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      ‘He’s 80 Years Old, and That Colors Every Impression Voters Have’: Three Writers Dish on Biden and the G.O.P. Debate

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      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Katherine Mangu-Ward, the editor in chief of Reason magazine, and Nate Silver, the founder and former editor of FiveThirtyEight and author of the newsletter Silver Bulletin, to discuss their expectations for the third Republican debate on Wednesday night. They also dug into and sorted through a blizzard of political news — particularly the new New York Times/Siena battleground-state polling with dreadful news for President Biden that has Democrats freaked out (again).Frank Bruni: Thank you both for joining me. While we’ll pivot in short order to the debate, I can’t shake that poll, whose scariness ranks somewhere between “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and “The Exorcist.” I know my own head is spinning. I mean: Donald Trump ahead of President Biden in five of six crucial battleground states?How loud an alarm is this? Should Biden at this late stage consider not pursuing re-election? Would that likely help or hurt the Democrats in winning the White House? And if not Biden, who would give the party the best chance? Nate, let’s start with you.Nate Silver: Thanks for having me, Frank! It’s nice to be back in the (digital) pages of The Times! I think whether Democrats would be better off if Biden dropped out is very much an open question — which is kind of a remarkable thing to be saying at this late stage. There’s a whole cottage industry devoted to trying to figure out why Biden doesn’t get more credit on the economy, for instance. And the answer might just be that he’s 80 years old, and that colors every impression voters have of him.Katherine Mangu-Ward: The voters in these polls just seem to be screaming, ‘He’s too old, and I feel poor!’ The most shocking finding was that only 2 percent of voters said the economy was excellent. Two percent! Less than 1 percent of voters under 30 said the economy was excellent. In Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin, exactly zero polled respondents under 30 said the economy was excellent.Bruni: Nate, I take your point about “open question” — I have no crystal ball, and my God, I’ve never so badly wanted one, because the Democrats getting this right and blocking Trump is, well, incalculably vital to this democracy’s future. But if you were the party’s chief adviser and you had to make the call: Yes to Biden or no to Biden and an invitation to someone else?Silver: Well, I’m the probabilities guy — so I’ll usually avoid answering a question definitively unless you force me to. Really, the best option would have been if Biden decided in March he wouldn’t run, and then you could have a vigorous primary. If you actually invested me with all this power, I’d want access to private information. I’d like to do some polling. I’d want to canvas people like Gretchen Whitmer and Raphael Warnock about how prepared they are. I’d like to know how energetic Biden is from day to day.Bruni: And you, Katherine? Biden thumbs-up or thumbs-down? And if thumbs-down, tell me your favorite alternative.Mangu-Ward: If we’re picking up magical artifacts, a time machine would be more useful than a crystal ball. And you’d need to go back before the selection of Kamala Harris as vice president. A viable vice president would have been a moderate threat to Biden, but a weak one is a major threat to the party. If we’re scrounging around for an alternative, I don’t completely hate Colorado Gov. Jared Polis.Bruni: I’d settle at this point for a Magic 8 Ball. And Katherine, “don’t completely hate” in 2023 politics equals “want to marry and live with forever” in the politics of decades past. We’re a cynical lot!In any case, Nate mentioned age. How do you two explain that the same poll we’ve been talking about revealed that while 62 percent of Americans feel that Biden, 80, doesn’t have the mental sharpness to be effective, only 44 percent feel that way about Trump, 77. Only 39 percent said that Trump is too old to be president, while 71 percent said that Biden is. Do those numbers make any sense at all to you?Silver: There are at least three things going on here. First, the three-and-a-half-year difference between Trump and Biden is not nothing. It’s certainly something you start to notice if you have older friends, parents, relatives entering their late 70s or early 80s. Second, Biden’s manner of speaking and presentation just reads as being more old-fashioned than Trump’s, and that perception is reinforced by media coverage. Third, I wonder if younger voters feel like Biden’s a bit of a forced choice — there wasn’t really a competitive primary — so “old” serves as a euphemism for “stale.”Mangu-Ward: Because this election cycle has been largely bereft of serious policy debate, I also think age is one thing people can grab on to to justify their unease about a Biden second term.Bruni: I wrote a few months back about this: Trump is so deliberately and flamboyantly outrageous — such a purposeful cyclone of noise