Midterm Elections (2022)

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      The Trump Aide Who Helps the Former President Navigate Legal Peril

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      Boris Epshteyn is the latest aide to take on the role of slashing defender of the former president, even as the Justice Department seeks information about him in the Jan. 6 and documents inquiries.Boris Epshteyn has had his phone seized by federal agents investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to remain in power after his election loss. Lacking any track record as a political strategist, he has made more than $1.1 million in the past two years for providing advice to the campaigns of Republican candidates, many of whom believed he could be a conduit to Mr. Trump.A cryptocurrency with which he is involved has drawn scrutiny from federal prosecutors. And he has twice been arrested over personal altercations, leading in one case to an agreement to attend anger management classes and in another to a guilty plea for disorderly conduct.As the former president faces escalating legal peril in the midst of another run for the White House, Mr. Epshteyn, people who deal with him say, mirrors in many ways Mr. Trump’s defining traits: combative, obsessed with loyalty, transactional, entangled in investigations and eager to make money from his position.Mr. Epshteyn is the latest aide to try to live up to Mr. Trump’s desire for a slashing defender in the mold of his first lawyer protector, Roy M. Cohn. He serves as a top adviser and self-described in-house counsel for Mr. Trump, at a time when the former president has a growing cast of outside lawyers representing him in a slew of investigations and court cases.A Trump spokesman, Steven Cheung, called Mr. Epshteyn “a deeply valued member of the team” and said he has “done a terrific job shepherding the legal efforts fighting” the Justice Department and congressional investigations.Mr. Epshteyn declined to comment for this article.Mr. Epshteyn speaks with Mr. Trump several times a day and makes it known that he does so, according to interviews with Trump associates and other Republicans. He has recommended, helped hire and negotiated pay for several lawyers working for Mr. Trump on civil litigation and the federal and local criminal investigations swirling around him.As Mr. Epshteyn has worked to establish his place as a key legal adviser to Mr. Trump, he has profited from his ties to the former president — and come under scrutiny himself.Desiree Rios/The New York Times“Boris is a pair of heavy hands — he’s not Louis Brandeis,” said Stephen K. Bannon, a close ally of Mr. Epshteyn and former adviser to Mr. Trump, referring to the renowned Supreme Court justice. But Mr. Trump, he said, “doesn’t need Louis Brandeis.”“You need to be a killer, and he’s a killer,” Mr. Bannon added.But Mr. Epshteyn’s attacking style grates on other people in Mr. Trump’s circle, and he has encouraged ideas and civil lawsuits that have frustrated some of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, like suits against the journalist Bob Woodward and the Pulitzer Prize committee. His detractors see him as more of a political operative with a law license than as a provider of valuable legal advice.“As soon as anybody starts making anything happen for Trump overall, the knives come out,” Mr. Bannon said. He described Mr. Epshteyn as “a wartime consigliere.”Federal records show that Mr. Epshteyn was paid nearly $200,000 by Mr. Trump’s political action committee over seven months in 2022, and $30,000 by his 2024 campaign. The past payments were almost all listed in Federal Election Commission records as for “strategy consulting,” not legal work.After the search last summer of Mar-a-Lago by F.B.I. agents looking for classified documents still in Mr. Trump’s possession, Mr. Epshteyn retroactively changed his agreement with the political action committee. The agreement, which had been primarily for communications strategy, was updated to include legal work, and to say it covered legal work since the spring of last year, a campaign official said. His monthly retainer doubled to $30,000.But he dropped a separate effort to have Mr. Trump sign a letter retroactively designating him as a lawyer for Mr. Trump personally, dating to March of last year, soon after Mr. Trump’s post-presidency handling of classified documents became an issue. The letter specifically stated that their communications would be covered by attorney-client privilege, multiple people familiar with the request said.The Justice Department has recently sought to pierce assertions of attorney-client privilege by another of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran, and compel him to answer more questions before a grand jury in the special counsel’s investigation into the former president’s handling of classified documents.But even as Mr. Epshteyn has worked to establish his place as a key legal adviser to Mr. Trump, he has also profited from his ties to the former president and his supporters as a strategist and political adviser.Prosecutors have sought information related to Mr. Epshteyn in investigations into Mr. Trump’s efforts to thwart the transfer of power. They have also asked about Mr. Epshteyn’s role connecting two attorneys to respond to the Justice Department inquiry into classified material. Hailey Sadler for The New York TimesFederal records show the only candidates who paid Mr. Epshteyn for work before 2020 were the Republican senator John McCain, for his 2008 presidential race, and Mr. Trump. But in the 2022 midterm election cycle, he had contracts with at least 13 candidates, some of them interested in having Mr. Trump’s support, or in preventing attacks from him or other MAGA figures with whom Mr. Epshteyn has close connections.Bernard B. Kerik, a close Epshteyn ally who worked with him on a few races, said Mr. Epshteyn has an expansive list of contacts and offered advice on polling and social media. Some Republicans said he provided help with opinion essays and fund-raising targets. But some campaigns that paid his monthly retainers said they were skeptical of his value..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“It’s a mystery; we’re still trying to figure it out,” said Carl Paladino, a Republican who failed in his primary race in a congressional district in Western New York last year, when asked what Mr. Epshteyn did for $20,000 on what was a three-month House primary campaign.