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      Turnover of Election Officials in Swing States Adds Strain for 2024, Report Says

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      A tide of resignations and retirements by election officials in battleground states, who have increasingly faced threats, harassment and interference, could further strain the election system in 2024, a national voting rights group warned in a report released on Thursday.The group, the Voting Rights Lab, said that the departures of election officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania and other swing states had the potential to undermine the independence of those positions.The 28-page report reveals the scope of challenges to the election system and underscores the hostile climate facing election officials across the nation. Resignations have swept through election offices in Texas and Virginia, while Republicans in Wisconsin have voted to remove the state’s nonpartisan head of elections, sowing further distrust about voting integrity.In Pennsylvania, more than 50 top election officials at the county level have departed since the 2020 election, according to the report, which said that the loss of their expertise was particularly concerning.In Arizona, the top election officials in 13 of 15 counties left their posts during the same period, the report said. Some of the defections have taken place in counties where former President Donald J. Trump’s allies have sought to require the hand-counting of ballots and have spread misinformation about electronic voting equipment.“They are leaving primarily due to citing harassment and security concerns that are stemming from disproven conspiracy theories in the state,” said Liz Avore, a senior adviser for the Voting Rights Lab.The Justice Department has charged at least 14 people with trying to intimidate election officials since it created a task force in 2021 to focus on such threats, according to the agency. It has secured nine convictions, including two on Aug. 31 in Georgia and Arizona, both battleground states.“A functioning democracy requires that the public servants who administer our elections are able to do their jobs without fearing for their lives,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement at the time.Along with the departures, the Voting Rights Lab report examined a series of issues that it said could create obstacles for the 2024 election, including the approval of new rules in Georgia and North Carolina since 2020 that are likely to increase the number of voter eligibility challenges and stiffen identification requirements.In another area of concern for the group, it drew attention to the expiration of emergency rules for absentee voting in New Hampshire that were enacted during the pandemic.At the same time, some other battleground states have expanded voting access. Michigan will offer at least nine days of early voting in 2024, accept more forms of identification and allow voters to opt in to a permanent mail voting list, while Nevada made permanent the distribution of mail ballots to all voters, the report said. More

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      Doug Burgum and Asa Hutchinson May Not Make the Next GOP Debate

