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      Las encuestas indican las elecciones más reñidas de la historia contemporánea de EE. UU.

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      Las número más recientes del Times/Siena muestran a Harris por delante en Míchigan y Wisconsin, y con una ventaja razonable en el Segundo Distrito de NebraskaKamala Harris en Wayne, Michigan, en agosto. Lidera Michigan por un punto en nuestro último sondeo.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesSigue aquí las actualizaciones en directo de las elecciones de 2024.El viernes concluimos nuestra oleada de encuestas posdebate del New York Times y el Siena College en los estados en disputa, junto con un vistazo especial a Ohio y su carrera hacia el Senado.Kamala Harris estuvo a la cabeza entre los votantes probables por un punto porcentual en Michigan, dos puntos en Wisconsin y nueve puntos en el Segundo Distrito Congresional de Nebraska. Donald Trump lideró en Ohio por seis puntos entre los votantes probables, 50 por ciento a 44 por ciento (en 2020 ganó el estado por ocho puntos).Cuando se añaden al panorama las otras encuestas recientes del Times/Siena, la conclusión es clara: se trata de unas elecciones extremadamente reñidas.Imaginemos, por un momento, que las últimas encuestas del Times/Siena en cada estado clave acertaran. No lo harán, por supuesto, pero este es el resultado que se obtendría en el Colegio Electoral:Harris 270, Trump 268.En términos de conteo electoral, sería la elección presidencial moderna más reñida de Estados Unidos.Si se promedian las seis encuestas que hicimos en los principales estados en disputa (nos saltamos Nevada en nuestra ronda más reciente), Trump va a la delantera por una media de solo 0,6 puntos.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Harris y Trump están empatados en Míchigan y Wisconsin, según las encuestas

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      La contienda se ha estrechado en dos de los estados disputados del norte, según las encuestas de The New York Times/Siena College.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]La vicepresidenta Kamala Harris y el expresidente Donald Trump están en una contienda aún más apretada en los estados en disputa de Míchigan y Wisconsin que hace solo siete semanas, según las nuevas encuestas de The New York Times y Siena College.La ventaja de Harris de principios de agosto se ha visto ligeramente reducida por la fortaleza de Trump en cuestiones económicas, según las encuestas, un hecho potencialmente preocupante para la vicepresidenta, dado que la economía sigue siendo el tema más importante para los votantes.A menos de 40 días de las elecciones, la contienda está esencialmente empatada en Míchigan, con Harris recibiendo el 48 por ciento de apoyo entre los votantes probables y Trump obteniendo el 47 por ciento, bien dentro del margen de error de la encuesta. En Wisconsin, un estado donde las encuestas suelen exagerar el apoyo a los demócratas, Harris tiene un 49 por ciento, frente al 47 por ciento de Trump.Los sondeos también revelan que Harris aventaja en nueve puntos porcentuales a Trump en el segundo distrito electoral de Nebraska, cuyo único voto electoral podría ser decisivo en el Colegio Electoral. En un escenario posible, el distrito podría dar a Harris exactamente los 270 votos electorales que necesitaría para ganar las elecciones si ganara Míchigan, Wisconsin y Pensilvania, y Trump capturara los estados en disputa del Cinturón del Sol, donde las encuestas de Times/Siena muestran que está por delante.El Times y el Siena College también analizaron la contienda presidencial en Ohio, que no se considera un estado en disputa para obtener la Casa Blanca, pero tiene una de las contiendas senatoriales más competitivas del país. Trump lidera por seis puntos en Ohio, mientras que el senador demócrata Sherrod Brown aventaja a su oponente republicano, Bernie Moreno, por cuatro puntos.How the polls compare More

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      Where will abortion be on the ballot in the 2024 US election?