“He was highly recommended as having good relations with some people that work for Trump,” said Mr. Paladino, who did not receive Mr. Trump’s endorsement. He added: “I was told that it would be in my interest if I sent money to this Boris. I did, and we heard nothing from the man. He was totally useless.”Some former aides to Mr. Paladino said that the candidate was livid over his loss and that Mr. Epshteyn had in fact provided advice and assistance to senior aides.An adviser to another candidate seeking a Trump endorsement, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said the candidate’s team had hoped Mr. Epshteyn would praise the candidate to Mr. Trump or at least help avoid public criticism from him. Advisers to Mr. Trump have long said Mr. Epshteyn often tries to influence the former president’s views.Several people involved with campaigns that hired Mr. Epshteyn said he had made it clear that he could not promise an endorsement from Mr. Trump. But some said Mr. Epshteyn described himself as someone who understood Mr. Trump’s hard-core base. Some campaigns, one Republican operative said, saw him as an effective way to get information about what was happening within Mr. Trump’s orbit.Mr. Epshteyn was paid $95,000 over four months by Senator Katie Britt’s campaign in Alabama. Another $82,500 came from Eric Greitens’s losing Senate campaign in Missouri. Over three months, he was paid $60,000 by the losing Don Bolduc Senate campaign in New Hampshire.Representative Eli Crane’s campaign in Arizona paid him $125,000. The cryptocurrency entrepreneur Brock Pierce in Vermont paid him $100,000, but ultimately did not run for a Senate seat.Mr. Epshteyn’s legal role with Mr. Trump, while less often focused on gritty legal details, has been to try to serve as a gatekeeper between the lawyers on the front lines and the former president, who is said to sometimes roll his eyes at the frequency of Mr. Epshteyn’s calls but picks up the phone.“Boris has access to information and a network that is useful to us,” said one of the team’s lawyers, Timothy Parlatore, whom Mr. Epshteyn hired. “It’s good to have someone who’s a lawyer who is also inside the palace gates.”Mr. Parlatore suggested that he was not worried that Mr. Epshteyn, like a substantial number of other Trump lawyers, had become at least tangentially embroiled in some of the same investigations on which he was helping to defend Mr. Trump.“Absent any solid indication that Boris is a target here, I don’t think it affects us,” Mr. Parlatore said.“Going after the lawyers is a tactic D.O.J. uses to wear you down and remove your defenses,” he added, referring to the Justice Department. “And it’s dirty.”Prosecutors have sought information related to Mr. Epshteyn in investigations into Mr. Trump’s efforts to thwart the transfer of power. Of particular interest are his work with Rudolph W. Giuliani and his alleged involvement in securing so-called alternate electors in an attempt to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election, people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Epshteyn also testified before a fact-finding grand jury in Fulton County, Ga., looking into efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s election loss in that state.Prosecutors investigating Mr. Trump’s handling of classified material have looked at whether Mr. Epshteyn improperly sought a common-interest agreement among witnesses as a shield against the investigation, the people familiar with the matter said.Prosecutors have also asked about his role connecting two attorneys to respond to the Justice Department inquiry into classified material. The two lawyers then produced a statement in June saying that to the best of their knowledge all of the classified documents being kept at Mar-a-Lago had been returned to the government in compliance with a subpoena — which turned out to be untrue.More recently, a pro-Trump cryptocurrency that Mr. Epshteyn and Mr. Bannon are involved with managing is facing an inquiry from federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, according to a person familiar with the matter. ABC News reported that the management of the cryptocurrency has been criticized, including for not fulfilling charitable pledges.Mr. Epshteyn, whose family emigrated from the Soviet Union when he was young and who grew up in New Jersey, attended Georgetown University with Mr. Trump’s son, Eric, and then Georgetown’s law school. He worked at the firm Milbank Tweed for nearly three years.He became a television surrogate on the 2016 Trump campaign, hired late in the race.“He desperately wanted to be part of the inner circle,” said Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and fixer who is now a key witness against Mr. Trump.Mr. Epshteyn, left, speaking at Trump Tower in 2016. He became a television surrogate on the 2016 Trump campaign and also joined Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesMr. Epshteyn worked on the presidential inaugural committee after Mr. Trump’s victory, and then briefly in the White House, leaving after an issue arose with his security clearance. (A person briefed on the matter said the issue has been resolved.)He was the chief political analyst for Sinclair Broadcast Group until December 2019. After losing his on-air role, Mr. Epshteyn remained a consultant with Sinclair. He was hired months later by the 2020 Trump campaign as a strategic adviser.He has faced other legal entanglements over the years.Mr. Epshteyn was arrested in Arizona in 2014 for an alleged assault in a bar; the charges were dropped when he agreed to anger management classes.In October 2021, he was arrested in Arizona again after a woman claimed he had inappropriately touched her and a friend, telling the police he appeared as a less attractive “version of Tony Soprano,” according to a copy of the police report. Mr. Epshteyn denied the claims to the police. Prosecutors dropped charges related to sexual misconduct; Mr. Epshteyn pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. He was ordered to attend an alcohol abuse prevention program and put on probation, which ended last year. The conviction was set aside last year.Several people who have worked closely with Mr. Epshteyn compared his impulse to please Mr. Trump to that of Mr. Cohen, a comparison disputed by supporters of Mr. Epshteyn but backed by Mr. Cohen.“He’s a great mimic,” Mr. Cohen said. “He watched me with hungry eyes in terms of how to maneuver around Trump.”Ben Protess More