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      Low poll numbers could keep the long-shot Republicans off the stage next Wednesday in the second presidential primary debate.After eking their way into the first Republican presidential debate last month, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, long-shot candidates, appear to be in jeopardy of failing to qualify for the party’s second debate next week.Both have been registering support in the low single digits in national polls and in the polls from early nominating states that the Republican National Committee uses to determine eligibility.The threshold is higher for this debate, happening on Wednesday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. Several better-known G.O.P. rivals are expected to make the cut — but the candidate who is perhaps best known, former President Donald J. Trump, is again planning to skip the debate.Mr. Trump, who remains the overwhelming front-runner for the party’s nomination despite a maelstrom of indictments against him, will instead give a speech to striking union autoworkers in Michigan.Who Has Qualified for the Second Republican Presidential Debate?Six candidates appear to have made the cut for the next debate. Donald J. Trump is not expected to attend.Some of Mr. Trump’s harshest critics in the G.O.P. have stepped up calls for the party’s bottom-tier candidates to leave the crowded race, consolidating support for a more viable alternative to the former president.Lance Trover, a spokesman for the Burgum campaign, contended in an email on Wednesday that Mr. Burgum was still positioned to qualify for the debate. Mr. Hutchinson’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Emma Vaughn, a spokeswoman for the R.N.C., said in an email on Wednesday that candidates have until 48 hours before the debate to qualify. She declined to comment further about which ones had already done so.Before the first debate on Aug. 23, the R.N.C. announced it was raising its polling and fund-raising thresholds to qualify for the second debate, which will be televised by Fox Business. Candidates must now register at least 3 percent support in a minimum of two national polls accepted by the R.N.C. The threshold for the first debate was 1 percent.Debate organizers will also recognize a combination of one national poll and polls from at least two of the following early nominating states: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.“While debate stages are nice, we know there is no such thing as a national primary,” Mr. Trover said in a statement, adding, “Voters in Iowa and New Hampshire are the real people that narrow the field.”Mr. Burgum’s campaign has a plan to give him a boost just before the debate, Mr. Trover added, targeting certain Republicans and conservative-leaning independents through video text messages. A super PAC supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is running a distant second to Mr. Trump in Republican polls, has used a similar text messaging strategy.Mr. Burgum, a former software executive, is also harnessing his wealth to introduce himself to Republicans through television — and at considerable expense. Since the first debate, a super PAC aligned with him has booked about $8 million in national broadcast, live sports and radio advertising, including a $2 million infusion last week, according to Mr. Burgum’s campaign, which is a separate entity. His TV ads appeared during Monday Night Football on ESPN.As of Wednesday, there were six Republicans who appeared to be meeting the national polling requirement, according to FiveThirtyEight, a polling aggregation site.That list was led by Mr. Trump, who is ahead of Mr. DeSantis by an average of more than 40 percentage points. The list also includes the multimillionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy; Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Mr. Trump’s United Nations ambassador; former Vice President Mike Pence; and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.And while Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina was averaging only 2.4 percent support nationally as of Wednesday, he is also expected to make the debate stage by relying on a combination of national and early nominating state polls to qualify.Mr. Scott has performed better in places like Iowa and his home state than in national polls, and his campaign has pressed the R.N.C. to place more emphasis on early nominating states.The R.N.C. also lifted its fund-raising benchmarks for the second debate. Only candidates who have received financial support from 50,000 donors will make the debate stage — 10,000 more than they needed for the first debate. They must also have at least 200 donors in 20 or more states or territories.While Mr. Burgum’s campaign said that it had reached the fund-raising threshold, it was not immediately clear whether Mr. Hutchinson had.Both candidates resorted to some unusual tactics to qualify for the first debate.Mr. Burgum offered $20 gift cards to anyone who gave at least $1 to his campaign, while Politico reported that Mr. Hutchinson had paid college students for each person they could persuade to contribute to his campaign.Candidates will still be required to sign a loyalty pledge promising to support the eventual Republican nominee, something that Mr. Trump refused to do before skipping the first debate.Shane Goldmacher More

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      When Is the Second Debate, and Who Will Be There?

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      The Republican National Committee will hold its second primary debate on Sept. 27 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California.Eight Republicans clawed their way onto the stage on Wednesday for the first presidential primary debate, with some using gimmicks and giveaways to meet the party’s criteria.That may not cut it next time.To qualify for the second debate, which will be held on Sept. 27 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., candidates must register at least 3 percent support in a minimum of two national polls accepted by the Republican National Committee, according to a person familiar with the party’s criteria. That is up from the 1 percent threshold for Wednesday’s debate.Organizers will also recognize a combination of one national poll and polls from at least two of the following early nominating states: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. The R.N.C. is also lifting its fund-raising benchmarks. Only candidates who have received financial support from 50,000 donors will make the debate stage, which is 10,000 more than they needed for the first debate. They must also have at least 200 donors in 20 or more states or territories.Candidates will still be required to sign a loyalty pledge promising to support the eventual Republican nominee, something that former President Donald J. Trump refused to do before skipping Wednesday’s debate. He has suggested that he is not likely to participate in the next one either.As of Wednesday, seven Republicans were averaging at least 3 percent support in national polls, according to FiveThirtyEight, a polling aggregation site.That list included Mr. Trump, who is leading Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida by an average of more than 30 percentage points; the multimillionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy; former Vice President Mike Pence; Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina; Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Mr. Trump’s United Nations ambassador; and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.Based on the R.N.C.’s polling requirements, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor, are in jeopardy of not qualifying for the second debate, which will be televised by Fox Business.Both candidates resorted to unusual tactics to qualify for the first one.Mr. Burgum, a wealthy former software executive, offered $20 gift cards to anyone who gave at least $1 to his campaign, while Politico reported that Mr. Hutchinson had paid college students for each person they could persuade to contribute to his campaign. More

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      Nevada G.O.P. Sets February Caucus, Jumping Ahead of South Carolina

