Midterm Elections (2022)

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      Pennsylvania Voters Absorb an Unusual Debate: ‘I Felt Sorry for Fetterman’

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      LEMOYNE, Pa. — Two professors walked separately out of a grocery store just outside Pennsylvania’s capital city on Wednesday. Each had different political leanings and different preferences in the state’s Senate race.But they agreed on one thing: The extraordinary debate the day before between Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat and stroke survivor, and Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee and celebrity doctor, was a painful ordeal.“I felt sorry for Fetterman,” said Deb Donahue, 68, an adjunct professor and an Oz supporter from Camp Hill, Pa. “I think he really struggled a little bit.”Across the grocery-store parking lot, the other professor, now retired, Mary Boyer, said she could not bring herself to watch the debate. But Ms. Boyer, 72, a Fetterman supporter from Lewisberry, Pa., said she had read about his difficulties articulating his message at times onstage.“I didn’t want to have to watch him suffering,” she said, even as she emphasized that she saw Mr. Fetterman as a strong candidate and a good fit for the state.Mary Boyer, a Fetterman supporter, did not watch the debate. She still thinks he’s a strong candidate.Amanda Mustard for The New York TimesIn more than a dozen interviews across Pennsylvania on Wednesday, voters’ reactions to the debate overwhelmingly centered on Mr. Fetterman’s often halting performance, prompting a range of responses from both Democrats and Republicans — alarm, protectiveness, empathy, disappointment, embarrassment, admiration, worry about the political implications.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz clashed in one of the most closely watched debates of the midterm campaign. Here are five takeaways.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.The biggest open question, though, was whether his clash with Dr. Oz — who set off his own backlash by suggesting that state laws on abortion should be decided by “women, doctors, local political leaders” — changed any minds in one of the most consequential Senate contests on the map.“I don’t think Fetterman won over any undecided votes — I think it’s going to leave a lot of people with a tough decision about perceived competency,” said Damian Brennan, 51, a Fetterman backer from Pittsburgh. “We’re kind of fans of his, and we were a bit concerned.”Dr. Oz convinced at least one: Tom Linus, 50, an engineer from Washington Crossing, Pa., said the debate had cemented his decision to vote for the Republican. But he suggested he was more swayed by Dr. Oz’s remarks than by Mr. Fetterman’s performance.“I was kind of borderline before, but I think Oz won me over,” Mr. Linus said. “He was really much more into the details than I was expecting him to be.”Mr. Fetterman, who had a stroke in May, is dealing with lingering auditory processing issues, his campaign says, a challenge that led him to use closed captions in a fast-moving debate against an opponent who has years of television experience. His answers were sometimes notably brief, and at times he trailed off or jumbled words.His team, which had sought to lower expectations before the event, announced on Wednesday that it had raised $2 million since the debate. This month, his campaign released a note from Mr. Fetterman’s primary care physician saying that he could “work full duty in public office.”Cheryl Smith, a pathologist from Philadelphia, said she was confident that Mr. Fetterman would make a full recovery from his stroke.Rachel Wisniewski for The New York Times“John is ready to fight for every vote these next two weeks and win this race,” said Joe Calvello, a spokesman for Mr. Fetterman. The campaign also turned Dr. Oz’s abortion comments into an ad.Mr. Fetterman, who has won statewide office, has a strong political persona in Pennsylvania as a shorts-wearing former mayor of Braddock, a struggling old steel town he worked to help revitalize. Some voters said they simply did not expect him to be a strong debater, health challenges aside.“This is a setting that I think he wouldn’t have presented himself well even before the stroke, because he’s not a natural debater,” said Amie Gillingham, 51, of Greensburg, Pa. “If you’re judging on the style of the debate, Oz was the clear winner because he’s a polished public speaker, and that is not Fetterman.”Ms. Gillingham said the debate format seemed to work against Mr. Fetterman, but she added that was not a reason to vote against him.“If he’s willing to put himself out there, warts and all, I have so much respect for that,” she said. “To say that he’s an idiot who isn’t capable of being a senator simply because he’s struggling under this specific debate format is disingenuous and ableist in the extreme.”Cheryl Smith, 75, a pathologist from Philadelphia, expressed confidence in Mr. Fetterman’s ability to do the job.“They are going against Fetterman because of his speech problems right now, but hopefully that will clear up,” she said. “Even if it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter. As long as your mind is working well, you know what’s going on.”For several Democrats, their reaction to the debate was rooted in how they believed other voters might perceive Mr. Fetterman’s performance. The debate came after weeks of polling showing a tight race, and while surveys differ, Dr. Oz has undeniably gained ground this fall.Larry Kirk, 81, of Berks County, Pa., is a Democrat and will be voting for Mr. Fetterman in November. But he thought Dr. Oz had outperformed Mr. Fetterman onstage.Tom Linus of Washington Crossing, Pa., said Mehmet Oz’s performance in the debate had won him over.Rachel Wisniewski for The New York Times“I think it will have a negative impact on Fetterman because he didn’t really answer the accusations very well,” Mr. Kirk said. “And for people who are merely going to listen and not really think it through for themselves or check the research, unfortunately, I think Fetterman might have lost a few independent votes.”Megan Crossman of South Philadelphia said she was mostly worried that other voters would conclude that Mr. Fetterman is not up to the job.“I’m a physician, so that doesn’t necessarily mean his cognitive skills are off, it’s just his ability to get the words out,” she said. “But it does make me concerned about what voters who are less familiar might think.”Russell Greer, 75, of Butler, Pa., said he was a Republican who intended to vote for Mr. Fetterman. He said he didn’t think Dr. Oz — whose longtime principal residence was in New Jersey — had lived in Pennsylvania long enough to understand the state or its people, and he has followed Mr. Fetterman’s career.But the debate, he said, was hard to watch.“I think he was forced into that debate to quell different opinions, and I think he didn’t,” Mr. Greer said. “I think it made it worse.”He said he watched Mr. Fetterman and Dr. Oz debate for about 15 minutes. Then he turned it off.Jon Hurdle More

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      An Alternate History of the 2022 Midterms