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      This November, abortion will be on the ballot in 10 states, including the states that could determine the next president.In the two years since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, abortion has become the kind of issue that decides elections. Outrage over Roe’s demise led Republicans to flounder in the 2022 midterms, and abortion rights supporters have won every post-Roe abortion-related ballot measure, including in red states such as Ohio, Kentucky and Kansas.This year, most of the ballot measures are seeking to amend states’ constitutions to protect abortion rights up until fetal viability, or about 24 weeks of pregnancy. Because a number of the measures are in states that have outlawed abortion, they could become the first to overturn the post-Roe ban. Others are in states where abortion is legal, but activists say the measures are necessary to cement protections so they can’t be easily overturned if Republicans control the government.These are the states slated to vote on abortion this election day.ArizonaAbortion rights supporters in Arizona, a key battleground state in the presidential election, are vying to pass a measure that would enshrine the right to abortion up until viability in the state constitution. A provider could perform an abortion after viability if the procedure is necessary to protect the life or physical or mental health of a patient.Arizona currently bans abortion past 15 weeks of pregnancy. Earlier this year, the state supreme court reinstated a 19th-century near-total abortion ban, generating nationwide outrage that prompted the state legislature to quickly repeal it in favor of letting the 15-week ban stand.ColoradoColorado’s measure would amend the state constitution to block the state government from denying, impeding or discriminating against individuals’ “right to abortion”. This measure also includes a one-of-a-kind provision to bar Colorado from prohibiting healthcare coverage for abortion – which could very well pass in the deep-blue state.Because Colorado permits abortion throughout pregnancy and neighbors five states with bans – Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, Utah and Nebraska – the state has become a haven for people fleeing abortion bans, especially those seeking abortions later in pregnancy.FloridaOnce the last stronghold of southern abortion access, Florida in May banned abortion past six weeks of pregnancy, which is before many women know they’re pregnant. Its measure, which needs 60% of the vote to pass, would roll back that ban by adding the right to an abortion up until viability to the state’s constitution. Providers could perform an abortion after viability if one is needed to protect a patient’s health.Florida Republicans’ tactics in the fight against the measure has alarmed voting rights and civil rights groups. Law enforcement officials have investigated voters who signed petitions to get the measure onto the ballot, while a state health agency has created a webpage attacking the amendment.MarylandLegislators, rather than citizens, initiated Maryland’s measure, which would amend the state constitution to confirm individuals’ “right to reproductive freedom, including but not limited to the ability to make and effectuate decisions to prevent, continue, or end the individual’s pregnancy”. Like Colorado, Maryland has become an abortion haven because it permits the procedure throughout pregnancy. It is also relatively close to the deep south, which is blanketed in bans. MissouriAbortion opponents went to court to stop Missouri’s measure from appearing on voters’ ballots, but the state supreme court rejected their arguments and agreed to let voters decide whether the Missouri constitution should guarantee the “fundamental right to reproductive freedom, which is the right to make and carry out decisions about all matters relating to reproductive healthcare, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions”.Missouri, which was the first state to ban abortion after Roe fell, only permits the procedure in medical emergencies. If the measure passes, it is expected to roll back that ban and permit abortion until viability.MontanaIn the years since Roe fell, Montana courts and its Republican-dominated legislature have wrestled over abortion restrictions and whether the right to privacy embedded in Montana’s constitution includes the right to abortion. Abortion remains legal until viability in Montana, but the measure would amend the state constitution to explicitly include “a right to make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the right to abortion” up until viability. Providers could perform an abortion after viability to protect a patient’s life or health.NebraskaNebraska, which bans abortion past 12 weeks of pregnancy, is the lone state with two competing ballot measures this November. One of the measures would enshrine the right to abortion up until viability into the state constitution, while the other would enshrine the current ban. If both measures pass, the measure that garners the most votes would take effect.NevadaAlongside Arizona, Nevada is one of the most closely watched states in the presidential election. Its measure would amend the state constitution to protect individuals’ right to abortion up until viability, or after viability in cases where a patient’s health or life may be threatened. Nevada already permits abortion up until 26 weeks of pregnancy.New YorkNew York state legislators added a measure to the ballot to broaden the state’s anti-discrimination laws by adding, among other things, protections against discrimination on the basis of “sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive health”.Although sky-blue New York passed a law protecting reproductive rights in 2019, advocates say this measure could be used to defend abortion rights against future challenges. However, the ballot language before voters will not include the word “abortion”, leading advocates to fear voters will not understand what they are voting on. Democrats pushed to add the word “abortion” to the description of the measure, but a judge rejected the request, ruling that the amendment poses “complex interpretive questions” and its exact impact on abortion rights is unclear.South DakotaSouth Dakota’s measure is less sweeping than other abortion rights measures, because it would only protect the right to abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy. Under this measure, South Dakota could regulate access to abortion “only in ways that are reasonably related to the physical health of the pregnant woman” in the second trimester of pregnancy. In the third trimester, the state could ban abortion except in medical emergencies. Right now, South Dakota only allows abortions in such emergencies.Although this measure will appear on the ballot, there will be a trial over the validity of the signatures that were collected for it. Depending out the outcome of the trial, the measure – and any votes cast for it – could be invalidated. More

