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      Your Senate Election Guide as Democrats and Republicans Race for Control

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      The chamber had seemed like Republicans’ to lose, but a few surprises are playing out.All year, control of the Senate has seemed like Republicans’ to lose. They are practically certain to pick up Senator Joe Manchin’s West Virginia Senate seat, and they need just one more of seven competitive seats held by Democrats or an independent to claim the majority.With Senator Jon Tester, a farmer and a third-term Democrat, trailing his Republican opponent in Montana, a state that’s gotten redder and redder, Republicans are closing in on their goal of wresting back the Democrats’ narrow majority. That would turbocharge Donald Trump’s ability to install his allies in political and judicial roles if he were to win the presidency, and it would stymie Vice President Kamala Harris’s agenda right out of the gate if she won.But this has been a year of political surprises — and there are several playing out across the Senate map right now.Democrats led many of those competitive races for much of the year, but some have tightened in recent weeks. Republican-held seats in Texas and Nebraska (yes, Nebraska) have become surprisingly competitive. And some candidates are subtly shifting their messages.To explain the state of play, I called my colleagues Carl Hulse and Annie Karni, our indomitable congressional correspondents who are covering the two toughest Senate re-election battles on the map, Montana and Ohio. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.Jess Bidgood: Annie and Carl, welcome back to the newsletter! Where are you?Carl Hulse: I am in Montana, where I’ve been for a week, chasing around Tim Sheehy, the Republican running to unseat Jon Tester, and watching a gazillion ads on TV. It’s incessant. I feel for these people. They’ve been bombarded.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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      Michigan Could Be the Difference Maker for Harris in the 2024 Election

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      Operatives from both parties see the race as deadlocked, and both insist they have a clearer path.Last month, I laid out four swing states that — at that time — seemed most likely to help you understand the election: Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. They are all still very important. But, in a twist that was probably inevitable in a close and volatile election, another state may be emerging as do-or-die territory for Vice President Kamala Harris.This is why I headed to Michigan this week.Michigan is, after Pennsylvania, the state where the campaigns for both Harris and former President Donald Trump, and their allies, have spent the most money on television advertising. It is the only state where both candidates, both of their running mates and both Obamas were all scheduled to appear this week, with both Harris and Trump themselves holding two public events each.And, if Trump’s slight polling leads in Georgia and North Carolina bear out on Election Day, the loss of Michigan’s 15 electoral votes could cost Harris the presidency even if she holds onto Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.On paper, you might think Michigan would be easy for Democrats. The state helped Democrats win back the House in 2018, gave President Biden his biggest margin of victory among the swing states in 2020, and handed Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, an 11 percentage-point victory after the Dobbs decision in 2022.Both Democratic and Republican operatives I spoke with here believe the race to be deadlocked, and both sides insisted they have a clearer path to victory. Allies of Trump believe that Harris’s troubles with Arab American voters, who are frustrated with the Biden administration’s policy toward Israel, and her apparent erosion among some Black men, will carry him over the finish line. Democrats are trying to hold the line in Detroit and run up the score in the suburbs, leaning hard on women as they pull out their post-2016 playbook for its biggest test yet.“We are not in panic mode,” Representative Hillary Scholten, a Democrat whose district in Western Michigan includes the kind of well-educated suburbs, such as East Grand Rapids, that Harris is banking on. “Michigan could come down to something like two votes per precinct. We want to make sure we’re reaching all of those voters.”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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      Chapo Wins Mozambique’s Presidency in Disputed Election

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      Daniel Chapo of the Frelimo party, which has governed the southern African nation for nearly 50 years, was declared the victor amid violence and widespread allegations of fraud.Daniel Chapo was declared the winner of Mozambique’s presidential election on Thursday after a process marred by violence and widespread accusations that his party, Frelimo, which has run the country for nearly five decades, committed fraud.The country’s electoral commission announced that Mr. Chapo won with nearly 71 percent of the vote in the election, which was held on Oct. 9. He will replace Filipe Nyusi, who has served his limit of two five-year terms.The announcement came amid deep upheaval in a southern African nation that has been battling a yearslong insurgency by Islamist extremists in its northern coastal region of Cabo Delgado. The conflict has only deepened the divisions between those who benefit from Mozambique’s trove of natural resources — including natural gas and precious stones — and those struggling with widespread poverty and unemployment.On Monday, tear gas and gunfire filled the streets of the capital, Maputo, as the police clashed with thousands of demonstrators, who accused the governing party of rigging the election and orchestrating the fatal shooting of two supporters of Mr. Chapo’s main rival.Frelimo has said it has not committed any fraud and was not involved in the killings.“Frelimo is confident that the results reflect the will of the people,” Ludmila Maguni, a party spokeswoman, wrote in an email to The New York Times.This month’s election and the sporadic protests around it may be one of the sharpest tests of Frelimo’s power since it led Mozambique to independence from Portugal in 1975 and weathered a civil war in the years after.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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      Why Democracy Lives and Dies by Math

