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      What to Know About the Electoral College

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      “This is a very unique and bespoke system that I think nobody would create again today,” one expert said.Voters are already casting ballots for local offices, state legislators, governors, every member of the U.S. House and one-third of the U.S. Senate as Election Day nears.They are also choosing the next president but with a twist: Americans will actually select the electors, who will, in turn, elect Kamala Harris or Donald J. Trump, and their running mates.Yes, there are really two elections: one in which voters cast their ballots, and a second in which the electoral votes are cast and counted. Or, in other words, the winner of the most votes nationally is not assured victory.This is the way it has been done for more than 200 years, and it is likely to endure, even though a majority of Americans would prefer to have the winner of the most votes nationally rise to the presidency.What is the Electoral College?The Electoral College is made up of 538 elected members, one for each U.S. senator and U.S. representative, plus three for Washington, D.C.A presidential candidate needs to win a simple majority of them (270) to win the White House. The electors meet and cast votes for president and vice president in mid-December.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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      German Government at Risk of Collapse After Rift on Economy

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      A breakup of the divided and unpopular coalition well before elections set for next September could leave the country directionless at a critical time for Europe.Germany’s three-party coalition government, wracked by infighting and policy paralysis over a stagnant economy, is teetering on the brink of collapse.It does not look likely to last until the next scheduled elections in September 2025 and could fall imminently over a nasty budget debate that comes to a head this month, analysts say. The main political parties are already laying out their campaign positions, and coalition leaders are barely talking.The growing rift became more evident Friday evening, when a leaked position paper by the leader of one coalition party called for a fundamental economic overhaul that contradicts government policies, and is meant to cut costs.The 18-page economic paper was written by Christian Lindner, the leader of the pro-market liberal Free Democratic Party.Mr. Lindner wants to cut some social service payments, drop a special “solidarity tax” intended to help fund German reunification, and follow European Union climate regulations rather than more ambitious national ones — all demands that his coalition partners are highly unlikely to accept.After coalition parties lost votes in three state elections in September, Mr. Lindner warned that the coming months would become the “autumn of decisions.” And he has suggested that if the coalition did not work in his favor, his party could quit the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.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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      Kemi Badenoch, New Leader of the U.K.’s Tories, Vows to Make the Party More Conservative

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      Ms. Badenoch is expected to move the party, now in the opposition, further to the right.Britain’s Conservative Party announced on Saturday that it had selected Kemi Badenoch as its leader, putting a charismatic, often combative, right-wing firebrand at the helm of a party that suffered a crushing election defeat in July.Ms. Badenoch, 44, whose parents were immigrants from Nigeria, becomes the first Black woman to head a party that has had three other female leaders — Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss. She succeeds Rishi Sunak, who became the first nonwhite British prime minister after taking over the Tories, Britain’s oldest party, in 2022.“It is the most enormous honor to be elected to this role, to lead the party that I love, the party that has given me so much,” a smiling Ms. Badenoch said to a group of Conservative Party members after being announced the winner. “I hope that I will be able to repay that debt.”There is no guarantee, despite her swift ascent, that Ms. Badenoch will ever get to 10 Downing Street. The Labour Party’s landslide victory gave it a huge majority in Parliament and the Tories face at least four years in opposition before the next election is due.While the Labour prime minister, Keir Starmer, has gotten off to a shaky start, his party remains more popular than the Tories, who left voters frustrated and exhausted after 14 turbulent years in government.In a lively, occasionally bitter, leadership contest, Ms. Badenoch edged out Robert Jenrick, another former cabinet minister, by a vote of 53,806 to 41,388 among the party’s 130,000 or so dues-paying members (about 73 percent voted). She and Mr. Jenrick emerged as the two finalists in a multiple-round contest that left the members with an unexpectedly narrow choice of two candidates from the party’s right.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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      Trump Still Can’t Stop Talking About Women