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      Republican bid to change Nebraska voting rules to help Trump fails

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      A Republican attempt to change the electoral system in Nebraska to give Donald Trump a possible advantage in the event of a tied presidential election has been rebuffed after a state legislator refused to back the plan.Mike McDonnell, a former Democrat who crossed to the Republican party this year, said he would not vote to change the midwestern state’s distribution of electors to the same winner-takes-all process that operates in most of the US.His decision followed intense lobbying from both Republicans and Democrats, who anticipated that a change in the allocation of Nebraska’s five electoral college votes could have have a decisive impact on the outcome of the 5 November poll.It reduces the possibility that the former president and Kamala Harris could be tied on 269 electoral college votes each, a scenario that would throw the final say on the election’s outcome to the House of Representatives.A tie scenario could have arisen if Trump earned five electoral votes – rather than four, as expected under the present set-up – from winning Nebraska, then won the four “Sun belt” states of North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona, while the vice-president carried the northern battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.US presidential elections are not decided by the popular vote nationwide but by which candidate wins a majority of 538 electoral college votes, usually awarded to the winner of the popular vote in each state.Nebraska’s Republican legislators, egged on by Republicans on Capitol Hill, proposed to change the distribution of electors to ensure that Trump would be awarded all five electoral votes if, as expected, he wins the solidly pro-Republican state.That would have upended the status quo under which Nebraska, unlike every other state apart from Maine, splits its allocation to give two to the presidential candidate that wins the popular vote while awarding the other three on the basis of who prevails in each of its three congressional districts.The state’s second congressional district, covering its biggest city, Omaha, was won by Joe Biden in 2020, a feat Harris hopes to emulate.The spotlight had fallen on McDonnell, a former firefighter and the chair of Omaha’s federation of labour, because his support would have provided the two-thirds majority needed in the state legislature to change Nebraska’s distribution system law, which has operated since 1992.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a statement, McDonnell, who had seemed to wavering in recent days from his earlier vow not to vote to restore the winner-takes-all system, made it plain that he had not moved from his original position.“Elections should be an opportunity for all voters to be heard, no matter who they are, where they live, or what party they support,” he said. “I have taken time to listen carefully to Nebraskans and national leaders on both sides of the issue. After deep consideration, it is clear to me that right now, 43 days from election day, is not the moment to make this change.”His announcement came despite a meeting with the Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, who travelled to Nebraska last week to lobby local legislators, and appeared to end plans by Jim Pillen, Nebraska’s governor, to call a special legislative session to change the law.“With Mike McDonnell being an absolute no, that kind of closes the lid,” the Republican state senator Loren Lippincott told the Nebraska Examiner newspaper.McDonnell’s stance won praise from a former ally, Jane Kleeb, the chair of Nebraska’s Democrats, who hailed him for “standing strong against tremendous pressure from out-of-state interests to protect Nebraskans’ voice in our democracy”. More