and distraction — that the normal metrics don’t apply to him. He transcends mundane realities like age. He’s Trump! He’s a horror-movie villain, a Saturday-morning cartoon, a parade float. Those things don’t have ages (or four indictments encompassing 91 counts).Silver: I like that theory. There’s a sense in which some voters feel like they’re in on the joke with Trump. Although I also don’t think that voters have quite shifted into general-election mode, and maybe the media hasn’t, either. Trump as candidate is a very different ball of wax than Trump as president, and that’s what Democrats will spend the next year reminding voters about.Bruni: Katherine, let’s say Biden stays in the race. Certainly looks that way. Can you envision a scenario in which Democrats grow so doubtful, so uncomfortable, that he’s seriously challenged for the nomination and maybe doesn’t get it? If so, sketch that for me.Mangu-Ward: As a libertarian (but not a Libertarian), I’m always cautiously interested in third-party challenges, and that seems more likely to me than a direct challenge for the Democratic nomination. After each election cycle, there’s a moment when pundits decide whether to blame a Green or a Libertarian or an independent for the fact that their pick lost, but an appealing outsider peeling off support from Biden or Trump seems more likely to be a real consideration this time around. We have a lot of noisy characters who don’t fit neatly into partisan boxes on the loose at the moment.Bruni: Veterans of Obama’s 2012 campaign are arguing that Obama was in a similar position to Biden a year out from the election in 2011. Nate, do they have a point? Or do their assurances ring hollow because Biden is not Obama, isn’t as beloved by the base, is indeed old, has been stuck in a low-approval rut for months now going back to 2021, or some combination of those?Silver: Certainly, it’s generally true that polling a year in advance of the election is not very predictive. But Biden’s situation is worse than Obama’s. His approval ratings are notably worse. The Electoral College has shifted against Democrats since 2012 (although it’s now not a given). And there’s the age thing. Remember, a majority of Democrats did not even want Biden to run again. I think the Democratic communications and strategy people have been shrugging off that data more than they maybe should.Mangu-Ward: Biden is definitely not Obama, and it’s definitely not 2012. The concerns about Biden’s age are valid. Though they would apply to Trump just as much in a sane world.Bruni: You’re both so admirably — or is that eerily? — calm. I need to get your diet, exercise or pharmaceutical regimen. Am I nuts to worry/believe that Trump’s return to the presidency isn’t just an unideal election outcome but a historically cataclysmic one? How much does that prospect scare you two?Mangu-Ward: That’s my secret, Frank. I’m always angry. Like the Hulk. I think the current offerings for president are deeply unappealing, to say the least. But that’s nothing new for someone who prefers to maximize freedom and minimize the role of the state in Americans’ personal and economic lives. I am concerned about the peaceful transfer of power, and Trump has shown that he and his supporters are more of a threat to that.Silver: On that, one thing I feel better about is that the reforms that Congress made to the Electoral Count Act made a repeat of Jan. 6 less likely. There’s also perhaps less chance of another Electoral College-popular vote split. If Trump wins the popular vote by three points and there’s no other funny business, I’m not sure what to say exactly other than that in a democracy, you often have to live with outcomes that you yourself would not have chosen.Bruni: Biden, theoretically, isn’t the only bar to Trump’s long red tie dangling over the Resolute Desk anew. I mean — again, theoretically — one of the candidates in this third Republican debate could be the nominee. Yes? Or is it time to admit that, barring a truly extraordinary development, the Republican primary is over?Silver: Prediction markets say there’s a roughly 75 percent chance that Trump is the nominee. That frankly seems too low — no candidate has been this dominant at this stage of the race before. I suppose there’s a path where Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley does relatively well in Iowa, the other drops out, and then — actually, I’m still not sure there’s a path. Maybe Trump’s legal trouble begins to catch up to him? As much as the early states tend to produce surprises, I think if you put all the numbers into a model, it would put the chances at closer to 90 percent than 75.Mangu-Ward: The Times/Siena poll is bad news for Biden, but it’s even worse news for the folks on the G.O.P. debate stage, because it suggests that they simply needn’t bother. Trump is doing just fine holding his own against Biden, so there’s no need to change horses midrace. Unless your horse goes to jail, I guess.The debate will be a primo demonstration of Sayre’s Law: “In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.”Bruni: If one of the five people on the debate stage were somehow to overtake Trump, who would that be? Has