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      In the campaign’s final days, Democratic strategists are already back-seat driving, second-guessing and what-iffing.In “Blame It on Cain,” his biblically infused 1978 song lamenting the fickleness of fate, Elvis Costello croons, “It’s nobody’s fault, but we need somebody to burn.”It’s as apt a description of the grim mood among Democratic strategists as any I’ve seen this week, with back-seat driving, second-guessing and what-iffing about the midterms rocketing around the left over the past few days.No single person is in charge of as complicated a thing as 435 House races, 30-odd Senate races and thousands more contests down the ballot. But the collective decision-making of party leaders is already coming under question, so Costello’s words were ringing in my ears this morning as I pored over Democrats’ disagreements.Even former President Barack Obama has emerged to chide his fellow Democrats, in a recent podcast interview, for “being a buzzkill” sometimes and losing focus on the things voters “care most deeply about.”The state of playLet’s make one thing clear: This was always going to be a bad year for Democrats. The only question was how bad.At the moment, Republicans are expressing growing confidence that they will capture a significant number of seats in the House. They need only five to take back the majority, but G.O.P. operatives are projecting that seats Democrats won by seven percentage points in 2020, such as Representative Abigail Spanberger’s in Virginia, could be winnable. Independent forecasters have shifted their predictions in recent days to what seems to be the consensus guesstimate: that Republicans will pick up as many as 25 seats.Republicans might even seize the Senate, where just one net pickup could shift partisan control. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto looks wobbly in inflation-racked Nevada, and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s shaky debate performance last night in Pennsylvania has set off a fresh round of teeth-gnashing. If Republicans win those two contests, they can afford to lose in Arizona, Georgia and New Hampshire. And Mitch McConnell will be back in power.In the big governors’ races, Democrats’ prospects look mixed. In Pennsylvania, Attorney General Josh Shapiro is comfortably ahead of Doug Mastriano, the far-right state senator. In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer leads Tudor Dixon by about five percentage points.But Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin looks vulnerable, while in Arizona, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs is struggling to hold off an election-denying former television anchor, Kari Lake.We’ll see what happens on Election Day — anger over abortion could prompt a surge of Democratic turnout, to raise just one scenario, or Trump voters could stay home with their champion off the ballot. Or maybe the polls are wrong. But it’s worth considering whether there were any alternate approaches that could have put Democrats in a better position heading into the final days.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz clashed in one of the most closely watched debates of the midterm campaign. Here are five takeaways.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.The progressives’ complaint: too much abortion, not enough economyAs usual, the emerging fault line is between progressives who would prefer a sharper line of attack on economic issues, and mostly centrist operatives who are skeptical that those topics will play to Democrats’ advantage.Representative Ro Khanna of California, one of the main sponsors of bipartisan legislation to increase semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S., complained that he had seen few ads promoting Democrats’ economic policies.“We should be shouting from the rooftops that we’re for putting money in working peoples’ pockets and bringing jobs home from overseas, and they’re for cutting taxes for the wealthy,” Khanna said. “I don’t get it. It’s like running a football team with all offense and no defense.”On Oct. 10, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont wrote in The Guardian that he was “alarmed” that unidentified Democratic consultants were advising candidates to “focus only on abortion” in the closing weeks of the campaign.“In my view,” Sanders added, “while the abortion issue must remain on the front burner, it would be political malpractice for Democrats to ignore the state of the economy and allow Republican lies and distortions to go unanswered.”Then, on Friday, four senior Democratic strategists argued in The American Prospect, a liberal magazine, that the party could not wish away the inflation crisis — and needed to talk about it more in the closing weeks of the campaign.“Democrats need to understand that we have a winning message on the economy and inflation,” they wrote. “But rising costs will beat us if we avoid the issue.”Mike Lux, one of the co-authors, said in an interview that although some Democrats had run with smart, lunch-bucket messages on inflation — he named Tim Ryan in Ohio, and Fetterman and Representative Matt Cartwright in Pennsylvania — he wished “there had been more focus on kitchen-table issues, from the White House on down.”President Biden has begun doing exactly that, warning this week that Republicans would tank the economy and cut benefits like Social Security and Medicare if they retook Congress. But it’s fairly late to try to alter the trajectory of an election that has largely been fought on Republican terrain.As for the consultants Sanders alluded to, they counter that it was rational to focus on abortion because the reversal of Roe v. Wade fired up the base of the Democratic Party and angered suburban women without college degrees, a group widely seen as the most important swing demographic in this election.One challenge Democrats faced, Lux said, was that voters simply didn’t believe that Republicans planned to cut Social Security and Medicare. Voters tend to be skeptical of hypothetical arguments, because they hear them so often. Abortion rights advocates, for instance, had warned for years that Republicans wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade. Until the Supreme Court did so, it sounded to many voters like political posturing. And now, he said, “the wolf is at the door.”In Senate races, Democrats have spent roughly 41 percent of their television advertising budgets on abortion, according to Celinda Lake, a pollster who was another co-author of the American Prospect article.Some of that money could have been spent on shoring up voters’ knowledge of what Democrats have done to help address rising health care costs, some Democrats said. Others blamed fickle Democratic megadonors for hoarding their money for 2024. Still others faulted progressive House lawmakers, or Senator Joe Manchin, for spending nearly a year and a half fighting over what ultimately became the Inflation Reduction Act.Some Democrats have praised Tim Ryan for how he is running on economic issues like inflation in Ohio.Megan Jelinger for The New York TimesThere are also fierce debates over tactical decisions made in Washington. Allies of Ryan, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Ohio, have questioned why party groups have heavily spent to help Cheri Beasley, the party’s candidate in North Carolina, while largely leaving Ryan to face J.D. Vance alone. Then there’s crime, an emotionally charged issue that many Democrats have pooh-poohed as overblown, pointing to instances of race-baiting by Republicans. Overblown or not, a Gallup poll in April found that voters’ concerns about crime had reached their highest level since 2016, and it’s been a factor in many big races.James Carville, the former adviser to Bill Clinton and a frequent scold of the left, noted on Twitter that he had urged Democrats last year to “take control of the anti-crime message.”“Crime is going to be an issue up and down the ballot in 2022, and many local politicians are already feeling the heat,” Carville wrote then in a Wall Street Journal opinion essay. “If we don’t aggressively begin to own the crime issue and make Republicans respond to their own failures, we risk losing our slim majorities in Congress.”“They did not,” Carville observed in a tweet this week. “Colossal mistake.”‘It just seems to be his turn’If there’s anyone Democrats consistently blame for their fate this year, it’s the man in charge of their party: Biden, whose national approval ratings have settled back into the low 40s after a brief summer honeymoon, and they are worse in swing states. It’s telling that he isn’t barnstorming the country right now on behalf of embattled Democratic candidates, and he has stuck to raising money or taking targeted trips to more hospitable places like Colorado.But not only did most Democrats in Congress vote for the spending bills that Republicans are attacking as inflationary, they are also often at a loss when asked who might be a better banner-carrier for their party in 2024. Kamala Harris? Unimpressive. Gavin Newsom? Too slick or too Californian. J.B. Pritzker? Too rich.Once again, “Blame It on Cain” sounds prophetic.“It’s nobody’s fault,” Costello sings in the song’s last line. “But it just seems to be his turn.”What to readJohn Fetterman’s debate performance is raising anxiety levels among Democrats in Pennsylvania, Lisa Lerer and Katie Glueck report.A woman who did not identify herself said on Wednesday that Herschel Walker pressured her to have an abortion and paid for the procedure nearly three decades ago after a yearslong extramarital relationship.Republicans are targeting Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democrat whose Hudson Valley seat is becoming one of the most closely contested in the country.A judge in South Carolina ordered Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, to testify in an Atlanta-area investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged meddling in the 2020 election.Pugilistic press aides have moved from the shadows of campaigns to become stars on social media, Michael Bender writes, netting hundreds of thousands of followers.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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      How People With Disabilities Saw Fetterman’s Debate Performance