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      Republicans step up effort to change Nebraska voting rules to help Trump

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      Congressional Republicans are demanding an 11th-hour change to Nebraska’s presidential voting system in a move that could transform the electoral calculus and tip the race to Donald Trump in the event of a photo finish.With polls showing Trump neck-and-neck with Kamala Harris both nationally and in battleground states, senior GOP congressional figures are pressing the Nebraska legislature to replace a system that splits the allocation of its electoral college votes with the straightforward winner-takes-all distribution that operates in most US states.The change would increase the number of electors allotted to Trump for winning the solidly Republican state from four to five – and raises the possibility that the former president could end up tied with Harris at 269 electoral votes each.Such a scenario would pitch the ultimate decision on the election into the House of Representatives, which has the constitutional authority to certify the results – meaning the outcome of November’s House election, in which Republicans are defending a wafer-thin majority, could be even more pivotal than usual.In a sign of the raised stakes, the South Carolina senator Lindsay Graham – a close Trump ally – visited Nebraska this week and urged legislators to find the extra votes needed to revert its electoral college distribution procedure back to the winner-takes-all system it used before 1992.Pressure was also ratcheted up by the state’s five US congressional members, who wrote to Nebraska’s governor, Jim Pillen, and the speaker of its single-chamber legislature, John Arch, who are both Republicans.“As members of Nebraska’s federal delegation in Congress, we are united in our support for apportioning all five of the Nebraska’s electoral votes in presidential elections according to the winner of the whole state,” read the Nebraska delegation’s letter, posted on X by GOP House member Mike Flood, one of its signatories. “It is past time that Nebraska join 48 other states in embracing winner-take-all in presidential elections.”A two-thirds majority of the Republican-led chamber is needed to change the system. Only 31 or 32 of the 50-seat body are thought to be in favour, meaning the spotlight is being focused on the state senator Mike McDonnell, a former Democrat who turned Republican this year but swore he would never support winner-takes-all.Local media reports have depicted McDonnell as wavering amid speculation that Trump may soon contact him personally.The issue is potentially vital because some pollsters have predicted that Harris is on course to win exactly the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the White House by winning the three northern swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, where recent polling has shown her with small but consistent leads.However, she would fall short by just one if a winner-takes-all distribution was adopted in Nebraska, whose second congressional district – encompassing the state’s largest city, Omaha, and its suburbs – together with its single electoral vote is expected to fall to Harris, as it did to Joe Biden in 2020.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTo avoid a tie, Harris would need to win the three northern battlegrounds along with at least one of four southern Sun belt states – North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona – where she and Trump are deadlocked, but where polls often show the former president with a tiny edge.Unlike most other states, Nebraska does not allocate its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote, but instead gives that candidate two electoral votes while awarding the rest on the basis of which party wins its three congressional districts.Maine is the only other state to operate a comparable system. This year, its Democratic house majority leader vowed that it would cancel out any move in Nebraska to revert to a winner-takes-all approach by introducing a similar change in Maine.However, by leaving the push until less than seven weeks before the 5 November election, Republicans may have blocked off that option.Maine’s legislative rules deem that a bill can only become law 90 days after its passage, unless it is passed with two-thirds majorities in both chambers, meaning there will be insufficient time to implement a new system by polling day. Although Democrats have majorities in the state’s house and senate, they do not have supermajorities. More

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      How One Man’s Vote in Nebraska Could Change the Presidential Election