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      Arizona Sues After County Puts an Election Skeptic in Charge of Voting

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      Cochise County, a hotbed of conspiracy theories, transferred election duties from a nonpartisan office to the county’s elected recorder, a Republican.An Arizona county is being sued by the state’s Democratic attorney general after it transferred voting oversight to the county’s Republican recorder, who has cast doubts about past election results in a place where former President Donald J. Trump won nearly 60 percent of the vote in 2020.It is the latest clash between Democrats in statewide office and Cochise County, a deeply Republican area in southeastern Arizona, where conspiracy theories about voter fraud and irregularities still swirl.The county’s nonpartisan elections director, Lisa Marra, announced in January that she would resign, citing threats against her after she refused to comply with rogue election directives from the Republicans who control county government, including plans to count ballots by hand after last year’s midterm elections. She recently accepted a position with the secretary of state’s office.The county’s board of supervisors then made David W. Stevens, the Republican recorder, the interim elections director, with the board’s two G.O.P. members supporting the new power structure in a Feb. 28 vote, and its lone Democrat opposing it.On Tuesday, Kris Mayes, who was narrowly elected as Arizona’s attorney general in November and took office in January, filed a lawsuit against the county and called the power shift an “unqualified handover.”Understand the 4 Criminal Inquiries Into Donald TrumpCard 1 of 5Intensifying investigations. More

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      G.O.P. States Abandon Group That Helps Fight Voter Fraud