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      A documentary filmmaker and a mathematician discuss our fear of numbers and its civic costs.“Math is power” is the tag line of a new documentary, “Counted Out,” currently making the rounds at festivals and community screenings. (It will have a limited theatrical release next year.) The film explores the intersection of mathematics, civil rights and democracy. And it delves into how an understanding of math, or lack thereof, affects society’s ability to deal with its most pressing challenges and crises — health care, climate, misinformation, elections.“When we limit access to the power of math to a select few, we limit our progress as a society,” said Vicki Abeles, the film’s director and a former Wall Street lawyer.Ms. Abeles was spurred to make the film in part in response to an anxiety about math that she had long observed in students, including her middle-school-age daughter. She was also struck by the math anxiety among friends and colleagues, and by the extent to which they tried to avoid math altogether. She wondered: Why are people so afraid of math? What are the consequences?One of many mathematicians who share their perspectives in the film is Ismar Volic, a professor at Wellesley College and a founder, in 2019, of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy. He is also the author of “Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps and Representation.”Dr. Volic grew up in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a country that in the early 1990s went through “a horrific war,” he said. “I am familiar with what collapse of democracy can lead to.” He saw parallels between what happened in Bosnia and what was happening in the United States and around the world. “That has driven me in the last few years, understanding the mechanics of democracy, the infrastructure of democracy, which is very much mathematical,” he said.The following conversation, conducted by videoconference and email, has been condensed and edited for clarity.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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      U.K. Plans Disposable Vape Ban in England

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      The measure, which echoes plans in Scotland and Wales, aims to protect young people’s health and reduce environmental damage.Disposable vapes will be banned in England starting in June under a government plan announced on Thursday, a move aimed at protecting young people’s health and reducing waste.Single-use vapes, which are often sold in brightly colored packaging, have become the “product of choice for the majority of kids vaping today,” Andrew Gwynne, the minister for public health and prevention, said in a government statement.An estimated five million disposable vapes are discarded each week in Britain, according to the government.The proposed ban — which requires the approval of Parliament, where the governing Labour Party holds a large majority — would prevent plastic, lead and mercury from single-use vapes leaching into the environment, the government said.It is also aimed at reducing problems caused by the disposal of lithium-ion batteries. Even when sent to recycling facilities, the government said, the products usually needed to be disassembled by hand, and the batteries posed a fire risk to workers in the waste industry.“Single-use vapes are extremely wasteful and blight our towns and cities,” Mary Creagh, an environment minister, said in the statement, adding that the initiative was part of an effort to combat Britain’s “throwaway culture.”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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      How ‘Gilded Age’ Star Christine Baranski Is Helping Harris Sway Polish American Voters

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      Voters with Eastern European backgrounds could be crucial in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.Christine Baranski, star of stage and screen, was watching the presidential debate in September when a lightbulb went off.Vice President Kamala Harris made a pointed reference to “the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania” as she castigated former President Donald Trump for his warm relationship with Vladimir Putin. Baranski, an actress who is among the country’s more famous Polish Americans, wondered if she could help sway any of them to Harris.This is how Baranski, a Buffalo native who plays a socialite in “The Gilded Age,” found herself on a modest street corner in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., last week, knocking on doors and talking to me.“I just thought, ‘Well, if there’s a way of making Polish Americans feel that heroic thing that they have,’” Baranski said, after stepping off a doorstep decorated for Halloween. “This election is so important that actually they could make a difference.”As Election Day nears, Polish American voters — as well as other Eastern European ethnic groups — have become as hot a commodity, electorally speaking, as kielbasa at Christmastime.In a dead-heat race, both Trump and Harris have made direct appeals to the group, which happens to be well-represented in the so-called Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. While Polish Americans are often seen as fairly conservative because of their Catholic roots, Democrats are hoping to gain the support of those who are concerned about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and apprehensive about Trump’s ties to the Russian president. Harris’s campaign is working to reach to those voters on the ground, while her allies say they have spent more than $1 million on digital advertisements micro-targeted at Polish and Ukrainian Americans in Pennsylvania.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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      Moldova Referendum on Goal of E.U. Membership Passes by a Thin Margin