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      For many Americans with disabilities who watched the Senate debate in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s performance against Dr. Mehmet Oz was both a sign of how far they had come in political representation and a painful reminder of how far they have left to go.On one hand, Mr. Fetterman, the Democratic nominee, was in a nationally watched debate months after a stroke left him with an auditory processing disorder, speaking openly about his disability — a remarkable moment for people who have felt pressure to hide their own, and who rarely see people like themselves in politics. On the other hand, much of the coverage of the debate focused on Mr. Fetterman’s verbal stumbles.“To see how quick people were to say, ‘He shouldn’t have been on that stage tonight,’ ‘I don’t think he can do this’ — it’s yet another reminder of how the world views disabled people,” said Maria Town, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities. “It really does show me how much we use speech to perceive competence and confidence, and we really shouldn’t.”The debate was powerful, and the punditry painful, for Ms. Town, who has cerebral palsy and recalled falling onstage in front of elected officials and her boss. She said she could imagine the anxiety Mr. Fetterman might have felt about his disability being on public display.Historically, many politicians with disabilities tried to hide them, like former President Franklin Roosevelt, who sought to conceal his use of a wheelchair. Today, officials like Senator Tammy Duckworth and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas use them with little fuss.But communication-related disabilities remain deeply stigmatized. Disability rights advocates are acutely aware of the possibility that some voters will mistakenly equate difficulty speaking with difficulty thinking.“I fear that our general population still has that thought, and so I don’t think a debate was probably the best platform for him,” said Josie Badger, who runs a youth development consulting firm and a legislative advocacy training program for disabled Pennsylvanians. But, she added, “What an amazing opportunity for him to share empowerment with others with disabilities.”Mr. Fetterman is continuing to get speech therapy, which experts say is standard treatment for an auditory processing disorder. Experts also say such disorders often improve with time.Dr. Badger, Ms. Town and Rebecca Cokley, program officer for the U.S. disability rights portfolio at the Ford Foundation, are all disabled themselves and all said Mr. Fetterman’s candor felt invigorating.“I’m excited anytime I see a qualified candidate with a disability running, but even more so when I see one who doesn’t hide who they are,” Ms. Cokley said.Sheryl Gay Stolberg More

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      Second Woman Says Walker Paid for Her to Have Abortion

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      A woman who did not identify herself said on Wednesday that Herschel Walker pressured her to have an abortion and paid for the procedure nearly three decades ago after a yearslong extramarital relationship. A former football star, Mr. Walker is running for the Senate in Georgia as an abortion opponent.The New York Times could not confirm the account, interview the woman or inspect the evidence that Gloria Allred, the celebrity lawyer, asserted was proof that the woman had a relationship with Mr. Walker.The woman told her story at a news conference with Ms. Allred, but did not appear on camera. Neither she nor Ms. Allred offered any evidence to back up the woman’s accusation that Mr. Walker, a Republican, had urged her to end her pregnancy even after she initially left an abortion clinic without going through with the procedure.The evidence provided included a taped message from a man Ms. Allred said was Mr. Walker calling from the Winter Olympics of 1992, where Mr. Walker competed in bobsled; a number of greeting cards signed “H”; and a blurry photo of a man who Ms. Allred said was Mr. Walker in a hotel room in Mankato, Minn. She also showed what she said was a receipt for that hotel, a Holiday Inn in the city where the Minnesota Vikings, Mr. Walker’s professional football team at the time, practiced.The woman, speaking remotely into the news conference, said she was so traumatized in 1993 after she had the abortion that she left her home in the Dallas area and did not return for 15 years.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz clashed in one of the most closely watched debates of the midterm campaign. Here are five takeaways.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.The woman said she was a registered independent who voted for Donald J. Trump, a Republican, in 2016 and 2020. She told her story, she said, to expose hypocrisy in Mr. Walker’s campaign message and because, she said, he lied in denying another woman’s account of his urging her to have an abortion by saying that he never signed cards with just his first initial, “H.”Shortly before the news conference, Mr. Walker broadly denied the claim at a campaign event in Dillard, Ga., about 100 miles north of Atlanta.“I’m done with this foolishness. I’ve already told people this is a lie and I’m not going to entertain it,” he said, suggesting that this was a reflection of Democratic jitters following his performance during the Senate debate against the Democratic incumbent, Senator Raphael Warnock, this month. “The Democrats will do and say whatever they can to win this seat.”Just weeks ago, another woman said Mr. Walker had paid for her to have an abortion in 2009 and urged her to terminate a second pregnancy two years later. They ended their relationship after she refused, that woman, who also refused to be identified, told The Times in a series of interviews.Mr. Walker, who denied that account, has anchored his campaign on an appeal to social conservatives as an unwavering opponent of abortion even in cases of rape and incest. He has since wavered on his policy approach to abortion, saying in September that he would support a measure from Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina that would ban abortion nationwide after 15 weeks of pregnancy and declaring his support during the Senate debate for Georgia’s new law that outlaws the procedure after six weeks.A spokesman for Mr. Walker did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the specifics of the new claim.Mr. Warnock’s campaign released a statement calling the new accusation “just the latest example of a troubling pattern we have seen play out again and again and again,” saying Mr. Walker has “a problem with the truth.”Mr. Walker has been dogged by a series of potentially damaging reports about his personal life since he began his campaign for Senate in 2021. In June, The Daily Beast reported that Mr. Walker, who has criticized absentee fathers in Black households, had fathered a child out of wedlock. Later that week, the outlet reported on two more children he had not previously mentioned publicly or to his campaign aides.Mr. Walker acknowledged an extramarital affair in his 2009 memoir, “Breaking Free: My Life With Dissociative Identity Disorder.” He described a relationship with a woman who lived in Irving, Tex., a Dallas suburb.“I just want to convey that I knew right from wrong and I did a very, very wrong thing that hurt my wife, another person and in the end me,” he wrote. More

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      Fetterman’s Debate Showing Raises Democratic Anxieties in Senate Battle

