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      Why Kevin McCarthy Is Struggling to Get Republicans in Line

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      Only a few weeks remain for the would-be House speaker to rally enough support to take power.The most fascinating election of 2023 is not happening in a presidential battleground like Arizona or Pennsylvania. It’s taking place in Washington, D.C., where Representative Kevin McCarthy of California is laboring mightily to become speaker of the House — a job he has long coveted.When the full House votes for speaker on Jan. 3, McCarthy will need the backing of a majority of all members. And with the party’s narrow hold on power, even a small number of Republican defections could imperil his bid. The uncertainty over McCarthy’s fate is roiling the G.O.P. while helping Democrats who want to portray Republicans as dysfunctional and hopelessly in thrall to extremists.Most of the action is taking place behind closed doors. But McCarthy’s allies and a rump faction of ultraconservative lawmakers have been dueling one another through the Beltway news media as January approaches, giving us glimpses of the jockeying and negotiations. The battle for speaker is taking place as Democrats try to push through a critical year-end spending bill that House Republicans almost universally oppose.The past week has brought a few developments — many of them baffling even to Capitol Hill insiders. On Friday, seven conservative hard-liners issued a lengthy list of demands to the would-be speaker, mostly involving obscure procedural rules. On Tuesday, a group of nearly 50 moderates aligned with McCarthy said they would oppose some of those ideas. Then on Wednesday, news broke that a different group of five anti-McCarthy members led by Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona had made a pact to vote as a bloc, one way or another. If they stick together, those five are enough to deny McCarthy his gavel, and it is not clear how he gets them to yes.But it’s also not clear that Republicans have another viable option. To reinforce that point, McCarthy’s allies have begun distributing buttons saying “O.K.” — as in “Only Kevin.”Annie Karni, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times, has been tracking the race closely. Here is our conversation, edited lightly for length and clarity:How large a faction are the McCarthy holdouts? Is it just the die-hards like Biggs and three or four others that some are calling the Never Kevins?Let me just start by saying that no one has any idea if McCarthy is going to pull this out. Reporters are asking Republicans. Republicans are asking reporters. The smartest people watching this closely are unwilling to make predictions at this point. McCarthy is playing it all very close to the vest. He’s not including other members of his leadership team in his deliberations or his calculations.As for your question, publicly, the Never Kevins are a small bunch: At least four people have said they are hard nos.But 31 House Republicans voted “no” on nominating McCarthy for the position back in November. How many of them were simply doing so to make a point but are ultimately for him? How many are still at “no” but keeping it to themselves, at least for now? McCarthy doesn’t necessarily know the entire list of people he has to win over.Has McCarthy won back any of the 31?That’s hard to answer, since it was a secret ballot and we don’t know who those 31 Republicans were. But it’s not a great sign for him that in the same vote, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana had unanimous support in his race to become the No. 2 House Republican next year. In other words, for these people, it isn’t an attack on the leadership. This is an attack on McCarthy.But it also might not mean that much. For context, all this turmoil is in line with how this phase of the process has played out in the past, for lawmakers who eventually won the speakership. Paul Ryan lost 43 votes in the secret ballot phase in 2015. Nancy Pelosi, in 2018, lost 32 votes. They both eventually emerged victorious and became speaker.What do the die-hards want? Is this just “blackmail,” as former Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote this week? Do they have some kind of ideal outcome in mind?This is what makes it extra tough for McCarthy. He has to contend with something that no Democrat has had to face: a sizable group that was sent to Congress explicitly to obstruct. Some of the people he is attempting to bargain with don’t seem to have a price. They’re not motivated by legislating as much as they are about shrinking the federal government, or upending it completely.That being said, the real sticking point is what’s known in congressional jargon as the “motion to vacate,” a term we try to avoid using in news stories because it’s meaningless to most readers. What it would do is change the rules to allow any member to force a snap floor vote to get rid of the speaker at any time. The holdouts want McCarthy to commit to allowing a vote like that. So far, that’s been a nonstarter for him; he understandably views the prospect as handing his enemies a loaded political weapon.Bottom line: It seems like McCarthy is dealing with some chaos agents, which makes his process a lot more difficult than it was for Pelosi in 2018. Back then, she also had to negotiate her way to the speakership, but she was dealing with a caucus made up of members with specific demands that she could address.The alternative to McCarthy is unlikely to be his current opponent, Biggs. The Beltway chatter is that if McCarthy fails to get the necessary votes on the House floor, someone of more stature than Biggs, like Scalise or Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, could potentially get drafted into becoming a speaker candidate.You reported this week, with Maggie Haberman and Catie Edmondson, that Donald Trump had been making calls to House members to ask them to support McCarthy. What were you able to learn about the arguments he had been making, and how that was resonating?Yes, we reported that Trump had been calling members who are ambivalent, at best, about McCarthy serving as speaker.Trump is not that gung-ho about McCarthy, we understand, although some of the top people around him are very pro-McCarthy. Nonetheless, Trump has been calling Republican lawmakers because he doesn’t see a viable alternative and believes McCarthy is better for him than an improbable scenario where the job goes to a moderate who can draw some Democratic votes.Trump’s thinking is in line with how a lot of people are viewing this: OK, so you don’t love Kevin McCarthy. But what’s the real alternative? Regarding Trump and McCarthy, their relationship over the course of the past few years has had its ups and downs, but usually lands back at cordial. Friendly. Not particularly close. But not bad.Also, it’s good to remember that Trump officially endorsed McCarthy’s bid for speaker. So it’s in his interest, in terms of his personal scorecard of wins and losses, to have his endorsee pull this out.One more dynamic worth a fleeting mention: Trump is making calls for McCarthy, and yet one of Trump’s biggest allies in Congress, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, is one of the most vocal obstacles to McCarthy’s bid. Why can’t Trump get Gaetz to cease and desist? Trump has yet to make a big public campaign on McCarthy’s behalf that would resonate with constituents of these members and put more pressure on them.So many of the concessions McCarthy has made thus far are about arcane issues, like funding formulas. But he has also welcomed into the fold far-right figures like Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona and promised to restore their committee assignments. Has that bargain been worth it, from his perspective?Definitely. McCarthy wants to be speaker. He’s known as an aggressive fund-raiser, an affable people person, and generally a go-along-to-get-along guy. He’s not an ideologue, which means that he’s less scary to some Democrats than, say, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio. But it also means he’s not bothered by making compromises for these far-right members, if it means getting where he wants.Greene has been publicly vouching for McCarthy. It’s funny — before the midterm elections, when there were questions about what could happen to thwart McCarthy’s plans to become speaker, it seemed like Greene or Trump could pose the biggest problems for him. If Trump, for instance, turned on him, the thinking was that Trump’s influence on the far right of the Republican Party would cost McCarthy critical votes.But here we are, with Trump and Greene on Team McCarthy. And yet he’s still working hard to close the sale.What to readThree Michigan men were sentenced to prison terms for their roles in the plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Eliza Fawcett has the details.A new lawsuit alleges that the New York attorney general, Letitia James, shielded her former chief of staff from harassment claims, Jeffrey C. Mays reports.Trump teased a big announcement this week. It turns out he was selling digital trading cards, in what Michael C. Bender describes as a baffling move.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      in Elections

