. Merkel met President Xi Jinping of China, second right, in Beijing in 2019. Germany has grown strongly through trade with China, but they’re also increasingly competitors. Pool photo by Michael Kappeler“That is going to come back to haunt Germany in the next 10 years,” said Guntram Wolff, director of Bruegel, a research institute in Brussels.There was never much pressure on Ms. Merkel to focus on fundamental economic policy because the German economy has boomed during her tenure. Germany has recovered from the pandemic faster than other European countries like France or Italy.But the pandemic has also exposed Germany’s economic dependence on China.In 2005, China accounted for a fraction of German exports. Last year it surpassed the United States as Germany’s largest trading partner. China is the biggest market by far for the automakers Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. German companies have also thrived by equipping Chinese factories with machine tools and other industrial goods that made China an export powerhouse.Ms. Merkel abandoned her early emphasis on human rights in her relations with the Chinese government and instead encouraged ever deeper economic ties. She hosted Chinese leaders in Berlin and traveled 12 times to Beijing and other cities in China, often with delegations of German business managers. But Germany’s economic entanglement with China has made it increasingly vulnerable to pressure from China’s president, Xi Jinping.Late last year, while Germany took its official turn setting the agenda of the European Union, Ms. Merkel and President Emmanuel Macron of France pushed through an investment accord with China over the objections of the incoming Biden administration, largely bypassing other European allies.“German trade with China dwarfs all other member states, and Germany clearly drives policy on China in the E.U.,” said Theresa Fallon, director of the Center for Russia Europe Asia Studies in Brussels. Germany’s economic dependence on China “is driving a wedge in trans-Atlantic relations,” Ms. Fallon said.An electric Mercedes Benz at the International Motor Show in Munich this month. Germany has only recently moved to match U.S. incentives for buyers of electric cars.Felix Schmitt for The New York TimesIn recent years China has been using what it learned from German companies to compete with them. Chinese carmakers including Nio and BYD are beginning to sell electric vehicles in Europe. China has become the No. 2 exporter of industrial machinery, after Germany, according to the VDMA, which represents German engineering companies.Ms. Merkel’s supporters say that she has helped the German economy dodge some bullets. Her sharp political instincts proved valuable during a eurozone debt crisis that began in 2010 and nearly destroyed the currency that Germany shares with 18 other countries. Ms. Merkel arguably kept hard-liners in her own Christian Democratic Union in check as the European Central Bank printed money to help stricken countries like Greece, Italy and Spain.But her longtime finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, was also a leading enforcer of policies that protected German banks while imposing harsh austerity on southern Europe. At the time, Germany refused to back the idea of collective European debt — a position that Ms. Merkel abandoned last year, when faced with the fallout from a pandemic that threatened European unity.Ms. Merkel had some luck on her side, too. The former communist states of East Germany largely caught up during her tenure. And Ms. Merkel profited from reforms made by her predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, which made it easier for firms to hire and fire and put pressure on unemployed people to take low-wage jobs.Mr. Schröder’s economic overhaul led to a sharp decline in unemployment, from more than 11 percent when Ms. Merkel took office to less than 4 percent. But the changes were unpopular because they weakened regulations that shielded Germans from layoffs. They paved the way for Mr. Schröder’s defeat by Ms. Merkel in 2005.The lesson for German politicians was that it was better not to tamper with Germans’ privileges, and for the most part Ms. Merkel did not. Many of the jobs created were low wage and offered limited chances for upward mobility. The result has also been a rise in social disparity, with a rapidly aging population increasingly threatened by poverty.“Over the past 15 to 16 years we have seen a clear increase in the number of people who live below the poverty line and are threatened,” said Marcel Fratzscher, an economist at the D.I.W. research institute in Berlin. “Although the 2010 years were very economically successful, not everyone has benefited.”Ms. Merkel’s failure to invest more in infrastructure, research and education, despite her background as a doctor of physics, also reflects the German aversion to public debt. Mr. Schäuble, as finance minister, enforced fiscal discipline that prioritized budget surpluses over investment. The German Parliament, controlled by Ms. Merkel’s party, even enshrined balanced budgets in law, a so-called debt brake.A school in Berlin last year. Economists say that Germany has not invested enough in education and in emerging technologies.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesThe frugal policies were popular among Germans who associate deficit spending with runaway inflation. But they also let Germany fall behind other nations.Since 2016 Germany has slipped from 15th to 18th place in rankings of digital competitiveness by the Institute for Management and Development in Lausanne, Switzerland, which attributed the decline partly to inferior training and education as well as government regulations. Between 40 to 50 percent of all workers in Germany will need to retrain in digital skills to keep working within the next decade, according to the Labor Ministry. Most German schools lack broadband internet and teachers are reluctant to use digital learning tools — a situation that became woefully apparent during the coronavirus lockdowns.“Technology is strategic. It’s a key instrument in the systemic rivalry we have with China,” Omid Nouripour, a lawmaker who speaks for the Green Party on foreign affairs, said during an online discussion this month organized by Berenberg Bank. “We didn’t create enough awareness of that in the past.”The need for Germany to modernize has become more urgent as climate change has become more tangible, and as a shift to electric vehicles threatens the hegemony of German luxury automakers. Tesla has already taken significant market share from BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi, and is building a factory near Berlin to challenge them on their home turf. Until last year, the financial incentives that the German government offered to buyers of electric cars were substantially smaller than the tax credits available in the United States.Wind turbines, mining and coal power in Garzweiler, Germany. Ms. Merkel pushed the country away from nuclear energy, but without renewables quickly filling the gap.Ina Fassbender/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“What is very important for Germany as an industrial nation, and also for Europe as a place for innovation, is a symbiosis between an ambitious climate policy and a very strong economic policy,” Ola Källenius, the chief executive of Daimler, told reporters at the IAA Mobility trade fair in Munich.Auto executives do not criticize Ms. Merkel, who has been a strong advocate for their interests in Berlin and abroad. But they implicitly fault her government’s sluggish response to the shift to electric vehicles. While Germany has more charging stations per capita than the United States, there are not enough to support increasing demand for electric vehicles.“The framework for this transition of the auto industry is not complete yet,” said Oliver Zipse, the chief executive of BMW and president of the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. “We need an industry policy framework that begins with charging infrastructure.”Said Mr. Källenius of Daimler, “We are in an economic competition with the United States, North America with China, with other strong Asian countries. We need an economic policy that ensures that Europe remains attractive for investment.” More