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      The debate performance on Tuesday night by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, left party officials newly anxious, injecting a fresh dose of unpredictability into one of the country’s most important contests less than two weeks before Election Day.Five months after surviving a serious stroke, Mr. Fetterman cut a sharp contrast with Mehmet Oz, a quick-spoken former talk show host, as he haltingly provided answers to questions using closed captioning to accommodate the auditory processing impairments he has been confronting. At times, Mr. Fetterman seemed to pause to seek the right words or offered a jumble of sentences to express his positions. In some cases, he contradicted himself or appeared to state the opposite of his actual view.The contentious matchup between Mr. Fetterman and Dr. Oz, his Republican rival, was a kind of political duel rarely seen in American life, upending the traditional pageantry of rapid-fire debates.Mr. Fetterman’s performance thrust questions about health and disability into the center of the final weeks of a nearly deadlocked race. Even as doctors and disability rights advocates praised his delivery, saying that his speech did not reflect any cognitive impairment and that he had offered an inspiring model for others with disabilities, some Democrats worried that ordinary voters might see it differently.“I was nervous before the debate began, and I’m still nervous,” said Ed Rendell, a Democratic former governor of Pennsylvania, who added that the format — with 60-second answers and 15- and 30-second rebuttals — made it more difficult for Mr. Fetterman to respond fluidly. “You never know which way this goes.”One senior Democratic official in the state described an intense level of anxiety, and an awareness that the debate could be decisive.Republicans clearly saw an opening.“Fetterman proved he’s incapable of the physical and communication demands of the job,” said former Representative Ryan Costello, a Republican from the Philadelphia suburbs who also criticized Mr. Fetterman over issues of transparency.“This is a six-year term,” he said. “This is a serious job.”The outcome of the contest could decide control of the Senate — determining whether President Biden will be able to keep confirming federal judges, and whether he will confront investigations and conservative legislation from both chambers of Congress or only from what is widely expected to be a Republican-controlled House.For many voters, the verdict on Mr. Fetterman will be decided in the days to come. Few voters watch entire debates, leaving most to learn about what happened through videos that circulate in the days and weeks that follow.Democratic officials and campaign operatives in Pennsylvania quickly seized on a statement by Dr. Oz that abortion decisions should be up to “women, doctors, local political leaders.” Those involved with the Fetterman campaign said they had made the right decision in going forward with the debate, arguing that it had given them a politically damaging moment for Dr. Oz that would linger longer than Mr. Fetterman’s overall performance.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz clashed in one of the most closely watched debates of the midterm campaign. Here are five takeaways.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.On Wednesday, the Fetterman team turned Dr. Oz’s remark into an ad for television and digital platforms and blasted it across social media.“I want women, doctors, local political leaders — letting the democracy that’s always allowed our nation to thrive — to put the best ideas forward so states can decide,” Dr. Oz said on Tuesday, after repeatedly declining to say directly whether he would support a 15-week federal ban on abortion.The comment, Fetterman allies said, allows Democrats to tie Dr. Oz to Doug Mastriano, the struggling Republican nominee for governor, who has vowed to ban abortion without exceptions. Mr. Fetterman’s campaign said it had raised $2 million since the debate, a number it said illustrated the steadfast commitment of the party’s base.“John obviously struggled with some words,” said Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania. “I thought he would have performed better. But in the end, mashing up some words is not going to matter to swing voters.”Republicans, looking to capitalize on the debate, highlighted a moment when Mr. Fetterman was questioned on his views on fracking. In a 2018 interview, he expressed opposition to it; he now says that he has “always” supported the practice — a major issue in the state. But it was also a moment that showed Mr. Fetterman’s difficulties with articulating his thoughts. Mr. Fetterman said the captions did not make clear that the question was directed to him, causing him to pause before answering, according to a senior campaign aide.When pressed on his previous opposition, Mr. Fetterman paused and said: “I do support fracking and, I don’t, I don’t — I support fracking and I stand — I do support fracking.”Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania last week.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesEarlier in the race, the Oz campaign mocked Mr. Fetterman repeatedly over his health. But at a campaign event on Wednesday in Harrisburg, Pa., as he appeared with Nikki R. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, Dr. Oz sought to keep his focus firmly on matters of public safety, in keeping with Republican efforts to tar Mr. Fetterman as radically anti-law enforcement, a message he has vehemently rejected..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.“Last night’s debate focused on my desire to bring balance to Washington, a desire to bring together left and right, on issues that are bipartisan in their very nature,” Dr. Oz said.Still, Dr. Oz’s allies are not being so sensitive about Mr. Fetterman’s health. A new ad from a super PAC affiliated with former President Donald J. Trump says that the Pennsylvania Democrat “just isn’t right.”During the debate, Mr. Fetterman tried to reposition his difficulties as a symbol of his grit, part of his brand as a tattooed former mayor of a battered steel town who can relate to working-class Pennsylvanians. His campaign had sought to lower expectations ahead of the clash, sending a memo to reporters that highlighted Mr. Fetterman’s challenges with auditory processing and noting that even before the stroke, debates were not his strong suit.Even as some pundits and strategists argued that skipping a debate would ultimately be forgiven, Mr. Fetterman wanted to appear, campaign officials said, because he believed Pennsylvania voters deserved an opportunity to hear from their candidates.In his opening remarks, he said of the stroke, “It knocked me down, but I’m going to keep coming back up.” He added, “This campaign is all about, to me, is about fighting for everyone in Pennsylvania that got knocked down, that needs to get back up, and fighting for all forgotten communities all across Pennsylvania that also got knocked down that needs to keep to get back up.”After the debate, his campaign said the caption system it had requested was “delayed” and “filled with errors” — a claim the media host denied.During the debate, Mr. Fetterman would not commit to releasing additional medical records. A CBS News/YouGov poll released last month found that 59 percent of registered voters in Pennsylvania believed Mr. Fetterman was healthy enough to serve.But for many voters, the debate was their first chance to watch and listen to Mr. Fetterman — or any politician who recently had a life-threatening stroke — for an extended period of time.Over the years, strokes have sidelined several senators, who have sometimes needed recoveries as long as a full year. Early this year, Senator Ben Ray Luján, Democrat of New Mexico, had a stroke, sending a jolt through his party given its narrow control of the Senate. He returned to work a month later, saying he was “90 percent” recovered.If Mr. Fetterman wins, his work in the Senate is unlikely to be significantly affected by his condition, said Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat from Pennsylvania who is supporting his bid. Mr. Casey said he had seen Mr. Fetterman rapidly improve since the summer.“He’s ready to do this job right now,” Mr. Casey said. “And I think by the time he would take the oath, he’ll be able to have then even additional recovery.”Mr. Fetterman had the stroke on the Friday before the May primary election, though he waited until Sunday to disclose it. On Primary Day, he had a pacemaker and defibrillator implanted, which his campaign described as a standard procedure that would help address “the underlying cause of his stroke, atrial fibrillation.”In a statement in early June, his cardiologist said he also had a serious heart condition called cardiomyopathy. Mr. Fetterman spent much of the summer off the campaign trail, returning in mid-August for a rally in Erie, Pa.Mr. Fetterman said during the debate that his stroke “knocked me down, but I’m going to keep coming back up.” Mehmet Oz, whose campaign mocked Mr. Fetterman’s health earlier in the race, has recently sought to focus on public safety.Nextstar Media GroupSince then, he has ramped up his appearances, regularly holding rallies and giving television interviews, and his team has been open about his lingering auditory processing challenges and his use of closed captions.This month, Mr. Fetterman released a letter from a different doctor — his primary care physician — that said “he has no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office.”Neurologists who have experience treating stroke patients with aphasia, which can disrupt a person’s ability to express speech, complimented his performance on Tuesday night.A political debate “is probably the most adversarial environment that someone with aphasia could face,” said Dr. Lee Schwamm, a vascular neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. “It doesn’t mean he can’t think, but his immediate ability to absorb information rapidly and deliver that canned message that all candidates practice is clearly impaired.”Disability advocates were thrilled with Mr. Fetterman’s showing, saying his appearance carried import beyond party politics by providing a positive image for the 26 percent of Americans living with disabilities.Darlene Williamson, the president of the National Aphasia Association and a speech language pathologist, praised Mr. Fetterman.“To have someone exhibit — the best word I can use is bravery — is enormously important to our families who live in a situation where people do not necessarily understand the language problems and oftentimes equate it with loss of intelligence,” she said. “And that is completely untrue.”Reporting was contributed by More