      DeSantis Is Showing Strength. He’s Also Vulnerable on His Right Flank.

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      For staunchly anti-abortion conservatives, the Florida governor’s 15-week ban doesn’t go far enough.In April, when Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a bill banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest, he staked out a position as an unapologetic opponent of abortion rights.But now, as polls show DeSantis gaining strength in a hypothetical Republican presidential primary in 2024, he’s under pressure from conservatives to do more. More than perhaps any other issue, abortion is a potential point of vulnerability for the Florida governor — and a rare subject on which he has faced criticism from his right flank.“So far, we’ve actually been quite disappointed with Governor DeSantis,” said Andrew Shirvell, the founder and executive director of Florida Voice for the Unborn, a grass-roots anti-abortion group.And should DeSantis run for president, Shirvell said, “if there’s a big pro-life champion to contrast their record with Governor DeSantis’s record, there’s no doubt that he will be hit. That is his weak point.”It isn’t just DeSantis’s position that makes him a potential target for a future conservative rival; it’s also the state he represents.Florida is a paradox. It’s firmly in Republican hands now. But it also has one of the highest rates of abortion in the country — nearly twice the national average. And as surrounding states have tightened their laws, the number of women seeking abortion care in Florida clinics has roughly doubled, according to Planned Parenthood.“From my perspective, it’s terrible, but for those who would completely ban abortion, it’s not enough,” Anna Eskamani, a Democratic state lawmaker, said of the 15-week ban. “If he thought it was popular, DeSantis would have campaigned on that, and he didn’t. He wouldn’t even say ‘abortion.’”Polls show that somewhere between roughly half and two-thirds of the state’s residents would prefer that abortion remain legal in all or most cases. In battleground states this year, voters punished Republicans they deemed too extreme on abortion. All that might be giving DeSantis pause, even though he cruised to re-election by nearly 20 percentage points and would seem to have little to fear from Florida’s demoralized Democrats.“There’s always going to be a need for abortion care,” said Laura Goodhue, the executive director of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates. “Ron DeSantis is fond of saying he’s in favor of freedom, yet he’s perfectly happy taking away people’s bodily autonomy.”Shifting post-Roe politicsAnti-abortion groups, however, sense a shifting political landscape after the Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade. In red states like Florida, where Republicans now hold supermajorities in both chambers of the State Legislature, they see a chance to push a maximalist agenda.What to Know About Donald Trump TodayCard 1 of 6Donald J. Trump is running for president again, being investigated by a special counsel again and he’s back on Twitter. Here’s what to know about some of the latest developments involving the former president:Documents investigation. More