Nikki Haley supplanted Ron DeSantis as the fallback?Silver: The one thing DeSantis originally had going for him was a perception of being more electable. But he’s pretty much squandered that by being an unappealing candidate along many dimensions. And Haley largely performed better than Trump in that new Times/Siena poll. Still, I’m not sure how many Republicans are going to be willing to oust Trump on the basis of a New York Times poll. And it’s not an easy argument to make to Republican voters when Biden looks vulnerable against anyone right now.Mangu-Ward: I appreciated Haley’s early debate appearances, where she put a lot of emphasis on the shared responsibility for budgetary malfeasance between the Democrats and Trump. But now she’s giving me 2012 Mitt Romney flashbacks. She’s a sane and competent Republican who has realized the best way to keep her primary campaign viable is to go hard on immigration restrictionism. She was never an open borders gal, but she did usually offer some warm fuzzies about our nation of immigrants followed by a “get in line.”Bruni: ​​Trump has said he doesn’t want a running mate from any of the people on the debate stage. Do you see anyone — like Haley in particular — who could force his or her way into at least serious consideration? And could possibly help him get elected?Mangu-Ward: The Harris debacle certainly offers lessons for Trump, but I’m not sure whether he’s in the mood to learn them.Silver: The conventional political science view is that V.P. choices do not matter very much unless they seem manifestly unqualified. But they probably ought to matter more for candidates as old as Biden and Trump. I do think Haley would represent some softening of Trump’s image and might appeal to Republicans who worry about a second term being a total clown show. Who would actually staff the cabinet in a second Trump administration, with Trump’s tendency to be disloyal and the legal jeopardy he puts everybody in his orbit in, is one of those things that keeps me up at night.Bruni: Nate, your cabinet question haunts me, too. The quality of Trump’s aides deteriorated steadily across his four years in the White House. And anyone who came near him paid for it in legal fees and the contagion of madness to which they were exposed. So who does serve him if he’s back? Do Ivanka and Jared make peace with him — power again!Silver: I don’t think I have anything reassuring to say on this front! I do think, I guess, that Trump has some incentive to assure voters that he wouldn’t go too crazy in a second term — in 2016, voters actually saw Trump as being more moderate than Clinton.Mangu-Ward: A second-term president will always have a different kind of cabinet than a first-termer, and a Trump-Biden matchup would mean a second-termer no matter who wins. But either way the cabinet will likely be lower quality and more focused on risk mitigation, which isn’t ideal.Bruni: So is there any reason to watch this debate other than, when the subjects of the Middle East in particular and foreign policy in general come up, to see Haley come at the yapping human jitterbug known as Vivek Ramaswamy like a can of Raid?Silver: TV ratings for the second debate were quite low. But I suspect the main audience here isn’t rank-and-file voters so much as what remains of the anti-Trump Republican establishment. If Haley can convince that crowd that she’s more viable than DeSantis, and more electable than Trump, that could make some difference.Mangu-Ward: Historically, debates have been my favorite part of the campaign season, because I’m in it for the policy. But G.O.P. primary voters have been pretty clear that policy is not a priority. I suppose I’ll also tune in to see Chris Christie scold the audience. This week’s spectacle of him telling a booing crowd “Your anger against the truth is reprehensible” was pretty wild.Bruni: OK, lightning round — fast and dirty. Or clean. But definitely fast. Will Trump ever serve a day in prison?Silver: I’d say no, although prediction markets put the odds at above 50 percent!Bruni: You and your prediction markets, Nate! You could have given me your own hunch. Or wish. My wish is a 10-year sentence. At least. My hunch is zip. Hulk?Mangu-Ward: He will probably serve time. He will certainly exhaust every avenue available to him before doing so. In general, the fact that there are many opportunities for appeal is a good thing about our justice system.Bruni: Which 2024 Senate race do you find most interesting?Silver: Undoubtedly Texas, just because it’s one of the only chances Democrats have to pick up a G.O.P. seat. Ted Cruz won fairly narrowly last time, and Colin Allred is probably a better candidate than Beto O’Rourke.Mangu-Ward: Peter Meijer just joined the Senate Republican primary race in Michigan. I appreciated his performance in the House — he’s quite libertarian and was one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach Trump.Bruni: America’s medium-term future — are you bullish, bearish or, I don’t know, horse-ish?Silver: Everyone is so bearish now, you can almost seem like a bull by default just by pointing out that liberal democracy usually gets its act together in the long run. But the younger generation of voters takes a different attitude on a lot of issues, such as free speech, which has begun to worry me a bit.Mangu-Ward: Bullish, always. Politics ruins everything it touches, but not everything is politics.Bruni: Finally, should Democrats be brutally victory-minded and just swap out Joe and Kamala for Taylor and Travis?Mangu-Ward: I just said politics ruins everything it touches! Must you take Taylor from us, too?Bruni: Fair point, Hulk. You have me there.Silver: It would be a very popular ticket! Taylor Swift will turn 35 only a month before Inauguration Day in 2024, I’d note.Bruni: You both have my thanks. Great chatting with you.Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter.Katherine Mangu-Ward (@kmanguward) is the editor in chief of Reason magazine.Nate Silver, the founder and former editor of FiveThirtyEight and author of the forthcoming book “On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything,” writes the newsletter Silver Bulletin.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

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      What Voters Want That Trump Seems to Have

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      So about that poll. You know the one: the Times/Siena poll showing Donald Trump with an edge over President Biden in five out of six swing states, and suggesting a softening of support for Mr. Biden among Black, Latino and young voters.The results have been met in Democratic and other anti-MAGA circles with horror, disbelief and panic. How could they not be? Whatever disappointment voters have with Mr. Biden, the idea that any of his 2020 backers would give his predecessor another shot at destroying democracy feels like pure lunacy.It is best to take horse-race polling this far out from Election Day with a boatload of salt. There are too many moving pieces. Too much that could happen. Too much of the public is not paying attention.But some of the data points to the unusual dynamics at play with a defeated president challenging the guy that America dumped him for. It isn’t just that Mr. Biden has weakness among less engaged voters, or that some respondents weren’t embracing Mr. Trump so much as rejecting Mr. Biden. What struck me is that despite his own raging unpopularity, Mr. Trump is positioned to serve as the repository for protest votes, nostalgia votes and change votes, a weird but potentially potent mash-up of support that could make up for a multitude of weaknesses. He could wind up beating Mr. Biden almost by default.A re-election campaign is fundamentally a referendum on the incumbent. And for all his accomplishments, Mr. Biden is presiding over a rough time. Inflation is still taking its bite out of people’s paychecks. The nation is still in a twitchy, sour mood post-pandemic. People are worried about crime and homelessness and the surge of migrants at the southern border. They are still dealing with the toll Covid took on their kids. And the broader mental health crisis. And the opioid scourge. And the two wars in which America is playing a supporting role. Of course a big chunk of the electorate sees the country as headed in the wrong direction.When Americans are feeling pessimistic, the president gets blamed. The degree to which Mr. Biden’s policies have helped or hurt does not much matter, especially on the economy. He owns it. And here’s the thing: You can’t argue with voters’ feelings. Even if you win the debate on points, you’re not going to convince people that they or the nation is actually doing swell. Trying, in fact, often just makes you look like a condescending, out-of-touch jerk.In such gloomy times, many voters start itching for change, for someone to come in and shake things up. This commonly means giving the out party a chance. Think Barack Obama in 2008, after eight enervating years of George W. and Dick Cheney.This time, instead of a fresh face, the Republican Party looks poised to offer a familiar one. This has its downsides. Mr. Trump’s defects are excruciatingly well known — and ever more so as the multiple cases against him wend their way through the courts. But no one denies that he likes to shake things up. And just as Mr. Biden sold himself in 2020 as a break from the chaos of Trumpism, Mr. Trump can now position himself as the change candidate. To borrow a cliché from Mr. Biden, Americans won’t be comparing Mr. Trump to the Almighty but to the alternative. And for many voters, the alternative in 2024 is a Biden status quo they consider unpalatable.It does not help Mr. Biden that he comes across as doddering and frail. This opens him up to one of Republicans’ favorite charges against Democrats: weakness. And political smears resonate more when they fit within an existing framework.At an even more basic level, Mr. Trump doesn’t have to promise positive change so much as the chance to stiff-arm the current leadership. Plenty of protest voters may not be looking to punish Mr. Biden for a particular action, or inaction, so much as for their inchoate disenchantment with the way things are. The economy should be better. Life should be better. The people in charge should be doing better.Some protest voters will