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      A referendum that constitutionally enshrines a national objective to join the E.U. passed by a thin margin. The incumbent pro-E.U. president won the most votes in a concurrent election, but faces a runoff.A referendum in Moldova intended to put an end to decades of swerving between East and West yielded a microscopic win on Monday for voters who favor amending the Constitution to lock in alignment with Europe rather than Russia.The result of the referendum held Sunday was so tight, and the mandate for an irreversible path to Europe so thin, that Moldova, a former Soviet Republic and one of Europe’s poorest countries, looked stuck in a mire of uncertainty over its direction.The referendum has been closely watched by Russia, the European Union and the United States. The results highlighted the deep divisions found in many formerly Soviet lands — divisions that Russia has labored to widen and, in the case of Ukraine, Moldova’s neighbor to the east, exploited to set the stage for its full-scale military invasion in February 2022.Moldova’s firmly pro-Western president, Maia Sandu, finished far ahead of 10 rival candidates in an election that was also held on Sunday but she did not win the majority needed to avoid a runoff vote on Nov. 3.In a statement Monday afternoon, she declared victory “in an unfair fight” but warned that “we can only prevent disaster” if voters turned out for the runoff.Despite a slew of advance opinion polls showing that a substantial majority wanted to break out of Russia’s orbit of influence, near-final results announced Monday afternoon by the central electoral commission gave the “Yes” vote 50.46 percent against 49.54 for “No.”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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      Vietnam Revives Power-Sharing Arrangement With New President

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      The move restores a “four pillar” government structure that divides top-level duties to avoid the rise of a single strongman.Vietnam’s National Assembly approved a new president on Monday, restoring a power-sharing arrangement among four high-level leaders that has defined the country’s approach to Communist government for decades.The assembly’s announcement that Luong Cuong, a Vietnamese Army general, would be president calms speculation about the country’s top leader, To Lam, and whether he would try to retain the presidency after rising to become general secretary of the Communist Party in August.Under the country’s “four pillar” structure, established in part to avoid the rise of a single strongman, decision-making roles are split among the general secretary, president, prime minister and head of the National Assembly.Vietnam’s president typically oversees the military and usually comes from within its ranks. But from 2018 to 2021, Nguyen Phu Trong, who was general secretary from 2011 until his death in 2024, also served as president.Mr. Lam had been named president in May and initially held both roles. As minister of public security before that, he helped lead an anti-corruption campaign that pushed out several high-level figures, including two presidents and three deputy prime ministers.It was unclear whether he would seek to keep two positions and consolidate power ahead of the National Party Congress scheduled for 2026, when the country’s next leaders will be chosen.In a speech opening the assembly’s session on Monday, Mr. Lam praised his Communist Party colleagues for reaching an agreement at a moment when “the global and regional situation has had many complex developments, with unprecedented and unpredictable issues, posing many significant challenges to the task of building and defending the nation.”“The passing of comrade general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong is a great loss, leaving deep sorrow among the people and soldiers across the country,” he said. “In this context, our party has shown steadfast resolve, maintaining a unified bloc in will and action, quickly consolidating the leadership of the party and state with high consensus.”In his own introductory speech, Mr. Cuong promised to “resolutely and persistently safeguard national independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity.”Analysts said a return to Vietnam’s four-pillars arrangement could help minimize political infighting as another generation of leaders seek to fulfill Vietnam’s long-held ambitions of becoming a wealthy nation with high-end manufacturing and a larger role on the world stage.“This could help mitigate factional tensions by ensuring that the military has a prominent role in the nation’s leadership,” said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a research organization in Singapore.He added, “This will help stabilize the system after a period of significant turbulence.” More