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      Five red states have severed ties since last year with the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit that helps maintain accurate voter rolls.First to leave was Louisiana, followed by Alabama.Then, in one fell swoop, Florida, Missouri and West Virginia announced on Monday that they would drop out of a bipartisan network of about 30 states that helps maintain accurate voter rolls, one that has faced intensifying attacks from election deniers and right-wing media.Ohio may not be far behind, according to a letter sent to the group Monday from the state’s chief election official, Frank LaRose. Mr. LaRose and his counterparts in the five states that left the group are all Republicans.For more than a year, the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit organization known as ERIC, has been hit with false claims from allies of former President Donald J. Trump who say it is a voter registration vehicle for Democrats that received money from George Soros, the liberal billionaire and philanthropist, when it was created in 2012.Mr. Trump even chimed in on Monday, urging all Republican governors to sever ties with the group, baselessly claiming in a Truth Social media post that it “pumps the rolls” for Democrats.The Republicans who announced their states were leaving the group cited complaints about governance issues, chiefly that it mails newly eligible voters who have not registered ahead of federal elections. They also accused the group of opening itself up to a partisan influence.In an interview on Tuesday, Jay Ashcroft, a Republican who is Missouri’s secretary of state, said that the group had balked at his state’s calls for reforms, some of which were expected to be weighed by the group’s board of directors at a meeting on March 17. He denied that the decision to pull out was fueled by what the organization and its defenders have described as a right-wing smear campaign.“It’s not like I was antagonistic toward cleaning our voter rolls,” Mr. Ashcroft said.Shane Hamlin, the group’s executive director, did not comment about particular complaints of the states in an email on Tuesday, but referred to an open letter that he wrote on March 2 saying that the organization had been the subject of substantial misinformation regarding the nature of its work and who has access to voter lists.Wes Allen, Alabama’s secretary of state, withdrew the state from the Electronic Registration Information Center in January, a day after he was sworn in.Butch Dill/Associated PressDefenders of the group lamented the departures, saying they would weaken the group’s information-sharing efforts and undermine it financially because of lost dues. And, they said, the defections conflict with the election integrity mantra that has motivated Republicans since Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020.Republicans haven’t always been so sour about the work of the coalition, which Louisiana left in 2022.It was just last year that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida mentioned the group’s benefit to his state, which he described as useful for checking voter rolls during a news conference announcing the highly contentious arrests of about 20 people on voter fraud charges. He was joined then by Cord Byrd, Florida’s secretary of state, a fellow Republican who, on Monday, was expressing a much different opinion. In an announcement that Florida was leaving the group, Mr. Byrd said that the state’s concerns about data security and “partisan tendencies” had not been addressed.“Therefore, we have lost confidence in ERIC,” Mr. Byrd said.Representatives for Mr. DeSantis, who is considering a Republican run for president, did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. LaRose, in Ohio, also had a stark shift in tone: After recently describing the group to reporters as imperfect but still “one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have,” by Monday he was also calling for reforms and put the group on notice.“Anything short of the reforms mentioned above will result in action up to and including our withdrawal from membership,” Mr. LaRose wrote. “I implore you to do the right thing.”The complaints about partisanship seem centered on David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who helped develop the group and is a nonvoting board member. Mr. Ashcroft said he didn’t think that Mr. Becker, a former director of the elections program at the Pew Charitable Trusts who has vocally debunked election fraud claims, including disputing Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, should be on the board.Mr. Becker is the founder and director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, another nonpartisan group that has been attacked by election deniers.“There’s truth and there’s lies,” Mr. Becker said on a video call with reporters on Tuesday. “I will continue to stand for the truth.”Mr. Hamlin vowed that the organization would “continue our work on behalf of our remaining member states in improving the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increasing access to voter registration for all eligible citizens.”While some Republican states are ending their relationship with the group, California, the nation’s most populous state, could potentially join its ranks under a bill proposed by a Democratic state lawmaker. But in Texas, a Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill with the opposite intention.Still, Sam Taylor, a spokesman for Texas’s Republican secretary of state, said in an email on Tuesday that “We are not currently aware of any system comparable to ERIC, but are open to learning about other potentially viable, cost-effective alternatives.”New York, another heavily populated state, is also not a member of the group.Seven states started the organization more than a decade ago. It charges new members a one-time fee of $25,000 and annual dues that are partly based on the citizen voting age population in each state. The Pew Charitable Trusts provided seed funding to the group, but that money was separate from donations that it had received from Mr. Soros, according to the website PolitiFact.Shenna Bellows, a Democrat who is Maine’s secretary of state, said in an interview on Tuesday that the group had been particularly helpful in identifying voters who have died or may no longer live in the state, which became a member in 2021.“We have a lot of Mainers who retire to Florida for example,” Ms. Bellows said.Ms. Bellows called the recent defections “tragic” and said that her office had received several inquiries from residents who had read criticism of the group online.“Unfortunately, this move by our colleagues in Florida and elsewhere to leave ERIC in part because of misinformation being spread by election deniers deprives all of us of the ability to effectively clean our voter rolls and fight voter fraud,” she said. More

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      Gigi Sohn, Biden’s F.C.C. Nominee, Withdraws