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      As Russian Election Nears, Voters Voice Resignation, Anger and Fear

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      Many in Russia say they are fed up with corruption, stagnant wages and rising prices. But they worry, as one man said, that “if things start to change, there will be blood.”She walked into the cafe wearing a face mask that read, “I’m not afraid, and don’t you be afraid.” A man in a leather jacket followed her in, looked at her as she sat down next to me, then disappeared. Another man, in a vest and gray cap, waited outside.He trailed us as we walked out.I was interviewing Violetta Grudina, an activist in the Russian Arctic city of Murmansk who is allied with the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny. She was still recovering from a hunger strike. Now under relentless surveillance, she confessed to a creeping, numbing desperation.“We are all in a trap — trapped by one tyrant,” Ms. Grudina said. “This stupor that comes from giving everything you possibly can, but nothing changes — it is hard.”Russia is a country in which nothing changes until everything changes. Ahead of the national parliamentary elections this weekend, President Vladimir V. Putin’s rule has reached a new apogee of authoritarianism, coated in a patina of comfortable stability. To many, Mr. Putin remains a hero, especially for his assertive foreign policy, while those who oppose him are retreating, as they put it, into their own oases or parallel worlds. More

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      What Exit Polling Tells Us About Voters in the Recall

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      The only exit poll from California’s recall election showed Mr. Newsom winning with an unusual coalition. In a departure from nearly every recent election, longstanding racial and ethnic divides between white voters and voters of color seemed to vanish.According to the exits, 63 percent of people of color and 60 percent of Latino voters chose “No” on the question of whether to remove the governor, compared to 59 percent of white voters. Typically, Democrats fare somewhat worse among white voters in California, but much better among other voters. The 63 percent and 60 percent showings of people of color and Latinos would be the weakest for a California Democrat in memory.If true, the exit poll result would mark a seminal moment in California’s political evolution. It would suggest that growing Democratic strength among college graduates — and weakness among those without degrees — has begun to significantly reduce the gap between white voters and others, and nearly eliminate it altogether in the state.But the actual results of the recall election tell a different story. They don’t show much of anything unusual at all. The results suggest that Mr. Newsom won with a fairly typical coalition for a California Democrat in recent years, one not too dissimilar from the one that elected him in 2018 and elected President Biden in 2020.The governor may have fared somewhat worse among nonwhite voters than Democrats did a decade ago, but in the end, California voted for the Democrat — and it seems to have done so in about the same way it has in recent cycles, including among Asian and Latino voters.Millions of votes remain to be counted, and a clearer picture may emerge in the coming days as more votes are tallied. But so far, the county-by-county results are nearly identical to those from 2018 or 2020. There’s only one county — Riverside County — that flipped from 2018 so far, and it flipped to Mr. Newsom.On average in the recall election, the “No” vote in a typical county was only about 2 percentage points different than Mr. Newsom’s vote share in 2018. It’s hard to reconcile the stability of the results so far with the huge shift in Mr. Newsom’s coalition indicated by the exit poll. The results don’t show evidence of a stark drop-off in Democratic support among Latino voters, either.Mr. Newsom performed about as well as he did four years ago in relatively diverse Southern California, including in heavily Latino stretches of the rural Central Valley and the Imperial Valley, where Democrats only compete on the strength of Latino voters.Still, Mr. Newsom’s support there was already relatively weak for a Democrat: He often fared about as poorly as Mr. Biden, and worse than Gov. Jerry Brown did in 2014. The 2018 exit poll showed Mr. Newsom winning 64 percent of Latino voters, down from the 73 percent share won by Mr. Brown in 2014.The exit poll on Tuesday was conducted by Edison Research and sponsored by major television news networks. Unlike traditional in-person exit polls, most California exit poll interviews are typically conducted by telephone to reach early and mail-in voters. This year, the recall exit poll added an online and text message component.It is possible the additional online and text interviews may have contributed to some of the unusual shifts that were apparent in the poll. More