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      What the Pennsylvania Media Is Saying About the Senate Debate

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      Pennsylvania voters are navigating through a vortex of headlines, commentary and opinion page takeaways about Tuesday night’s Senate debate between the celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Republican, and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat who is recovering from a stroke that he had in May.Mr. Fetterman lumbered through the hourlong encounter with his rival, a performance that dominated the news media’s coverage of the debate in a race that could determine control of the divided Senate.Here is what pundits in Pennsylvania are saying:Sharp critiques from The Philadelphia Inquirer’s opinion staffA panel of columnists and other contributors was less than charitable in its reviews of both candidates, giving Mr. Fetterman an average score of 4.3 out of 10 and Dr. Oz a score of 4.1.Here’s some of what the panelists said:“The only good thing you can say about Fetterman’s performance is that he didn’t put on airs. He is authentically inarticulate.” — Jonathan Zimmerman“Rather than counter his reputation as a snake-oil salesman, Oz leaned into it for most of the debate, with slick answers that were as empty as the diet pills that he once promoted (despite his ridiculous dodging answer) on TV.” — Will Bunch“Fetterman’s stumbling and verbal gaffes made the debate a complete cringefest from beginning to end.” — Jenice Armstrong“For all his years on TV, Oz came across as a fast-talking used car salesman.” — Paul DaviesPundits online and on the radio: ‘Painful’ vs. ‘slippery’Michael Smerconish, a Philadelphia lawyer-turned-political commentator for CNN and SiriusXM, on Wednesday panned Mr. Fetterman’s long-awaited return to the debate stage and called it “painful.”“Fetterman didn’t want to debate,” Mr. Smerconish said on his radio show. “Now we know why. He wanted to run out the clock.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz clashed in one of the most closely watched debates of the midterm campaign. Here are five takeaways.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.Mr. Smerconish said that he felt sorry for Mr. Fetterman and that Dr. Oz’s demeanor gave him pause.“Oz was slippery,” he said.Dom Giordano, a conservative talk radio host in Philadelphia, was even more blunt about how Mr. Fetterman handled the debate.“Can any reasonable person say Fetterman is capable?” Mr. Giordano wrote on Tuesday night on Twitter.Still, Marty Griffin, a Pittsburgh-area talk radio host, wondered how much the debate would sway voters.“Does Fetterman’s condition matter?” Mr. Griffin said on Tuesday night on Twitter. “I’d say no! Voters will vote in their lanes!”The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review took both candidates to taskCalling the debate “chaotic” in a headline, the newspaper focused on Mr. Fetterman’s verbal delivery and Dr. Oz’s attacking style in its coverage. It called out Mr. Fetterman’s dodge of “questions about past statements made in opposition to fracking” and wrote that he “appeared to hit a stride and speak better when his answers were longer.”As for Oz: “He spoke frantically, but cohesively, and consistently brought his answers back to attacking Fetterman.”‘Fetterman struggles’: Penn Live/The Patriot-NewsThat’s how the headline from The Patriot News characterized his performance. The newspaper in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s capital, where Tuesday night’s debate was held, wrote:“In what was considered a pivotal moment for the heated contest, Fetterman’s consistently stilted speech and jumbled sentences in the rapid-fire debate format are likely to fuel more questions about his health following a May 13 stroke.”The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette found the debate heavier on attacks than substantive policyNeither candidate alleviated the newspaper’s lingering questions — for Mr. Fetterman, concerns about his health, and for Dr. Oz, his promotion of certain medical treatments and products that critics say are risky and unproven.Sound bites aplenty, but skimpy on specifics, The Pennsylvania Capital-Star saysThe nonpartisan news nonprofit described the tone of the debate as nasty and reported that former President Donald J. Trump and President Biden loomed substantially over the clash. More

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      Republicans Target a Top House Democrat as Winds Shift to the Right