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      A single Republican state senator appears to be holding back a push by Donald J. Trump to net a potentially pivotal electoral vote even before ballots are cast.In Eastern Nebraska, far from the presidential battleground states, a drama is playing out that could, in a perfectly plausible November scenario, have history-altering repercussions for the nation’s future and the next president — and it may all come down to one man.A single Republican state senator from Omaha, Mike McDonnell, has so far stood firm against a push by former President Donald J. Trump, national Republicans and the Nebraska G.O.P. to change Nebraska from a state that divides its electoral votes by congressional district to one that awards all of them to the statewide winner. Maine is the only other state without a winner-take-all system.If Mr. McDonnell buckles, two other Republican senators in Nebraska’s unicameral legislature who have also not yet committed to changing Nebraska’s system are likely to follow his lead, according to a number of Republicans and Democrats involved in the discussions going on at the State Capitol.The tumbling dominoes would almost certainly give the single electoral vote of Omaha and its suburbs, which Vice President Kamala Harris is favored to win, to Mr. Trump.That might not sound like much, but if Ms. Harris were to win the so-called blue wall — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — while losing every other battleground state, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, that one electoral vote would be the difference between a 270-268 Electoral College victory for the vice president or a 269-269 tie. And in the event of a tie, the House of Representatives would determine the winner, not by raw votes of House members but by the support of each state delegation.With more delegations in Republican control, Mr. Trump would almost certainly win.As of Friday, Mr. McDonnell, who is barred by Nebraska’s term limits law from seeking re-election, had not changed his position.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nebraska may change its electoral system at the last second to help Trump win | Stephen Marche

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      American democracy is in a fragile place. If you haven’t figured that out by this point, you haven’t been paying attention. The dangers are coming from all sides. Donald Trump has just survived his second apparent assassination attempt. The governor of Ohio has had to call in the state police to monitor a spate of bomb threats to local schools after falsehoods about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs in the area began circulating. That’s aside from all the usual mass shootings, Proud Boy marches and the rest of it. But inside this fomenting turmoil, the most dangerous spot in the whole country, the rock on which the American state may well founder, is the quiet congressional district of Omaha, Nebraska, the very heart of the American heartland.Omaha is dangerous, not in itself, but due to the entirely weird position it inhabits inside the electoral college. In one of those strange freaks of American politics, Nebraska has a split electoral college vote, and for the past few elections the city of Omaha has reliably voted Democrat. The other two electoral districts vote solidly Republican. Ordinarily, this little hiccup in the system wouldn’t matter much. But 2024 represents a uniquely precarious moment.As it stands, once you remove the settled Democrat and Republican states, the most direct path to a Kamala Harris victory is by way of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. With those three states, she would receive exactly 270 electoral college seats, the number she needs to win. In that case, she would win if, and only if, she holds that one electoral college vote in the congressional district of Omaha, Nebraska.The Omaha congressional district hasn’t mattered much due to a kind of bipartisan detente, a balance of power. Nebraska is not the only state that splits its electoral system by district. So does Maine. And Maine, while mostly Democratic, has a similarly reliable Republican constituency, which will almost certainly give its electoral college seat to Trump. If Nebraska changes its system to give Trump an advantage, Maine has said it will reciprocate in order to cancel out any attempt to shift the balance of power.Largely for this reason, the inclination to change the law has been muted in Nebraska, even though Republicans control the statehouse. Having a contested electoral college seat also makes Nebraska slightly more worthy of attention from both national parties, meaning the current division is, to some small degree, in the interests of Nebraskans on the whole.Yet that state of detente may be set to unravel. The Maine legislature has now gone out of session, and last Friday, Jim Pillen, the governor of Nebraska, made a public statement: “I strongly support statewide unity and joining 48 other states by awarding all five of our electoral college votes to the presidential candidate who wins the majority of Nebraskans’ votes,” he said. “As I have also made clear, I am willing to convene the Legislature for a special session to fix this 30-year-old problem before the 2024 election. However, I must receive clear and public indication that 33 senators are willing to vote in such a session to restore winner-take-all.”Pillen is effectively deflecting the electoral college question onto the state senators, but he is also opening the door to the possibility of the switch, which could alter the course of the election.Republicans would not even need to switch the electoral college seat to win. They only need to muddy the waters. If, for example, the Nebraska legislature ensured that their electoral college votes were in dispute, and the courts had not decided the matter by 6 January, and no one had reached the threshold of 270, that state of affairs would automatically trigger a contingent election. In a contingent election, another abstruse mechanism of the US electoral system, each state delegation, whether it’s California or Wyoming, gets a single vote, which means that the Republicans would always win. (This possibility is the subject of a book I wrote with Andrew Yang, The Last Election.)The sheer boredom of what I’m describing here, the banal technicalities of the complex legal structures in place, may, on the surface, seem less frightening than assassination attempts and bomb threats and cooked pets and armed militias. But don’t misunderstand: this is the real danger America faces. The complexity is the trap. The complexity makes it easy for people to believe that somehow they haven’t been tricked, that a functioning democratic system, however bizarre, is still in place, even when it clearly isn’t anymore.It goes without saying that the nightmare I’ve described here – which could absolutely happen – is only one of several glitches in the electoral system which could undo the United States. (Georgia is a whole other nightmare.) The Republicans have set themselves up to maximize incoherence, exactly because they are aware of the vulnerability of the system.Needless to say, incoherence of outcome is precisely the opposite of what the founders intended when they established the electoral college 240 years ago. They were living in a different world, though. The electoral college was the product of an 18th-century agrarian society whose Capitol sat a hundred miles from virgin forest. At this point in history, it is little more than a legitimacy crisis in progress.The founders built their system to avoid exactly the kind of situation that the erasure of the district Omaha, Nebraska, would represent: the possibility of democracy in bad faith and by name only.