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      in Elections

      Sinema’s Defection Gives Democrats More Heartburn Over the 2024 Senate Map

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      A potential mess in Arizona was an unwelcome surprise for Democrats while they were still savoring their victories in 2022.When Senator Kyrsten Sinema left the Democratic Party last week, she didn’t just momentarily drive up antacid sales on Capitol Hill. She also raised the pressure on three especially vulnerable Democratic senators who are up for re-election in 2024, and are defending seats in states that have turned a shade of deep crimson since they were first elected to Congress.The 2024 map is daunting for Senate Democrats, and it will take all the political dexterity and luck they can muster to keep their 51-ish-seat majority — and then some. Twenty-three of the 33 seats up for grabs are held by Democrats or left-leaning independents. That list includes Montana, Ohio and West Virginia, where Donald Trump won in 2020 by 16, 8 and 29 percentage points.But daunting is not the same thing as impossible. Faced with steep odds in the past, Democrats have managed to find local causes to champion — remember Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin’s crusade against almond milk? — as they looked for ways to differentiate themselves from the national party. And their incumbents have proved doubters wrong in the past.“From 30,000 feet, it looks brutal, but as you get closer to the ground, I feel more optimistic about it,” said Jim Kessler, vice president for policy at Third Way, a center-left think tank. “If it’s mainstream versus extreme, we have a great shot.”For now, Democratic strategists are still poring over the results of the recent midterm elections, trying to gain a deeper understanding of what moved voters.One consensus viewpoint so far, at least among those I’ve spoken with: Democratic candidates earned just enough credit for trying to address inflation through moves like capping insulin prices to dull Republicans’ advantage on the economy. And they say that while abortion may not matter quite as much in the next election, the issue is not going away in 2024.Another lesson is crystal clear: Trump has become even more toxic to swing voters during his two years in exile. The latest evidence? A USA Today/Suffolk University poll shows Trump losing a hypothetical matchup with President Biden by nearly eight points.On the other hand, there are no signs that any of these three states have grown less difficult for Democrats over the last six years. It’s easy to forget that Barack Obama won Ohio twice, or that Montana had a Democratic governor as recently as 2021. Today, that feels like ancient history.Once Democrats turn to 2024 in earnest, their first and most important task will be ensuring that their incumbents run again. As for Republicans, they are still debating what went wrong this year, with much of the discussion centering on the mechanics of campaigns, like mail voting and ballot harvesting — rather than thornier issues, like abortion. At the same time, as G.O.P. candidates begin declaring their intentions, many are still treading cautiously when it comes to Trump.“Some of the primary noise on their side suggests they haven’t learned too much yet,” said J.B. Poersch, the president of Senate Majority PAC, a group closely associated with Senator Chuck Schumer. “There’s plenty of things for them to be nervous about.”The Democrats’ red-state defendersSo far, of the Democratic incumbents in those three states above, only Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio has definitively said he’s in. Brown has demonstrated a unique knack for winning working-class voters, even as cultural factors start to outweigh economics. He won his race by nearly seven points in 2018, while Representative Tim Ryan lost to J.D. Vance this year by roughly the same margin — far less than other statewide candidates in Ohio, but hardly encouraging for Democrats.Republicans are lining up to take on Brown, notably State Senator Matt Dolan, who finished third in this year’s Senate primary behind Vance and Josh Mandel — both of whom aggressively courted Trump and his base.Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians, is already exploring the boundaries of what constitutes acceptable criticism of Trump. “What we witnessed nationally should convince us the country is ready for substantive candidates, not personalities and election deniers,” he wrote in a recent email to Republican county chairs in Ohio. But he said he would support Trump if he were the nominee.Then there’s Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who sounds intrigued by Sinema’s decision to become an independent. “I don’t know how you get more independent than I am,” Manchin told reporters at the Capitol on Monday. “I look at all of these things, I’ve always looked at all of these things. But I have no intention of doing anything right now.”Like most things Manchin, that answer was neither a yes nor a no. He added, “I’m not a Washington Democrat.”Manchin already has an official Republican challenger: Representative Alex Mooney, who has telegraphed his line of attack in an anti-Manchin ad that ran four months ago. At least two others have shown interest: Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who ran against Manchin in 2018, and Gov. Jim Justice, who is term-limited.Montana is only slightly less intimidating terrain for Democrats. They lost both House races this year, while Republicans won a supermajority in the State Legislature.Senator Jon Tester of Montana is skilled at finding locally resonant issues to champion.