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      BRIARCLIFF MANOR, N.Y. — Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York was campaigning at a senior center recently, trying to give a largely Democratic audience reason for hope. But Pat Campbell, 84, had little patience for optimism.“We’re really worried about the Democratic Party,” Ms. Campbell, a Maloney supporter, interjected as the congressman mentioned the party’s legislative accomplishments.As he alluded to enthusiasm for defending abortion rights earlier this year, she insisted, “That’s not happening now!”And after the Saturday event, Ms. Campbell, a Democrat, fretted in an interview, “I’m afraid there are not enough of us.”As Democrats nationwide grow increasingly anxious about their midterm prospects, Mr. Maloney, the leader of the party’s House campaign arm, is racing to protect the current majority, helping vulnerable Democrats as they try to hang on in tough races across the country.But now he is himself one of those Democrats. The congressman is suddenly at real risk of losing his race for a seat in an area of the Hudson Valley that President Biden won by 10 percentage points. His predicament in New York reflects Democrats’ broader struggles in the face of Americans’ frustrations about the cost of living, Mr. Biden’s weak approval ratings and, sometimes, concerns about public safety.Republicans are throwing late money into their effort to defeat the powerful party leader, and the Democratic campaign committee Mr. Maloney leads is now spending cash to save him, a move that may rankle some Democrats as the party confronts difficult spending decisions across the map.“Sean Patrick Maloney is the highest-ranking Democrat in a competitive race,” said Assemblyman Mike Lawler, Mr. Maloney’s Republican opponent in the 17th District. A Republican victory, he said, would send a national message that “one-party rule does not work.”Party leaders are often enticing targets for their opposition, and they are typically difficult to defeat. Still, Republicans insist that their interest in the seat is not simply a symbolic attempt to make Democrats sweat, but rather a reflection of the worsening political climate facing Mr. Maloney and his party, especially in New York.The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with the House Republican leadership, is plunging $6 million into the race, including a $4 million investment announced last week, with ads highlighting a 2018 video in which Mr. Maloney calls ending cash bail a “top priority.” The Republican group’s polling early this month showed Mr. Lawler with a narrow lead within the margin of error, 47 percent to 45 percent, with 8 percent undecided.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz clashed in one of the most closely watched debates of the midterm campaign. Here are five takeaways.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.The House Republican campaign committee is also spending on the race. And Democrats acknowledge it is highly competitive.“I’m concerned about how motivated the Democrats are to vote,” said David Carlucci, a Democratic former state senator who represented the region.He said the politics of crime and bail reform — complex issues that have dominated the midterm landscape in New York — were a challenge for the Democratic brand. “It really moves the needle here,” he said.The race for the newly configured district took shape after a messy redistricting process that split Mr. Maloney’s current seat in two. Instead of running for a version of his current seat, Mr. Maloney decided to run in a slightly more Democratic-leaning district now represented by Mondaire Jones. (Mr. Jones then ran in a New York City primary and lost. Some Democrats sharply criticized Mr. Maloney’s handling of the process.)The district Mr. Maloney is now running for includes his home, but he must also introduce himself across significant new territory, even as he travels to raise money for fellow Democrats. Republicans have delighted in highlighting images from a fund-raising trip he took to Europe early this month.“Sean is new,” said Darren Rigger, a Democratic State Committee member from Westchester County. “People are getting to know him.”Mr. Maloney said in an interview that he had no regrets about where he chose to run. While redistricting was “disruptive,” he said, “it’s an honor to represent the community where I live.” He emphasized work he had done for the region.Mike Lawler defeated a seven-term Democrat for an assembly seat in 2020.Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesMr. Maloney’s team notes that he has broad support from key players in the area, including labor, and that he has had a cash advantage over Mr. Lawler. He also had a vigorous campaign presence this summer while navigating a primary challenge from State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, a prominent liberal Democrat..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.“I just beat the ‘defund’ candidate,” he said as he highlighted his support for police departments, pushing back on Republican efforts to paint him as anti-law enforcement. In advertising, his campaign overtly embraces a “tough-on-crime” message.Mr. Maloney casts himself as a “mainstream guy” who emphasizes support for abortion rights. He has also denounced Mr. Lawler over a Congressional Leadership Fund mailer about crime that has been criticized as perpetuating racist stereotypes, while labeling his opponent a far-right extremist (“MAGA Mike”).“If you put $7 million behind a ham-and-cheese sandwich,” Mr. Maloney said, “that sandwich would be competitive in this district.”Mr. Lawler, who rejects the extremist label, faces steep challenges, especially over abortion rights. But he has credible political chops: He defeated a seven-term Democrat for an Assembly seat in 2020.The infusion of Republican cash in the race — and the Democratic spending help in response — leaves Mr. Maloney in an uncomfortable position.“If he wins and survives, they’ll say, ‘Hey, you spent money on you and you let all these other people lose,’” said former Representative Steve Stivers, who was chairman of the Republican House campaign arm in 2018. “If he loses, it means they didn’t spend enough money and they lost an extra seat that they might not have otherwise.”Mr. Maloney was elected chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee with a pitch that he had experience winning challenging districts, and he has insisted that he can both manage his race and be a strong party steward.On Saturday, he sounded notes of bravado as he discussed Republican spending. “Do I like it?” he said. “No, I do not. But they are going to look foolish for having done it.”But he also said that the spending from the Republican super PAC “changes the equation,” adding, “We’re going to do what it takes to hold the seat.” He said he had recused himself from the D.C.C.C.’s decision to buy $605,000 worth of ads for his race — a cost the committee is sharing with the Maloney campaign — though he acknowledged that the group’s staff members work for him.Chris Taylor, a D.C.C.C. spokesman, said in a statement, “We are going to make investments that ensure Democrats hold our House majority.” Outside groups are beginning to engage as well.The district Mr. Maloney is now running in includes his home, but he must also introduce himself across significant territory that he has never represented, even as he travels to raise money for fellow Democrats.Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesParty strategists worry that passions over abortion rights have faded since Roe v. Wade was overturned, but interviews in liberal enclaves along the Hudson River showed that the issue still galvanizes Democrats and some independents.“Choice is a big issue,” said Cynthia Kalman of Ossining, N.Y., an independent who said she was leaning toward Democrats.But the district also includes more conservative constituencies.Mr. Lawler and Mr. Maloney are directly competing for Hasidic Jewish voters who often vote, to varying degrees, as a bloc. Mr. Lawler represents portions of those communities in his Assembly district.Mr. Maloney confirmed that he had invited the mayors of the Hasidic villages of New Square and Kaser, N.Y., to an event with Mr. Biden when he visited Poughkeepsie. He has also sought to link Mr. Lawler, who has worked as a political consultant, to an antisemitic video from the Rockland County Republican Party.Mr. Lawler, a former lobbyist who has faced scrutiny over his business, has disavowed the video and said that he asked at the time that it be removed.In an interview on Saturday, after he finished addressing — through a translator — a group of mostly immigrant Latina women at a community center, Mr. Lawler said he was focused on pocketbook and public safety issues that are urgent for many voters.“I’ve always been my own person,” Mr. Lawler said. “People are frustrated. And it really — when I go out talking to voters — it really has nothing to do with party. It has everything to do with policy.”Mr. Lawler, who was a 2016 Republican convention delegate for Donald J. Trump and voted for him in 2020, declined to say whether he wanted Mr. Trump to be the party’s 2024 nominee. Asked whether he believed Mr. Biden was elected legitimately, he replied, “Yes.”In a state that strongly supports abortion rights, Mr. Maloney and his Democratic allies are working to disqualify Mr. Lawler over that issue in the eyes of voters. Mr. Lawler, who opposes abortion with some exceptions, has cast it as a state issue, saying he would not support a federal ban. Abortion rights are protected in New York but have been banned or significantly restricted in many other states.“Across this district, the primary focus for voters is inflation and crime,” Mr. Lawler said, adding bluntly, “For those voters that abortion is their top issue, they’re never voting for me.”There are signs that violent crime is down in the Hudson Valley. But across New York, debates over the state’s bail laws have been a point of contention. Republicans are betting that the subject of public safety remains potent, especially in districts, like this one, where there is a significant law enforcement community.“I was unhappy with how the Democratic Party has been handling decisions with the inflation,” Steven Sanchez, 30, said as he worked at his family’s Colombian coffee shop in Ossining. Mr. Sanchez said he is typically a Democrat but is considering voting for Republicans.“New York has become very dangerous,” he added. “Hopefully on the Republican Party, it will change.”Mr. Rigger, the Democratic state official, said he was confident in the battle-tested Mr. Maloney. But he expressed concerns about what a tight New York race meant for the rest of the country.“When the Republicans are investing in Sean Patrick Maloney’s district, pouring money in against him, I think, ‘Ugh — they must be doing really well elsewhere,’” he said.Shane Goldmacher More

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      The Left-Right Divide Might Help Democrats Avoid a Total Wipeout