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      Nevada will now come third, after Iowa and New Hampshire, on the Republicans’ presidential nominating calendar.Nevada Republicans confirmed on Monday that the state would jump the traditional line in the presidential nominating calendar by scheduling a caucus for Feb. 8, 2024.For decades, in years with open presidential races, Nevada’s Republicans voted after South Carolina. The decision to move ahead of South Carolina’s Republican primary, set for Feb. 24 next year, was meant to raise Nevada’s prominence in the political landscape, the party said in a statement.But there was also another likely motive: to upstage a presidential primary scheduled for two days earlier, on Feb. 6. That primary, run by the state, is required by a law pushed through by Nevada Democrats in 2021. Republicans, who have tried to block the primary in court, say they will ignore the results and use the caucus to pick delegates to the Republican National Convention.A primary, with secret ballots and easier voting, typically yields broader voter participation. The potential for dueling election dates the same week is likely to sow voter confusion.Nevada’s caucus will follow Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus on Jan. 15, and the New Hampshire primary, whose date is not yet fixed.“The ‘first in the West caucus’ underscores Nevada’s prominence as a key player in the presidential nomination process,” the Nevada G.O.P. said in a statement on Monday.While public polling of the presidential race in Nevada is scarce, national surveys this year show former President Donald J. Trump well ahead of his closest rival for the nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. In Iowa, a recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed Mr. Trump with a large advantage over Mr. DeSantis and the rest of the field, but his statewide support there is smaller than his national dominance among Republicans.The chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, Michael J. McDonald, was one of six people who signed certificates designating Nevada’s electoral votes for Donald J. Trump in December 2020, even though Joseph R. Biden Jr. was certified as the winner of the state. He has also faced calls to resign after the party backed several losing election-denying candidates last year.The Republicans are not alone in shaking up their calendars. The Democratic National Committee has radically reshaped its traditional nominating calendar for next year, designating South Carolina as the first primary and demoting Iowa and New Hampshire.The move, endorsed by President Biden, was intended to more closely reflect the racial diversity of the party and the country. But New Hampshire, where state law requires it to hold the first primary, could cast a shadow over Democrats’ plans by holding, as expected, a late January primary, one in which Mr. Biden does not appear on the ballot. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump attacks ‘no personality’ DeSantis and repeats election lies in Nevada

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      Donald Trump attacked Ron DeSantis at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday, saying his closest challenger for the Republican presidential nomination had “no personality” – but claiming responsibility for the Florida governor’s career on the national stage.Trump also repeated his lie about electoral fraud in his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, to a receptive audience, before high-fiving fans at a mixed martial event.Reporting a retelling of “a story Trump has told many times”, the Nevada Independent said the multiply indicted former president described being asked for an endorsement when DeSantis, a hard-right congressman, ran for governor in 2018.“I said, listen Ron, you’re so dead that if Abraham Lincoln and George Washington came back from the dead, and if they put their hands and hearts together and prayed … nothing is going to change. Ron, you are gone.”DeSantis beat the Democrat Andrew Gillum for governor, pursued a hard-right agenda in office then beat Charlie Crist, a former governor and former Republican, in a re-election landslide last year.But DeSantis has struggled to make an impact on the presidential campaign, a clear second to Trump but unable to dent a near-30 point lead for the former president in most poll averages.“I’m not a big fan of his and he’s highly overrated,” Trump said in Las Vegas.Hitting DeSantis for having supported cuts to social security, Trump said: “The one thing you have to remember, when a politician comes out with an initial plan and then they go into a corner because they’re getting killed. Because he’s getting killed. Well, he also has no personality. That helps, right?”According to FactCheck.org, DeSantis “has, in the past, supported proposals that would reduce social security and Medicare spending, including raising the age for full eligibility”. DeSantis now says he will not “mess with” social security but Trump has seized on a profitable line of attack.DeSantis is widely seen to lack campaigning skills, struggling to connect with voters and engaging in barbed conversations with reporters. This week, he told Fox News the “corporate media” was to blame for his struggles.“Well, I think if you look at the people like the corporate media, who are they going after?” he said. “Who do they not want to be the nominee? They’re going after me.”DeSantis also said he would participate in the first Republican debate in August, an event Trump has suggested he will skip.Trump dominates the primary with more than 50% support despite facing an unprecedented 71 criminal indictments and the prospect of more.Trials are scheduled over hush money payments to a porn star and Trump’s retention of classified records. The former president pleaded not guilty to all charges. He also denied wrongdoing in a civil case in which he was held liable for sexual abuse and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll, and ordered to pay about $5m.Further indictments are thought imminent from state and federal prosecutors regarding election subversion and incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress.In Las Vegas, Trump repeated his lie about his conclusive defeat by Biden.The Nevada Independent said “more than 10 attendees ” it interviewed “echoed Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, dismissed … indictments against him as an abuse of government power and said Trump was the only Republican presidential candidate who has always stayed true to his word”.Attendees, the paper added, “described Trump as the only candidate who could save the country from ruin”.On Sunday, a fringe candidate in the Republican primary, the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, said he would not do business with Trump outside politics.“I just think that it’s important that you’re judged by the company you keep,” Burgum, who made his fortune in computing before entering politics, told NBC’s Meet the Press.However, Burgum also said he would support Trump if he is the Republican nominee.“I voted for him twice and if he’s running against Biden I will absolutely vote for him again,” Burgum said.The decision was a “no-brainer”, he said. More