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesSenator Jon Tester has said he will make a decision about running again after the holidays, though he has told reporters he feels “very positively about my chances.” Tester, who heads home to his farm most weekends, is skilled at finding locally resonant issues to champion, such as federal support for rural hospitals or floodplain mapping.Tester allies point to an emerging dynamic on the Republican side that resembles what happened in many primaries in 2022: a race to the right.One possible contender is Representative Matt Rosendale, whom Tester defeated in 2018 and who is staking out a position as one of the holdouts to Representative Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become House speaker. Another is Representative Ryan Zinke, who resigned as Trump’s interior secretary amid a flurry of investigations into his conduct. He will return to Congress early next year after winning by just three points against Monica Tranel, a political novice, despite outspending her by two to one.The rest of the mapAt the moment, Democrats appear to have just two pickup opportunities, and neither looks especially promising: Florida and Texas.And even the seemingly more comfortable seats they hold, like Nevada and Pennsylvania, are not all that comfortable. Nevada was the closest of all the big Senate races this year, with Senator Catherine Cortez Masto winning by fewer than 8,000 votes.In Pennsylvania, Republicans are hoping that David McCormick, who lost narrowly to Dr. Mehmet Oz in the primary this year, will challenge Senator Bob Casey in 2024. Democrats saw McCormick, a former hedge fund executive with deep pockets and roots in Pittsburgh, as the more formidable potential opponent, and subtly tried to help Oz. McCormick is planning to release a book in March, “Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America,” that appears aimed at positioning him more squarely as a China hawk, shoring up a point of vulnerability that hurt him this year.“I’d be shocked at this point if he doesn’t run,” said Josh Novotney, a former aide to Senator Pat Toomey and a partner at SBL Strategies, a lobbying firm in Pennsylvania. But Novotney cautioned that if Trump were the nominee, it could doom Republicans’ chances of defeating Casey. In the 2022 Senate race, Oz was weighed down by Trump and by Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor, whose hard-line stances on abortion and embrace of election denialism repelled swing voters.Democratic senators are also up for re-election in Michigan and Wisconsin, where their chances look brighter. In 2018, Baldwin crushed her Republican opponent, Leah Vukmir, by nearly 11 points, while in Michigan, Senator Debbie Stabenow cruised to victory over John James, who opted to run for a House seat rather than face Stabenow again. This year, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer won re-election easily, while Democrats took full control of the State Legislature for the first time in 40 years.Sinema’s defection undeniably makes Democrats’ path more complicated. She has not said she is running, though many political observers suspect her decision to switch parties had to do with worries she would lose a Democratic primary. Neither of the two most prominent Democrats weighing a run, Representatives Ruben Gallego and Greg Stanton, has officially entered the race, however.Republicans in Arizona could nominate someone on the far right, such as Sheriff Mark Lamb, or a moderate like Karrin Taylor Robson, a lawyer who lost to Kari Lake in this year’s primary for governor. So although most analysts assume that a three-way race would help Republicans, there are too many variables to draw any firm conclusions — including whether there will even be a three-way race.For now, Democrats are philosophical about the 2024 landscape. “Every election,” Poersch said, “you’re testing: Have the rules changed, or are we playing by the same old rules?”What to readDespite modest improvements for Republicans in 2022, Democrats largely held onto their gains among suburban voters, particularly in battleground states, Trip Gabriel reports.Donald Trump’s family business lost a criminal contempt trial that was held in secret last fall, according to a newly unsealed court document and several people with knowledge of the matter. Jonah Bromwich, William Rashbaum and Ben Protess explain.President Biden signed a bill mandating federal recognition for same-sex marriages and capped his evolution toward embracing gay rights over a four-decade political career. Michael D. Shear has the details.Inflation slowed more sharply than expected in November, Jeanna Smialek reports. It was an encouraging sign for both Federal Reserve officials and consumers and raised hopes for a “soft landing,” or one in which the economy slows gradually and without a painful recession.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      in Elections