      Stephen Marche is a Canadian essayist and novelist. He is the author of The Next Civil War and How Shakespeare Changed Everything More

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      In Nebraska, Tim Walz’s Family Is Split Over the Election

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      An intriguing photo has been circulating online. It appears to be a smiling family huddled around a matriarch, all in matching T-shirts that say “Nebraska Walz’s for Trump.”The photo is attached to a post on the social media site X from Charles W. Herbster, a Nebraska cattleman, businessman and former Republican candidate for governor. “Tim Walz’s family back in Nebraska wants you to know something…” he wrote.Tim Walz’s family back in Nebraska wants you to know something…@realDonaldTrump @JDVance #SaveAmerica🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/zp08nuKAun— Charles W. Herbster (@CWHerbster) September 4, 2024

      Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, grew up in Nebraska and still has family there. The photo looks authentically Nebraskan. It turns out the family is related to Mr. Walz. But they are distant relatives. They are descendants of Francis Walz, the brother of Mr. Walz’s grandfather.Sandy Dietrich, Tim Walz’s sister, made it clear the two branches of the family were not close.“That is not us,” Ms. Dietrich, who lives in Alliance, Neb, said in an interview. “We don’t even know them. We just have never known that side” of the family.The members of Francis Walz’s family told The Associated Press in a written statement that shortly after Mr. Walz was nominated, family members had a get-together.“We had T-shirts made to show support for President Trump and JD Vance and took a group picture,” the written statement said. “That photo was shared with friends, and when we were asked for permission to post the picture, we agreed.”“The picture is real. The shirts are real,” the message continued. “The message on the shirts speaks for itself.”For her part, when asked if she was voting for her brother, Ms. Dietrich said, “I’m a Democrat, so yes, most definitely.”But even among Mr. Walz’s siblings, there’s a political rift. Mr. Walz’s other sibling, Jeff Walz, has donated to Mr. Trump and comments on Facebook indicate he will not vote for his own brother’s ticket. “I’m 100% opposed to all his ideology,” read a message from his Facebook account.When a commenter suggested he get onstage with President Trump, the response from Jeff Walz’s account read, “I’ve thought hard about doing something like that. I’m torn between that and just keeping my family out of it.” More