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      DeSantis Takes Clear Aim at Trump in Nevada, an Important Early State

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida avoided mentioning Donald Trump at a G.O.P. fund-raiser in Nevada, but he took clear aim at the former president.In black boots, jeans and an untucked shirt — the fund-raiser dress code specified “ranch casual” — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Saturday tried to persuade Republican voters in Nevada still loyal to former President Donald J. Trump that the party’s formula for winning elections was beyond its shelf life.Headlining a conservative jamboree in the swing state, where loyalties to Mr. Trump still run deep, Mr. DeSantis never mentioned his rival for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination during a speech in Gardnerville, Nev.But the Florida governor sought to draw a not-so-subtle contrast between himself and the former president, a onetime ally who is the party’s overwhelming front-runner in a crowded Republican field. He described last year’s midterm elections as another disappointment in a string of defeats for the party, while touting his more than 1.2 million-vote margin of victory in his re-election last November.“We’ve developed a culture of losing in this party,” Mr. DeSantis said, adding, “You’re not going to get a mulligan on the 2024 election.”Mr. DeSantis spoke for nearly an hour at the Basque Fry, a barbecue fund-raiser that supports conservative groups in Nevada.Steven Cheung, a campaign spokesman for Mr. Trump, hit back at Mr. DeSantis in a statement to The Times on Saturday.“Ron DeSantis is a proven liar and fraud,” he said. “That’s why he’s collapsing in the polls — both nationally and statewide. He should be careful before his chances in 2028 completely disappear.”The Basque Fry has risen in stature since it was first held in 2015, drawing a stream of Republican presidential candidates to the Corley Ranch in the Carson Valley with its rugged backdrop of the Sierra Nevada.Past headliners have included Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who earlier this month entered the race, had been scheduled to attend in 2017 but canceled because Hurricane Harvey was bearing down on the Gulf Coast.It’s an opportunity for White House aspirants to make an elevator pitch to rank-and-file conservatives in Nevada, a crucial early proving ground that in 2021 replaced its party-run caucuses with a primary. Republicans oppose the change, passed by the State Legislature, and are suing the state to keep the caucuses.Mr. DeSantis’s visit to Nevada punctuated a week in which Mr. Trump dominated the news cycle with his arraignment on Tuesday in a 37-count federal indictment over his handling of classified documents after leaving office.As Mr. Trump’s chief Republican rival, Mr. DeSantis did not mention the indictment outright, but instead echoed G.O.P. attacks on the Justice Department and pledged to replace the director of the F.B.I. if elected.“We are going to end the weaponization of this government once and for all,” Mr. DeSantis said.In 2016, the last presidential election during which the G.O.P. did not have a sitting president, Mr. Trump won the Republican caucuses in Nevada, where rural activists and Mormon voters wield influence. He finished 22 percentage points ahead of his closest rival, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.During the midterm elections last fall, Mr. Trump campaigned for Republicans in Nevada at a rally in Minden, which is next to Gardnerville. The elections turned out to be a mixed showing for the G.O.P., which flipped the governor’s office but lost pivotal races for the Senate and the House, including the seat held by Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat who had been considered vulnerable.Ms. Cortez Masto’s defeat of Adam Laxalt, a former Nevada attorney general who was the de facto host of Saturday’s fund-raiser, helped give Democrats outright control of the Senate.Mr. Laxalt, who was a roommate of Mr. DeSantis when they were both Navy officers, introduced him to the crowd of about 2,500 people.“This is the kind of leader we need,” he said.Mr. Laxalt began the Basque Fry in 2015, building on a tradition that was started by his grandfather, Paul Laxalt, a former United States senator and governor of Nevada who died in 2018.Northern Nevada has one of the highest concentrations in the nation of people of Basque ancestry, a group that includes Mr. Laxalt, who also ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018.Jim McCrossin, 78, a retiree from Virginia City, Nev., who surveyed the ranch in a DeSantis cap, said that he had previously supported Mr. Trump but worried about his electability.“I just think there’s so much hate for him,” he said, adding, “Trump’s been arrested twice, and that’s probably not the last time.”He said that Mr. DeSantis “doesn’t have the drama.”His household is divided: His wife, Jacquie McCrossin, said that she still favored Mr. Trump, even though she had on a DeSantis cap.Shellie Wood, 72, a retired nail technician and gold miner from Winnemucca, Nev., who sported a Trump 2020 camouflage cap, said that Mr. DeSantis would make a strong running mate for Mr. Trump, but that it was not his moment.Still, Ms. Wood said Mr. DeSantis had made a positive impression on her with his record in Florida.“He’s stood up against Disney, and that’s something a lot of people didn’t have the gumption to do,” she said.Mr. DeSantis repeatedly reminded the crowd of his feud with Disney, which he and other Republicans turned into an avatar of “woke” culture after the company criticized a state law that prohibited classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity.In the buildup to his formal debut as a candidate last month, Mr. DeSantis grappled with being labeled by the media and rivals as awkward at retail politics and in one-on-one settings with voters.Before stepping up to the podium, with the snow-peaked mountains behind him, Mr. DeSantis mingled with a group of V.I.P.s for about 30 minutes in a reception that was closed to the news media.Mr. DeSantis waves as he walks behind his wife, Casey DeSantis, and their children, Madison, Mamie and Mason.Jason Henry for The New York TimesOutside the reception, Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife, who has been an omnipresent campaigner and influence on the policies of her husband’s administration, took selfies and signed autographs for local Republicans. She had on boots, too.While Mr. DeSantis impressed many of the attendees, there was still a pro-Trump undercurrent at the event. Shawn Newman, 58, a truck driver from Fernley, Nev., who hovered near a table with DeSantis campaign swag while wearing a ubiquitous red Trump cap, said Mr. Trump was still his candidate.“Trump’s above their reach,” he said of the other Republican candidates.As Mr. DeSantis worked a rope line after his speech, one man handed him a campaign hat to sign. In his other hand, he clutched a Trump cap. More

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      Jim Marchant, a Nevada Election Denier, Announces Senate Run