      Inside the Battle for Control of the Republican National Committee

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      Ronna McDaniel, the longtime chair of the committee, has become a vessel for discontent over the party’s losses in 2022.As anger and frustration ripple through the Republican Party over its underwhelming performance in this year’s midterm elections, Republicans are offering a number of explanations for their losses.Bad candidates. Weak fund-raising. The looming presence of Donald Trump. Election denial. The Democrats’ edge in the mechanics of running campaigns. Strategic and tactical errors by Republican leaders. Too much cultural red meat and not enough serious answers to the economic concerns of ordinary Americans.Some in the Trump wing of the party have settled on their own scapegoat: Ronna McDaniel, who has been the chair of the Republican National Committee since 2017. Coming after McDaniel reshaped the committee in the former president’s image — it was even paying his considerable legal bills until recently — this discontent is a striking turn of events.The committee’s 168 members from across the country will vote on McDaniel’s re-election in January. And the race has heated up over the last two weeks.She has already deterred one challenge from Representative Lee Zeldin, this year’s Republican nominee for governor of New York, who briefly explored a run — but pulled back days later after finding only a few dozen potential supporters within the committee.While McDaniel appears to have shored up her internal position, she is also contending with a hunger for change from outside the party’s formal structures. And the one person who might be able to secure her standing — Trump — has told aides that he is staying out of the race.Roughly two-thirds of committee members are already backing McDaniel, according to a letter circulated by her allies.The letter praises McDaniel’s investments in state parties, community centers and “election integrity units”; her decision to cut ties with the Committee on Presidential Debates, which hosts those much-anticipated events every four years; and her “ongoing investments in data, digital, and in a permanent ground game in key locations around the country.” McDaniel’s allies also credit her with raising $1.5 billion as party chair, including $325 million for the 2022 midterms, and for making gains in party registration in Arizona, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.The race for R.N.C. chair is just one window into the Republican Party’s post-midterm demolition derby — with governors and senators leading an increasingly vocal anti-Trump chorus — but a revealing one. It’s proving especially useful for those who would prefer to change the subject from Trump, whose third presidential run has landed in the party with a mixture of trepidation and condemnation.But it would be mistaken to see this as a proxy war over Trump, party insiders say. McDaniel’s supporters include longtime Trump backers like David Bossie, a Republican operative and committee member from Maryland — and she has declined to fault the former president in recent interviews. Her critics include members like Bill Palatucci of New Jersey, who has been one of Trump’s most vocal detractors.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      in Elections

      Sununu on Trump: ‘He’s Not Scaring Anyone Out of the Race’

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      In a wide-ranging interview, Chris Sununu, the New Hampshire governor, called the Republican presidential primary a tossup. As for Trump? “He’s not clearing the field.”Confident and even brash, Chris Sununu is one of the most popular governors in America. In a year when many Republicans struggled, he was re-elected in New Hampshire by more than 15 percentage points. The way to win, he says, is not “ranting and raving” about cultural topics but the old-fashioned way: listening carefully to voters and talking about solutions to their most pressing problems.Sununu thinks Republicans need to relearn the “basic tenets of politics.” He’s no fan of Donald Trump, and he thinks the former president will be eminently beatable in the Republican primary. He also says it’s “insulting” of Democrats to demand that New Hampshire give up its traditional place in the presidential calendar to suit the “personal whims” of President Biden, who he predicts will eventually be pushed aside by Democratic power brokers in Washington or bow out on his own.The New Hampshire governor, who is often discussed as a possible presidential contender in 2024, had a lot to say over the course of a 40-minute interview. Here’s a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity:Let’s talk about what happened in the midterm elections. A lot of people are blaming Donald Trump for choosing candidates in primaries who struggled in November. Is it that simple?No, no, no, no. Look, there’s a lot of different pieces here. It’s not just about former President Trump. It’s about the candidates themselves. They were bad candidates because they had a bad message, right? Often they made Trump a part of their message. And that just isn’t what voters wanted.A lot of candidates forgot the most basic tenets of politics: I need more votes than the other side. And it isn’t just about catering to a base or firing up your base. You need to listen to independents. You need to listen to all of the voting constituencies to see what the issues are for voters.There was also a little bit of manipulation of the primary process by Democrats. We saw it right here in New Hampshire with our U.S. Senate race. You effectively had the opposing party trying to pick your party’s candidate. Democrats were good at defining our candidates for us.Some Republicans say that candidates were too focused on hot-button cultural topics like transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, or books in school libraries. Do you agree with that critique?Yes. I agree that candidates focused on the wrong issues. I don’t mind addressing cultural issues; of course we need to. But it’s how you as a candidate stand up for it — not just ranting and raving, but hopefully inspiring folks to really believe in you as the person who can be a positive agent of change for those issues.Democrats talk about how abortion was a really powerful issue for them. You supported a 24-week ban, right?Yeah, I signed that. The Legislature put it in the budget. I’m pro-choice, but it’s a provision that I think most Americans would support. It’s very late — the third trimester.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      in Elections