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      The countdown to the election feels like an Advent calendar with a dubious remark behind each door.Vice President Kamala Harris almost never talks about what it would mean to elect a female president, nor does she speculate about why women disproportionately support her candidacy.Former President Donald Trump is talking plenty.In the past two days, he has vowed to be a protector of women “whether they like it or not.” He said that if he won the presidential election, he would want Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a man who is a vaccine skeptic, to work on “health and women’s health.” And, speaking with Tucker Carlson last night in Glendale, Ariz., Trump imagined a supremely violent fate for Liz Cheney, the Republican former congresswoman who has become a prominent surrogate for Harris.“She’s a radical war hawk,” Trump said. “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”The remark was graphic even by the standards of Trump, who has always seen provocation as a feature, not a bug, of his political style. And it fed right into Democrats’ efforts to frame the election — the first presidential contest since the fall of Roe v. Wade — as a reckoning over bigger questions of freedom, control and women’s fundamental place in society.“Anyone who wants to be president of the United States who uses that kind of violent rhetoric is clearly disqualified, and unqualified, to be president,” Harris said today on the tarmac in Madison, Wis.Trump’s defenders say he was simply making a statement about Cheney’s past support for American involvement in overseas conflicts. But the episode seemed like yet another gift from Trump and his allies to Democrats — making the final countdown to the election feel like an Advent calendar with a sexist, violent or otherwise politically dubious remark behind each door.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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      Tips on Discussing Politics With Family

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      When families disagree on candidates, kids can get caught in the middle.This article is part of A Kid’s Guide to the Election, a collection of stories about the 2024 presidential election for readers ages 8 to 14, written and produced by The New York Times for Kids. This section is published in The Times’s print edition on the last Sunday of every month.There’s one topic that Charlotte K.’s brother and dad simply cannot get along about these days: politics. Her family will sit down to dinner, someone will bring up a touchy political subject and suddenly they’re arguing. “It’s just like, ‘Oh, there they go,’” says Charlotte, 12, who’s from Hamburg, N.Y. “It makes me want to leave dinner kind of early so I can read or whatever.”Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s pretty common. In a 2022 poll, nearly one in five American voters said disagreements about politics hurt their relationships with friends or family. And things can get even more tense during a presidential election year, when it seems like that’s all anyone’s talking about. “We take very seriously how our political decisions affect our lives,” says Elan C. Hope, a researcher who studies young people, health and politics. When people support different candidates, it can sometimes feel as if they disagree with bigger parts of one another’s lives.To keep the peace, some families avoid political subjects entirely. Alayna W., 17, from Boise, Idaho, says her family doesn’t go near politics after years of division between her grandma (who supports Donald Trump) and her parents (who don’t). The pandemic felt like the last straw, when her family couldn’t agree on how to stay healthy. “It was weird and uncomfortable and awkward,” she says. “It was definitely a turning point in our family.”These types of disagreements can actually make families feel less close, according to Colleen Warner, a professor of communication. You may feel powerless and disconnected from the people you love the most. But if that’s the case, there are a few things you can do to help bring everyone together again. For starters, try bringing up a political opinion you do all agree on. It sounds corny, but if you’re caught in the middle of a divided family, it can help.Sometimes, Warner says, the best way to prevent political conversations from getting heated is to try listening and asking questions — before anyone jumps in with a counterpoint. Hannah F., 10, from Mint Hill, N.C., knew her grandparents supported Trump, unlike her parents. So Hannah asked them: Why? “I wanted to know a few reasons,” she says, and also to explain some of her own ideas. Family members won’t change their minds overnight. But asking questions helps everyone feel more respected. And by listening to other people’s ideas, you might just figure out where you stand on important issues, too. More

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      Play: Election-Night Bingo