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      Mr. Marchant, who lost his bid for Nevada’s secretary of state last year, will now attempt to unseat Senator Jacky Rosen, the Democratic incumbent.Jim Marchant, a vocal election denier and Trump ally who lost his bid for Nevada’s secretary of state in last year’s midterm elections, declared his candidacy on Tuesday for the Senate in a swing state contest that could decide control of the chamber in 2024.Mr. Marchant, a Republican, is seeking to challenge Senator Jacky Rosen, a moderate Democrat who is in her first term. No other high-profile Republicans have entered the contest so far.During last year’s midterm elections, Mr. Marchant helped organize a national “America First” slate of secretary of state candidates, a group of right-wing election deniers whose campaigns centered on re-litigating baseless voter fraud claims. All but one of the candidates were rejected by voters.The once-obscure election oversight post has taken on heightened significance since the 2020 election. In Mr. Marchant’s race, he did not appear to concede.Mr. Marchant, 66, a former one-term assemblyman, was also part of Nevada’s alternate slate of pro-Trump electors who sought to overturn Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the state in 2020. He refused to accept the results that same year in his race for Congress, unsuccessfully challenging them in court.“There’s nothing more precious than our freedom and personal liberty,” Mr. Marchant said on Tuesday, speaking at a Las Vegas church known for having tested Nevada’s pandemic stay-at-home orders in court in 2020. “And I’m running for United States Senate to protect Nevadans from the overbearing government, from Silicon Valley, from big media, from labor unions, from the radical gender change advocates, where Jacky Rosen has failed you.”In a statement on Twitter on Tuesday, Ms. Rosen cast Mr. Marchant as an extremist.“Nevadans deserve a Senator who will fight for them, not a MAGA election denier who opposes abortion rights even in cases of rape and incest,” she wrote. “While far-right politicians like Jim Marchant spread baseless conspiracy theories, I’ve always focused on solving problems for Nevadans.”Mr. Marchant was joined on Tuesday by the political strategist Dick Morris, who Mr. Marchant said would be working as a general consultant on his campaign. Mr. Morris, who preceded him onstage, also repeated false claims about election fraud. More

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      The ‘Diploma Divide’ Is the New Fault Line in American Politics