      Turnout by Republicans Was Great. It’s Just That Many of Them Didn’t Vote for Republicans.

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      No, the main G.O.P. problem wasn’t prioritizing Election Day voting over early voting.Republicans turned out in force, but Herschel Walker still lost in Georgia.Nicole Buchanan for The New York TimesAfter yet another disappointing showing for Republicans in Georgia’s Senate runoff on Tuesday, some conservatives — like Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich and Kevin McCarthy — have begun to point to a surprising culprit: a failure to take advantage of early voting.The theory seems to be that Republicans are losing because early voting is giving Democrats a turnout edge. It follows a similar conversation after the midterm elections, when a chorus of conservatives said Republicans needed to start encouraging mail voting.But as more data becomes available on turnout in this year’s election, it is quite clear that turnout was not the main problem facing Republicans.In state after state, the final turnout data shows that registered Republicans turned out at a higher rate — and in some places a much higher rate — than registered Democrats, including in many of the states where Republicans were dealt some of their most embarrassing losses.Instead, high-profile Republicans like Herschel Walker in Georgia or Blake Masters in Arizona lost because Republican-leaning voters decided to cast ballots for Democrats, even as they voted for Republican candidates for U.S. House or other down-ballot races in their states.Understand the Georgia Senate RunoffNew Battlegrounds: Senator Raphael Warnock’s win shows how Georgia and Arizona are poised to be the next kingmakers of presidential politics, Lisa Lerer writes.A Rising Democratic Star: Mr. Warnock, a son of Savannah public housing who rose to become Georgia’s first Black senator, is a pastor and politician who sees voting as a form of prayer.Trump’s Bad Day: The loss by Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate, capped one of the worst days for former President Donald J. Trump since he announced his 2024 bid.Georgia is a fine example. While Mr. Walker may blame turnout for his poor showing in November and earlier this week, other Republican candidates seemed to have no problem at all. Gov. Brian Kemp won by nearly eight points over Stacey Abrams; Republican candidates for House won the most votes on the same day.Yet Senator Raphael Warnock won in Georgia anyway because a large group of voters willing to back other Republicans weren’t willing to back Mr. Walker.The final turnout figures make it clear that Republicans — including Mr. Walker — benefited from very favorable turnout last month. Unlike in recent years, Republican primary voters were likelier to vote than Democrats (by a modest margin). Meanwhile, the white turnout rate exceeded the Black turnout rate by the widest margin since 2006.We went back and looked at the respondents to our pre-election Times/Siena survey, and matched them to post-election vote turnout records. We found that the respondents who said they backed Mr. Walker were actually likelier to vote than those who said they backed Mr. Warnock.But Mr. Walker still lost.On Tuesday, Mr. Walker lost again. This time, he lost by three points — two points worse than in November. The final turnout data won’t be in for weeks, but for now it is reasonable to suppose that Mr. Warnock fared better because the turnout was incrementally more favorable to him than it was in November.But that doesn’t necessarily mean Democrats enjoyed a great turnout. All of the Republicans running for statewide office — other than Mr. Walker — could have easily survived an electorate that was two points less favorable.By our estimates, the 2022 electorate was several points more favorable to Republicans in Georgia than the 2020 electorate — which wasn’t great for Democrats, either.Any Democratic gains in the runoff almost certainly weren’t because of early voting. After all, this election was held with just one week of early voting, as opposed to three weeks in the general election. The number of Election Day voters actually increased in the runoff. So did the share of votes cast on Election Day. But it was the Democrat who fared better.Georgia is just one example of a broader national turnout gap, including in many of the places where Republicans blame early voting for their woes.Take Maricopa County in Arizona. It’s home to Phoenix and around 70 percent of the state’s voters. Some Republicans say — without any clear evidence — they faltered in Arizona because some Maricopa voters were unable to cast ballots at the polls on Election Day, but the final turnout data shows that 75 percent of registered Republicans turned out, compared with 69 percent of Democrats. That was enough to yield an electorate in which registered Republicans outnumbered Democrats by nine percentage points. Yet Republicans like Mr. Masters and Kari Lake lost their races for Senate and governor.Or consider Clark County in Nevada. There, 67 percent of Republicans voted, compared with 57 percent of Democrats, implying that Republicans probably outnumbered Democrats statewide. Yet the Democrat — Catherine Cortez Masto — prevailed in the Senate while Republicans won the governorship and also won the most votes for the House.Wherever I’ve dug into the data, I see a similar story. You can read comprehensive analyses of North Carolina, Florida or New York, all showing a considerable Republican edge as well.In the key Senate states mentioned in this article, Republican House candidates received more votes than Democratic ones. The final Times/Siena polls showed that voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada preferred Republican control of the Senate.It’s fair to say voters in these key states probably preferred Republican control of government, in no small part because more Republicans showed up to vote. They just didn’t find Republican candidates they wanted to support at the top of the ticket. More