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      Listen up for these terms as the votes roll in. Find them on the board to be the night’s big winner.This article is part of A Kid’s Guide to the Election, a collection of stories about the 2024 presidential election for readers ages 8 to 14, written and produced by The New York Times for Kids. This section is published in The Times’s print edition on the last Sunday of every month.After months and months and months of hearing about it, the election is finally here! Every four years, millions of Americans cast their ballots for president. Then, they wait and watch for the results on election night. It’s exciting! But also kind of … a lot.The news is a jumble of numbers, some very intense maps and a bunch of politics wonks talking a mile a minute about “exit polls” and “returns.” Not the most kid-friendly introduction to participatory democracy. But like most things, the more kids understand what’s going on, the more interesting it can be.That’s where this game comes in. Think of it as a mash-up of bingo and a language scavenger hunt. LINGO!InstructionsPrint out the bingo board and the definitions of the terms on it. Skim the terms to familiarize yourself.Set a timer for 30 minutes and settle in for an evening of election excitement.Anytime you read or hear one of phrases from the board, check it off. Check your printout (or scroll below) to read the explanation, too!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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      Trump Offends Women as His Campaign Reaches Out to Young Men

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      How Donald Trump’s allies are honing their message to young men in the campaign’s final days.For Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who is the founder of the pro-Trump group Turning Point USA, the most frightful Halloween trick of all might be this: Women are outvoting men.“Early vote has been disproportionately female,” he wrote yesterday on X, warning that, if men stay home, Vice President Kamala Harris will be elected.“If you want a vision of the future if you don’t vote, imagine Kamala’s voice cackling, forever,” Kirk added. “Men need to GO VOTE NOW.”It was a post that managed to both bemoan and explain a dynamic that has come to define the country’s first presidential election since the Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion. The gender gap between Harris and former President Donald Trump has grown large enough that just the fact of high turnout among women is enough to spook Republicans — and yet they keep talking about women in ways that may further intensify that gap.So Kirk may well be right that they need to scare up more men.And that’s exactly what he and Senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, seemed to be trying to do this morning when they appeared together near High Point University in North Carolina. Trump has opened an enormous lead among young men, and I traveled to High Point to hear Vance and Kirk’s message in a space with lots of them.“I think you guys have a lot to lose,” Vance said.“Do you want a person like Kamala Harris negotiating in private rooms with people like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping?” Vance asked, not mentioning the fact that Trump has praised both dictators. “Or do you want a person like Donald Trump actually sticking up for the United States of America?”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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      North Korea, in the Spotlight Over Ukraine, Launches a Long-Range Missile

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      The launch, into waters west of Japan, came shortly after the United States and South Korea criticized the North for sending troops to join Russia’s war. North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile off its east coast on Thursday, South Korean defense officials said, shortly after the United States and South Korea condemned the country for deploying troops near Ukraine to join Russia’s war effort.The missile was fired from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, at a deliberately steep angle so that it reached an unusually high altitude but did not fly over Japan, the South Korean military said in a brief statement. The missile landed in waters between North Korea and Japan.The military said it was analyzing data to learn more about the missile, but that it believed it was an ICBM. North Korea last tested a long-range missile​ in December, when it test-fired its solid-fueled Hwasong-18 ICBM.The launch on Thursday was the North’s first major weapons test since September, when it fired a new type of Hwasong-11 short-range ballistic missile, which it said could carry a “super-large” conventional warhead weighing 4.5 tons.On Wednesday, South Korean defense intelligence officials told lawmakers that North Korea might conduct long-range missile tests before the American presidential election next week. They also said that the North was preparing to conduct its seventh underground nuclear test, in a bid to raise tensions and gain diplomatic leverage with the next U.S. president. North Korea conducted its last nuclear test in 2017.In recent weeks, North Korea has posed a fresh security challenge to Washington and its allies by sending an estimated 11,000 troops to Russia to fight in its war against Ukraine. Thousands of them, outfitted with Russian uniforms and equipment, have moved closer to the front lines, preparing themselves for possible battle against Ukrainian troops, South Korean and American officials said.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