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      The legal imbroglios of Donald Trump have lately dominated conversation about the 2024 election. As primary season grinds on, campaign activity will ebb and wane, and issues of the moment — like the first Trump indictment and potentially others to come — will blaze into focus and then disappear.Yet certain fundamentals will shape the races as candidates strategize about how to win the White House. To do this, they will have to account for at least one major political realignment: educational attainment is the new fault line in American politics.Educational attainment has not replaced race in that respect, but it is increasingly the best predictor of how Americans will vote, and for whom. It has shaped the political landscape and where the 2024 presidential election almost certainly will be decided. To understand American politics, candidates and voters alike will need to understand this new fundamental.Americans have always viewed education as a key to opportunity, but few predicted the critical role it has come to play in our politics. What makes the “diploma divide,” as it is often called, so fundamental to our politics is how it has been sorting Americans into the Democratic and Republican Parties by educational attainment. College-educated voters are now more likely to identify as Democrats, while those without college degrees — especially white Americans, but increasingly others as well — are now more likely to support Republicans.It’s both economics and cultureThe impact of education on voting has an economic as well as a cultural component. The confluence of rising globalization, technological developments and the offshoring of many working-class jobs led to a sorting of economic fortunes, a widening gap in the average real wealth between households led by college graduates compared with the rest of the population, whose levels are near all-time lows.According to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, since 1989, families headed by college graduates have increased their wealth by 83 percent. For households headed by someone without a college degree, there was relatively little or no increase in wealth.Culturally, a person’s educational attainment increasingly correlates with their views on a wide range of issues like abortion, attitudes about L.G.B.T.Q. rights and the relationship between government and organized religion. It also extends to cultural consumption (movies, TV, books), social media choices and the sources of information that shape voters’ understanding of facts.This is not unique to the United States; the pattern has developed across nearly all Western democracies. Going back to the 2016 Brexit vote and the most recent national elections in Britain and France, education level was the best predictor of how people voted.This new class-based politics oriented around the education divide could turn out to be just as toxic as race-based politics. It has facilitated a sorting of America into enclaves of like-minded people who look at members of the other enclave with increasing contempt.The road to political realignmentThe diploma divide really started to emerge in voting in the early 1990s, and Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016 solidified this political realignment. Since then, the trends have deepened.In the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden defeated Mr. Trump by assembling a coalition different from the one that elected and re-elected Barack Obama. Of the 206 counties that Mr. Obama carried in 2008 and 2012 that were won by Mr. Trump in 2016, Mr. Biden won back only 25 of these areas, which generally had a higher percentage of non-college-educated voters. But overall Mr. Biden carried college-educated voters by 15 points.In the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats carried white voters with a college degree by three points, while Republicans won white non-college voters by 34 points (a 10-point improvement from 2018).This has helped establish a new political geography. There are now 42 states firmly controlled by one party or the other. And with 45 out of 50 states voting for the same party in the last two presidential elections, the only states that voted for the winning presidential candidates in both 2016 and 2020 rank roughly in the middle on educational levels — Pennsylvania (23rd in education attainment), Georgia (24th), Wisconsin (26th), Arizona (30th) and Michigan (32nd).In 2020, Mr. Biden received 306 electoral votes, Mr. Trump, 232. In the reapportionment process — which readjusts the Electoral College counts based on the most current census data — the new presidential electoral map is more favorable to Republicans by a net six points.In 2024, Democrats are likely to enter the general election with 222 electoral votes, compared