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      in Elections

      Where Trump Stands in Early (Very Early) 2024 Polls

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      The former president’s support has not collapsed. But Republican voters appear strikingly open to another Florida-based politician.Donald Trump’s support in the Republican Party has not collapsed, and perhaps it never will. But a look at the major polls taken since Election Day suggests that the ice is shifting beneath his feet.The data also shows Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida gaining ground in hypothetical 2024 matchups, even though he has yet to declare his intentions.And it underscores the careful line any presidential hopeful must walk with Republican voters; whatever they might think about Trump’s third bid for the White House, there’s little evidence of a clear anti-Trump majority that wants to repudiate him altogether.One of the sharpest articulations of this point I’ve seen came from Nate Hochman, a conservative writer. “If DeSantis allows himself to be defined as the Never Trump — or even the anti-Trump — candidate, he will be permanently discredited in the eyes of many of the voters he needs to win,” Hochman wrote in an essay for Unherd. “If he can convince those voters that he is the next step in the MAGA movement, he may just have a chance.”As Hochman noted in an interview, that will be a far harder trick to pull off when DeSantis actually enters the arena against Trump and the attacks start flying. And he won’t be facing the former president alone, or at least not right away.“In some ways, Trump is in a stronger position now than he was in 2015,” said Terry Sullivan, who managed the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio.A methodological note: Keep in mind that the margin of error goes up whenever you’re looking at smaller subsamples like this. So don’t take the numbers themselves as definitive; focus on the overall trend lines.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      in Elections

      Will Georgia Deal Trump Another Political Blow?