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      Gigi Sohn, who was first nominated by President Biden in October 2021, said she had faced “unrelenting, dishonest and cruel attacks” on her character and career.One of President Biden’s nominees to the Federal Communications Commission, Gigi Sohn, withdrew from consideration for the job on Tuesday, saying she had faced “unrelenting, dishonest and cruel attacks on my character and my career as an advocate for the public interest.”Ms. Sohn’s announcement came shortly after Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, said he would vote against her nomination, denying her a crucial vote in a closely divided Senate. In a statement, Mr. Manchin said the commission “must remain above the toxic partisanship that Americans are sick and tired of, and Ms. Sohn has clearly shown she is not the person to do that.”The F.C.C. has been in a deadlock — with two Democratic commissioners and two Republicans — for years. Although the agency has approved some measures on bipartisan grounds, the split has made it impossible for the Biden administration to pursue its more ambitious priorities like net neutrality rules for internet service providers.Mr. Biden nominated Ms. Sohn to the commission in October 2021. She had long been a fixture of progressive tech policy in Washington, having pushed for consumer protection measures before serving as an aide to Tom Wheeler, a former chairman of the F.C.C. With Ms. Sohn at his side, Mr. Wheeler pursued sweeping net neutrality rules, which would stop internet providers from favoring certain content, and a measure to open up the market for television set-top boxes.But Ms. Sohn quickly faced opposition from Republicans who accused her of being too far left to join the commission, which regulates internet providers, broadcast stations and wireless carriers. Despite having support from public interest and civil rights groups, among others, her nomination did not move forward. Mr. Biden renominated her in January.Ms. Sohn’s decision to withdraw her nomination was first reported by The Washington Post.“It is a sad day for our country and our democracy when dominant industries, with assistance from unlimited dark money, get to choose their regulators,” Ms. Sohn said in her statement. “And with the help of their friends in the Senate, the powerful cable and media companies have done just that.”Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, the top Republican on the Commerce Committee, cheered Ms. Sohn’s withdrawal, saying the F.C.C. was “not a place for partisan activists.”“Now, it’s time for the Biden administration to put forth a nominee who can be confirmed by the full Senate and is committed to serving as an evenhanded and truly independent regulator,” he said. More

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      Where Asian Neighborhoods Increased Support of New York’s Republicans

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      In last year’s governor’s election, voters in Asian neighborhoods across New York City sharply increased their support for Republicans. Though these areas remained blue overall, they shifted to the right by 23 percentage points, compared with 2018, after more than a decade of reliably backing Democrats. Governor’s margin of victory since 2006 Source: New York […] More

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      Reader Mailbag: Bots and Other Business