with 219 for Republicans. That leaves only eight states, with 97 electoral votes — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — up for grabs. And for these states, education levels are near the national average — not proportionately highly educated nor toward the bottom of attainment.The 2024 mapA presidential candidate will need a three-track strategy to carry these states in 2024. The first goal is to further exploit the trend of education levels driving how people vote. Democrats have been making significant inroads with disaffected Republicans, given much of the party base’s continued embrace of Mr. Trump and his backward-looking grievances, as well as a shift to the hard right on social issues — foremost on abortion. This is particularly true with college-educated Republican women.In this era of straight-party voting, it is notable that Democrats racked up double-digit percentages from Republicans in the 2022 Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania governors’ races. They also made significant inroads with these voters in the Senate races in Arizona (13 percent), Pennsylvania (8 percent), Nevada (7 percent) and Georgia (6 percent).This represents a large and growing pool of voters. In a recent NBC poll, over 30 percent of self-identified Republicans said that they were not supporters of MAGA.At the same time, Republicans have continued to increase their support with non-college-educated voters of color. Between 2012 and 2020, support for Democrats from nonwhite-working-class voters dropped 18 points. The 2022 Associated Press VoteCast exit polls indicated that support for Democrats dropped an additional 14 points compared with the 2020 results.However, since these battleground states largely fall in the middle of education levels in our country, they haven’t followed the same trends as the other 42 states. So there are limits to relying on the education profile of voters to carry these states.This is where the second group of voters comes in: political independents, who were carried by the winning party in the last four election cycles. Following Mr. Trump’s narrow victory with independent voters in 2016, Mr. Biden carried them by nine points in 2020. In 2018, when Democrats took back the House, they carried them by 15 points, and their narrow two-point margin in 2022 enabled them to hold the Senate.The importance of the independent voting bloc continues to rise. This is particularly significant since the margin of victory in these battleground states has been very narrow in recent elections. The 2022 exit polls showed that over 30 percent of voters were independents, the highest percentage since 1980. In Arizona, 40 percent of voters in 2022 considered themselves political independents.These independent voters tend to live disproportionately in suburbs, which are now the most diverse socioeconomic areas in our country. These suburban voters are the third component of a winning strategy. With cities increasingly controlled by Democrats — because of the high level of educated voters there — and Republicans maintaining their dominance in rural areas with large numbers of non-college voters, the suburbs are the last battleground in American politics.Voting in the suburbs has been decisive in determining the outcome of the last two presidential elections: Voters in the suburbs of Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Phoenix determined the winner in the last two presidential elections and are likely to play the same pivotal role in 2024.These voters moved to the suburbs for a higher quality of life: affordable housing, safe streets and good schools. These are the issues that animate these voters, who have a negative view of both parties. They do not embrace a MAGA-driven Republican Party, but they also do not trust Mr. Biden and Democrats, and consider them to be culturally extreme big spenders who aren’t focused enough on issues like immigration and crime.So in addition to education levels, these other factors will have a big impact on the election. The party that can capture the pivotal group of voters in the suburbs of battleground states is likely to prevail. Democrats’ success in the suburbs in recent elections suggests an advantage, but it is not necessarily enduring. Based on post-midterm exit polls from these areas, voters have often voted against a party or candidate — especially Mr. Trump — rather than for one.But in part because of the emergence of the diploma divide, there is an opening for both political parties in 2024 if they are willing to gear their agenda and policies beyond their political base. The party that does that is likely to win the White House.Doug Sosnik was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000 and is a senior adviser to the Brunswick Group.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