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      The former president faces serious legal jeopardy. A defeat for Herschel Walker would hardly help him with Republican voters.The polls are now closed in the Georgia runoff for Senate, and it’s time to start tallying the votes. We’re about to learn whether Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee, was able to rustle up the Election Day surge he needed to overcome Senator Raphael Warnock, the Democrat, who seems to have banked a significant lead in the early balloting.While you’re waiting for the returns to come in — follow them here, and track our live updates — dig into some reading material:Here’s an election-eve dispatch from my colleagues who have been reporting in Georgia: Maya King, Reid Epstein and Jazmine Ulloa. And here’s Jonathan Weisman’s take on the five factors that will decide the race.From Washington, Carl Hulse examines the stakes of the election within the Senate. “The potential upside for Senate Democrats and the Biden administration should their candidate prevail is far more substantial than a single vote might suggest,” he writes.And here’s some analysis from Nate Cohn, who writes that if Walker wins, “I don’t know how I would explain it. I would have to shrug my shoulders.”the former guyDonald J. Trump last month declared his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election.Saul Martinez for The New York Times‘Watch his political altimeter’As the political world awaits the outcome in Georgia, things are moving swiftly in the legal arena, where Donald Trump faces a serious threat from Justice Department investigators. A Manhattan jury convicted his business, the Trump Organization, of tax fraud on Tuesday. And if Walker — Trump’s handpicked candidate — loses the Senate race, these seemingly disparate events could soon intersect.Trump has been hammering away at Attorney General Merrick Garland and Jack Smith, the newly appointed special counsel for two cases that could lead to the indictment of a former president for the first time in American history. Trump has cast the investigations as a political “witch hunt,” with echoes of tactics he has long used to keep Republicans in his corner.Complicating matters, Trump has announced a third presidential bid. But he is a damaged commodity, burdened by the defeats his candidates suffered in the midterm elections. His Republican critics have grown increasingly bold; polls suggest that substantial numbers of rank-and-file G.O.P. voters now agree. Will Trump’s political force field fail him this time around?And another shoe may yet drop. On Tuesday, the head of the Jan. 6 committee, Representative Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, said the panel would “probably” make criminal referrals to the Justice Department. The committee is weighing whether to include Trump in that list.A referral from the Jan. 6 panel would be only a recommendation. But any such move would be freighted with uncertain political consequences — and it’s by no means clear how Trump’s battle for Republican hearts and minds would play out.To sift through these and other aspects of Trump’s challenges, I spoke with Glenn Thrush, a longtime political and White House reporter who now covers the Justice Department for The Times and has been tracking Garland’s moves closely. Our conversation:It sounds as if, from your reporting, Garland appointed a special prosecutor only reluctantly. What made him change his mind?I wouldn’t cast it as a change of mind by Garland so much as it was a gradual, grudging acceptance that it was an inevitable, and somewhat forced, move on a crowded chessboard with few lanes of maneuver.Garland’s aides have tried to portray the decision to pick Jack Smith as compulsory, dictated by the regulations governing the appointment of special counsels.It wasn’t. It was Garland’s choice. It was predicated on external forces rather than any deep self-examination of whether or not he was capable of investigating Trump impartially, and it chafed for the attorney general.Garland did not, notably, invoke the section of the special counsel regulation triggered by an actual conflict of interest — which Republicans have accused him of having; instead, he chose the “extraordinary circumstances” clause in the regulation.This is something a lot of people miss about Garland, whose quietude can be mistaken for passivity: He might appear to be a “smaller-than-life figure,” as one recent chronicler memorably quipped, but this is a man who once saw himself in the mirror as a Supreme Court justice, and who views himself as a capable arbiter of final resort in any case.When you talk to experts outside the Justice Department, how seriously are they taking the Mar-a-Lago documents case? Has there ever been anything like this before?The Mar-a-Lago investigation is very serious.The Jan. 6 inquiry deals more directly with Trump’s attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 election, but it is an extraordinarily complex case — and there are indications that prosecutors have a long way to go before even considering the kinds of charges that could eventually be brought.The documents case, which Trump has tried to shrug off as a partisan spat over paperwork, would not be an easy prosecution, either, but it is a lot more straightforward, and hence more dangerous to him in the immediate future.The government has already made it clear that it is focused on two primary possible charges, the mishandling of sensitive national security documents under the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice. One of the biggest decisions Smith is likely to face, people close to the situation have told me, would be whether to charge Trump with both — or focus on obstruction alone, with the Espionage Act as background music.It’s also possible prosecutors would bring a case alone on the mishandling of documents. But that could be problematic, especially if there is no evidence that any of the material Trump possessed actually hurt the country.Moreover, it is unlikely the department would have embarked on a high-risk criminal investigation if Trump had effectively said, “My bad,” and returned everything he had taken when the government issued a subpoena in May.Trump is running for president again, but he appears pretty wounded after his candidates did poorly in the midterm elections. Does that affect whatever pressure Garland might be under from Democrats to indict Trump? That is, if he’s politically weak, maybe there’s less of a sense on the left that he’s a real threat to become president again.Two things seem certain. Democrats are going to want Garland to indict Trump whether he is the front-runner or polling below Asa Hutchinson. Politically, you could make the case that charging Trump would create a backlash that could help him. And Garland is going to say that he is paying zero heed to politics.Enter Jack Smith, who provides Garland with thin, but not negligible, cover.While Garland technically has the ultimate say over both cases, his power is one of negation. He can reject Smith’s final recommendations, but under the special counsel regulation, he must inform Congress that he is opposing the man he picked, so it seems pretty unlikely that Garland would reject Smith’s work unless something really crazy happens.Putting your old political reporter hat back on, what’s your read on how vigorously Republicans are inclined to defend Trump and attack the Justice Department? Are you seeing any signs that some in the party are now thinking, “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Merrick Garland and Jack Smith handled this problem for us”?This is a great question. We covered the 2016 campaign together, and how many times did we predict that some Trump disaster — a debate blunder, his refusal to quickly denounce David Duke, the “Access Hollywood” tape, you name it — would finally set off a mass defection inside the party?This time might be different, but let’s withhold judgment and watch his political altimeter.Anyway, that won’t have an impact on these two investigations. Evidence will. Jack Smith and Merrick Garland won’t bring a prosecution they can’t win, and public filings indicate that the Justice Department is not close to bringing charges.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More