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      With the midterm election less than two weeks away, polling has turned bleak for the Democrats, not only increasing the likelihood that the party will lose control of the House, but also dimming the prospects that it will hold the Senate.The key question is whether Republicans will wipe out Democratic incumbents in a wave election.In a 2021 article, “The presidential and congressional elections of 2020: A national referendum on the Trump presidency,” Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California San Diego, described how the Trump administration and its 2020 campaign set the stage for the 2022 midterms:Reacting to the [Black Lives Matter] protests, Trump doubled down on race‐baiting rhetoric, posing as defender of the confederate flag and the statues of rebel generals erected as markers of white dominance in the post‐Reconstruction South, retweeting a video of a supporter shouting “white power” at demonstrators in Florida, and vowing to protect suburbanites from low-income housing that could attract minorities to their neighborhoods.The headline and display copy on my news-side colleague Jonathan Weisman’s Oct. 25 story about the campaign sums up the party’s current strategy:With Ads, Imagery and Words, Republicans Inject Race Into Campaigns: Running ads portraying Black candidates as soft on crime — or as “different” or “dangerous” — Republicans have shed quiet defenses of such tactics for unabashed defiance.Republican strategies that emphasize racially freighted issues are certainly not the only factor moving the electorate. Republican skill in weaponizing inflation is crucial, as is inflation itself. Polarization and the nationalization of elections also matter, particularly in states and districts with otherwise weak Republican candidates.Jacobson is one of a number of political analysts who argue that the calcification of the electorate into two mutually adversarial blocs limits the potential for significant gains for either party. In a recent essay, “The 2022 U.S. Midterm Election: A Conventional Referendum or Something Different?” Jacobson writes:Statistical models using as predictors the president’s most recent job approval ratings and real income growth during the election year, along with the president’s party’s current strength in Congress, can account for midterm seat swings with considerable accuracy. For example, applying such a model to 2018, when President Donald Trump’s approval stood at 40 percent and real income growth at 2.1 percent, Republicans should have ended up with 41 fewer House seats than they held after the 2016 election — improbably, the precise outcome.Applying those same models to the current contests, Jacobson continued,the Democrats stand to lose about 45 House seats, giving the Republicans a 258-177 majority, their largest since the 1920s. For multiple reasons (e.g., inflation, the broken immigration system, the humiliating exit from Afghanistan) Biden’s approval ratings have been in the low 40s for the entire year. High inflation has led to negative real income growth.No wonder then, Jacobson writes, that “the consensus expectation at the beginning of the year was an electoral tsunami that would put Republicans in solid control of both chambers.” Now, however, “this consensus no longer prevails.”Why?Partisans of both parties report extremely high levels of party loyalty in recent surveys, with more than 96 percent opting for their own party’s candidate. Most self-identified independents also lean toward one of the parties, and those who do are just as loyal as self-identified partisans. Party line voting has been increasing for several decades, reaching the 96 percent mark in 2020. This upward trend reflects a rise in negative partisanship — growing dislike for the other party — rather than increasing regard for the voter’s own side. Partisan antipathies keep the vast majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents from voting for Republican candidates regardless of their opinions of Biden and the economy.Jacobson noted in an email that over the past weekthe numbers have moved against the Democrats, and they should definitely be worried. The latest inflation figures were very bad news for them. But I still doubt that their House losses will approach the 45 predicted by the models and I think they still have some hope of retaining the Senate — or at least, their tie.Jacobson points out that in the current lead-up to the midterms, there is an exceptionally “wide gap between presidential approval and voting intentions, with the Democrats’ support on average 9.2 percentage points higher than Biden’s approval ratings.” He also notes that in previous wave elections, the spread between presidential approval and vote intention was much closer, 5 points in 1994, 4.9 in 2006, 0.3 in 2010 and 4.1 in 2018.Julie Wronski, a political scientist at the University of Mississippi, argued in an email that polarization has in very recent years changed the way voters evaluate presidents and, in turn, how they cast their ballots in midterm contests. “There is a higher floor and lower ceiling in presidential approval,” she said:If anything, approval is fairly resistant to external shocks in ways that look very different from either George W. Bush or Obama. An approval rating below 50 percent seems to be the new norm. But if we think about this from a partisan lens, an overwhelming percent of Democrats will always support the Democratic president, while an overwhelming percent of Republicans will oppose him.Put another way, Wronski said, “it wouldn’t matter what Biden does or doesn’t do to curb inflation, Democrats will largely support, and Republicans will largely oppose.”In this context, “partisanship serves as lens through which economic conditions are evaluated. The stronger partisanship exists as a social identity, the more likely it will be used as the motivation to view and accept information about economic conditions, like inflation.”Negative partisanship, Wronski wrote, “has emerged in recent elections as a driver of voting turnout and vote choice,” with the resultthat partisan antipathies keep Democrats from voting for Republican candidates. No matter how bad economic conditions may be under Biden, the alternative is seen as much worse. The threat to abortion rights and democracy should Republicans take control of Congress may be a more powerful driver of voting behavior.While polls show growing public fear that adherence to the principles of democracy have declined, Wronski pointed out thatthose concerns do not trump more immediate needs like being able to afford food, housing, and gas. To be fair, people cannot fight for lofty ideals like democracy when their basic needs are not being met. People need to be secure in their food and housing situation before they can advocate for bigger ideas.There is another factor limiting the number of House seats that the Republican Party is likely to gain: gerrymandering.Sean Trende, senior elections analyst at RealClearPolitics, makes the case that in state legislatures both parties “hoped to avoid creating districts that were uncertain for their party and/or winnable for the other party. One upshot of this is that in a neutral or close-to-neutral environment, there aren’t many winnable seats for either party.”Trende elaborates: “In the swingiest of swing seats where Biden won between 51 percent and 53 percent, there are just 19 seats. Of those seats, 10 are held by Democrats, seven are held by Republicans, and one is a newly created district.” In a neutral year when neither party has an advantage in the congressional vote, Trende writes, if “Republicans won all the districts where Joe Biden received 52 percent of the vote or less and lost all of the districts where he did better, they would win 224 seats.Gerrymandering has created what Trende calls “levees” — bulwarks — that limit gains and losses for both parties. The danger for Democrats is the possibility that these levees may be breached, which then turns 2022 into a Republican wave election, as was the case in 1994 and 2010: “In a universe where Republicans win the popular vote by four points, sweeping all of the districts that Biden won with 54 percent of the vote or less, the levee would break and the Republican majority would jump from 232 seats to 245 seats.”When Trende published his analysis on Sept. 29, the generic congressional vote was almost tied, 45.9 Republican to 44.9 Democratic, close to a “neutral” election. Since then, however, Republicans have pulled ahead to a 47.8 to 44.8 advantage on Oct. 22, according to RealClearPolitics. FiveThirtyEight’s measure of the generic vote shows a much closer contest as of Oct. 25, with Republicans ahead 45.2 to 44.7 percent.In 2010, the Republican Party’s generic advantage in late October was 9.4 points, a clear signal that a wave election was building.Educational polarization — with college-educated voters shifting decisively to the Democratic Party and non-college voters, mostly white, shifting to the Republican Party — in recent elections has worked to the advantage of the right because there are substantially more