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      Answering questions on topics including polling, independent voters and Black turnout.Voters in College Park, Md., in November. There are still some things to review about the midterm elections. T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesWe’ve gotten a lot of great questions and feedback over the last few months, and I think we’re inclined to make a mailbag a regular feature, especially during the off-season. If you have a question, send it to dear.upshot@nytimes.com.Bots in pollingLet’s start with a question on an issue that I’d already been mulling:Mr. Cohn, you mentioned “bots” in passing as a potential issue for nonprobability polls. Which makes me wonder, how easy/hard would it be for a malign outside actor to interfere in the polling and make Donald Trump’s chances look better than they are? Because if that would be possible, I’d say countries with an interest in a divided U.S. (Russia and China come to mind) would certainly be tempted to pull that off. — Moritz, ViennaThis is a serious question. A Pew Research study a few years ago used a few simple techniques to find that 4 percent to 7 percent of respondents to nonprobability surveys were “bogus,” to use their term. These “bogus” respondents took the survey multiple times, took the poll too quickly, stated that they lived outside the United States, or offered nonsensical answers in open-ended questioning.Anecdotally, I’ve heard more complaints about these kinds of issues from pollsters. I routinely hear about pollsters who toss as many as half of their respondents for data quality issues. It is reasonable to assume that the better-known pollsters take these challenges seriously, but we don’t know much about their practices, let alone whether they work.Could this be part of Donald J. Trump’s strength in online panel polls? It’s hard to prove, but one emerging pattern has caught my attention: Mr. Trump has fared quite poorly in two online nonprobability polls linked to voter registration files, which require the panelist to provide personal information that matches a real registered voter.Or put differently: Mr. Trump has done quite poorly in the nonprobability polls where there’s an extra layer of confidence that the respondents are human. It’s the pattern we would expect if bogus respondents were a factor.Still, I wouldn’t get too excited about this emerging pattern if you’re a Ron DeSantis fan. It’s just two polls, after all. And Mr. Trump’s poll numbers have gone up over the last few weeks, including in telephone polling. So perhaps these voter-file-matched polls are really the outliers. As we’ve written before, voter-file-matched polls like these can be biased in other ways.I’ve asked a few smart and well-positioned pollsters to look into the “bogus” respondent question in their own data. If you’re a similarly well-positioned pollster interested in digging in, you know where to find me.The tilt of independent voters in the midtermsWe’ve written that Republicans enjoyed a pretty meaningful turnout advantage in the midterm elections, but a few of you thought we overlooked one important group in this analysis: independents.It’s always the independents who determine who wins. How did they vote?— Ed from Calhoun, Ga.Article does not mention the impact of the growing number of independent voters who choose not to vote in the primaries but decide final elections.— Julio Stieffel, MiamiDemocrats did quite well among independent voters, and that’s partly why the party held up despite a Republican turnout advantage.Nationwide, self-identified independent voters backed Democrats by two percentage points, according to the network exit polls. It doesn’t sound so impressive, but it is by the standards of recent midterms, when the president’s party has tended to lose independent voters by double digits.And in the high-profile statewide contests — think Senate races in Pennsylvania and Arizona — the Democratic candidates fared even better among independent voters than that, allowing Democrats to win marquee races by unusually wide margins.Black turnout before ObamaOn a related midterm note, we observed that the Black share of the electorate was the lowest it has been since Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008. That left an important question unaddressed:I am interested if the Black voter turnout, which has dropped, is higher or lower than historical norms before the 2008/2012 increase in turnout due to Obama. Thank you. — Lisa Pate, Birmingham, Ala.It depends a bit on how you measure it.By the simplest measure — the proportion of Black adult citizens who vote — Black turnout actually remains slightly higher than it was before Mr. Obama’s historic campaign in 2008.The catch, however, is that turnout is higher across the board than it was before 2008. As a result, the racial gap in turnout in 2020 — that is, the difference between the share of eligible Black voters who turn out, compared with the share of eligible white voters who do — returned almost exactly to what it looked like in the 2004 presidential election. Based on what we’ve seen so far, the racial turnout gap in 2022 will probably look like 2006 or 2002.There’s one last twist to consider: the Black share of the electorate. Oddly enough, the Black share of the electorate has usually remained above pre-Obama levels, even though the gap between white and Black turnout is basically the same as it was back then. That’s because white voters, who turn out at higher rates than Black voters, have dipped as a share of eligible voters, while Hispanic and Asian voters, who turn out at lower rates than Black voters, have increased their share of eligible voters.Put it all together and the Black share of the electorate in 2020 was about halfway between where it was in 2004 and 2012.Alternatives to BidenWe haven’t done much to touch on the possibility of a Democratic primary, but that hasn’t stopped many of you from asking about it:Here is a question my friends and I keep wondering: Is there are any Democrat who could stand a chance if Mr. Biden decided not to run? Thanks much!— The Rev. Lorenzo LebrijaWhoever wins the Democratic nomination will at least stand a chance, and probably more than a chance if Mr. Trump is the nominee. Whether there’s a Democrat who would do as well as or better than President Biden is a slightly different question, and it’s really quite hard to say. I hope you don’t ask me that next time!Mrs. Clinton?Believe it or not, the most frequent question we received was about this sentence I wrote:“After all, most modern presidential nominees — Joe Biden, Mrs. Clinton, George W. Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain, John Kerry, Mitt Romney, Al Gore, to name eight recent ones — were not exactly superstar political talents distinguished by soaring oratory, made-for-television charisma, clap-backs on social media or dominant debate performances.”Here’s one (nice) version of the question it raised:“Can you please explain why you thought it was appropriate to list each male you were referring to with their full name (first and last) and list Hillary Clinton as Mrs. Clinton?” — Maura FitzgeraldThe answer is actually quite mundane. The Times uses people’s full names when they’re mentioned for the first time, but they typically receive courtesy titles, like Mr. and Ms., when mentioned again. In this case, Hillary Clinton had already been mentioned, but the male presidential candidates were being mentioned for the first time. Consequently, Mrs. Clinton, who prefers Mrs. to Ms., received her courtesy title while the male candidates got their full names.I see how it ended up looking a little weird in this case, so we adjusted the sentence after publication. More