non-college voters than those with degrees.This year, the education divide may work to some extent to the benefit of Democrats.James L. Wilson, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, pointed out in an email that not only do “polarization and party loyalty make the election outcomes less likely to depend on immediate economic circumstances,” but also “educational polarization, combined with the fact that better-educated voters tend to turn out at higher rates in midterm elections than do less-educated voters, may help the Democrats despite voter concerns about Biden or the economy.”Even with inflation as one of the Democratic Party’s major liabilities, the intensification of polarization appears to be muting its adverse impact.In their 2019 paper, “Motivated Reasoning, Public Opinion, and Presidential Approval,” Kathleen Donovan, Paul M. Kellstedt, Ellen M. Key and Matthew J. Lebo, of St. John Fisher University, Texas A&M University, Appalachian State University and Western University, wrote that “Polarization has increased partisan motivated reasoning when it comes to evaluations of the president,” as the choices made by voters are “increasingly detached from economic assessments.”As partisanship intensifies, voters are less likely to punish incumbents of the same party for failures to improve standards of living or to live up to other campaign promises.Yphtach Lelkes, a professor of communication and a co-director of the polarization lab at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote by email that “people (particularly partisans) are far less likely to, for instance, rely on retrospective voting — that is, they won’t throw the bums out for poor economic conditions or problematic policies.”In the early 1970s, Lelkes wrote, “partisanship explained less than 30 percent of the variance in vote choice. Today, partisanship explains more than 70 percent of the variance in vote choice.”This trend grows out of both identity-based partisanship and closely related patterns of media and information usage.As Lelkes put it:There are various explanations for this. There is an identity/motivated reasoning perspective, where people think better us than them and would prefer a lampshade to an out partisan. Another possibility is that people get skewed information. If I watch lots of Fox News or pay even marginal attention to Republican candidates, I’ll hear lots about the economy. If I watch MSNBC and pay attention to Democratic candidates, I’ll hear a lot about abortion, but less about the economy.Not everyone agrees that polarization will limit Democratic losses this year.John Sides, a political scientist at Vanderbilt, wrote by email that “it is absolutely true that party loyalty in congressional elections has increased. But this does not stop large seat swings from occurring.”There is, Sides continued, “some evidence that midterm seat swings can be driven by people actually switching their votes from the previous presidential election,” suggesting that “clearly not every voter is a die-hard partisan.”Sides remained cautious, however, about his expectations for the results on Nov. 8: “The recent poll trends are pushing toward larger G.O.P. gains but I am not sure those trends suggest the 40+ House seat gains that the national environment would forecast.” A narrow win, he wrote, would mean that Republican leaders in the House will face “a very delicate task. On the one hand, they have to appease Freedom Caucus types. But they also have to protect potentially vulnerable G.O.P. members in swing districts. I do not know how you manage that task, and so I do not envy Kevin McCarthy.”Dritan Nesho, a co-director of the Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll, was distinctly pessimistic concerning Democratic prospects:An empirical analysis of the 2022 midterm polls in the final stretch suggests that this election will tip both the House and the Senate toward Republicans, and it’s no exception to historical trends suggesting the incumbent party tends to lose an average of 28 seats in the House and 3 or so seats in the Senate. Key numbers around lack of confidence in the economy, the pervasive impact of inflation, and a worsening personal financial situation among a majority of voters today, actually suggest a stronger loss than the average.The two best predictive variables for election outcomes, Nesho writes,are presidential approval and the direction of personal finances. Both are severely underwater for Democrats. In our October Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll, Biden has plateaued at 42 percent job approval and 54 percent of voters report their personal financial situation as getting worse. 55 percent blame the Biden administration for inflation rather than other factors (including 42 percent of Democratic respondents), and 73 percent expect prices to further increase rather than come down. 84 percent of voters think the U.S. is in a recession now or will be in one by next year.If that were not enough, Nesho continued,at the same time Democrats are seen as disconnected from the key issues of concern for the median voter. Republicans are connecting better with general voters on inflation and the economy, crime, and immigration; Democrats are seen as preoccupied with Jan. 6, women’s rights/abortion, and the environment, which are further down the list of concerns.Republicans, in turn, have pulled out all the stops in activating racially divisive wedge issues, relentlessly pressing immigration, crime and the specter of generalized disorder.In Missouri, for example, Brian Seitz, a state representative, is determined to “shut down” critical race theory, declaring, “There is a huge red wave coming.” Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Republican Conference, ran a Facebook ad that read: “Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION. Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.” In Ohio, J.D. Vance, the Republican Senate candidate, contends that Democrats are recruiting immigrants and “have decided that they can’t win re-election in 2022 unless they bring in a large number of new voters to replace the voters that are already here.” Blake Masters, the Republican Senate nominee in Arizona, warns that Democrats want to increase immigration “to change the demographics of our country.”Robert Y. Shapiro, a political scientist at Columbia, observed in an email: “By all rights this should be a debacle for the incumbent party based on the fundamentals — the relative bad news about the economy — inflation — crime, the southern border, and the lingering Afghanistan fiasco.”But, Shapiro added:There are mitigating factors: a very important one is that the Republicans picked up many seats in the House in 2020 so those seats are not at risk now for the Democrats, thanks to around 11 million more Republican voters in 2020 than in 2016. The other factor is the Dobbs abortion decision that led to a surge in Democratic voter registration, very likely significantly women and younger voters. This at best has just helped the Democrats to catch up to Republicans.The crucial question in these circumstances, in Shapiro’s view, “will be relative partisan turnout — will this be more like 2010 or 2018? I sense the enthusiasm and anger here is at least a bit greater among Republicans than Democrats for House voting.”Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, emailed me to say that he agrees “with those who think the Democrats will lose the House,” but with Republicans seeing “a below historical average seat gain, i.e. under the 40-45 seats that some models are predicting.”Cain argued that a Democratic setback will not be as consequential as many on both the left and right argue: “It’s not like either party needs to worry about being locked out of power for very long. The electoral winds will shift, and the window to power and policy will open again soon enough.” Polarization, Cain noted, “has made it clear to both parties that you have to grab the policy prizes while you have trifecta control” — as both Trump and Biden have done during their first two years in office.One difference between the current election and the wave election of 1994 is that this time around Republicans have no attention-getting, mobilizing agenda comparable to Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America. They have contented themselves with hammering away on the economy, race and immigration.Republicans are fixated on an ethnically and racially freighted agenda of gridlock and revenge. They propose to reduce immigration and to roll back as much as they can of the civil rights revolution, the women’s rights revolution and the gay rights revolution. They threaten to hound Biden appointees, not to mention the president’s son Hunter, with endless hearings and inquiries. The party has also signaled its refusal to raise the debt ceiling and promised to shut down the government in order to force major concessions on spending.While this agenda may win Republicans the House and perhaps the Senate this year, it contains too many contradictions to achieve a durable Republican realignment.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