turn out to support anyone running against the object of their distaste. This is what plenty of people did with Mr. Trump in 2016 to express their lack of love for Hillary Clinton. Others, especially inconstant voters, may simply decide to sit out the race. If this happens disproportionately among groups who went for Mr. Biden in 2020, such as young and nonwhite voters, it works to Mr. Trump’s benefit. This is the low-turnout specter keeping Democrats up at night.Then there is the nostalgia factor. Political nostalgia is a real and powerful thing. People are wired to romanticize the way things used to be and, by extension, the leaders at the time. Usually, voters dissatisfied with a president do not have the opening for such a direct do over. Rarely does a president who loses re-election attempt a comeback, and only one, Grover Cleveland, has ever done so successfully. But this election, rather than exchanging the incumbent for an unknown quantity, voters can choose to go back to a devil they know, who hails from a pre-Covid age of golden elevators and cheap mortgages.Now factor in thermostatic voting, the fancy name for a kind of generic buyers’ remorse you see as voters frequently veer toward the opposite party from the one they backed in the previous election. Virginia, for instance, picks its governor the year after a presidential election, and its voters typically go with the candidate whose party did not win the White House. You also see this nationally in midterm elections, in which voters often punish the president’s team.Mr. Trump has the added advantage of the economy having been humming before the pandemic upended his last year in office. Inflation was practically nonexistent. Unemployment was low. The nation wasn’t neck deep in scary, sticky wars. Sure, he was a supertoxic aspiring autocrat who tried to subvert democracy by overturning a free and fair election and who is now facing dozens of criminal charges, not to mention a civil suit for fraud. But if, come fall of 2024, he asks voters that most basic of political questions, “Weren’t you better off when I was president?” an awful lot may answer, “Hell, yeah.”Twelve months is several eternities in politics. And none of this is to downplay Mr. Trump’s glaring flaws — or his manifest unfitness for office. But there are some political fundamentals working in his favor that go beyond his specific pros and cons. Anyone who isn’t at least a little afraid isn’t paying attention.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

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      How Haley, DeSantis and Other Republicans Could Beat Trump

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      In the movie “Back to the Future II,” Michael J. Fox’s character, Marty McFly, is transported to the fall of 2015 and encounters a world of self-tying shoes and hoverboards. He finds himself trying to make sense of how people behave and the choices they make.Lately, I too feel like I’ve been transported to autumn 2015.That fall, Republican Party officials, donors and operatives were brimming with hope that the field of presidential contenders facing Donald Trump would shrink, clearing the way for a one-on-one matchup between the then-unthinkable Mr. Trump and a more conventional nominee, like the senators Ted Cruz of Texas or Marco Rubio of Florida. As one Michigan donor put it, “Just like everyone else, I’m waiting for this field to consolidate, and it doesn’t seem to be consolidating.” Arguments ensued over which candidates should take the hint. If only the field were smaller, the thinking went, surely Mr. Trump would be defeated.If only, if only, if only. This line of thinking became an excuse for candidates who didn’t want to take any real swings at Mr. Trump. It was the field — not Mr. Trump — that was the problem. No top contender took him on aggressively. No one really hammered away at his weaknesses in the kind of sustained, nimble assault they would have needed to topple him from his position as the front-runner. And even as Mr. Trump’s opponents dropped out, some of their voters wound up drifting to Mr. Trump as a second choice, keeping him at the head of the pack.Something similar is happening today. From the Republican debates to the campaign trail, the other candidates aren’t making a real attempt to dent the front-runner’s lead; instead, they are sniping at one another, pleading with donors and engaging in magical thinking. While there is some truth that having more candidates helps Mr. Trump win the nomination, consolidating the field alone is not likely sufficient to defeat him.In Iowa, late October polling from NBC News, The Des Moines Register and Mediacom showed Mr. Trump at 43 percent among likely G.O.P. caucusgoers, and an analysis of those voters’ second-choice shows that a sizable number of Ron DeSantis’s voters would simply go to Mr. Trump were the Florida governor to withdraw from the race. And though the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has seen her fortunes improve dramatically since her first debate, she still trails Mr. Trump by a wide margin in her home state of South Carolina, according to the latest CNN polling.Mr. DeSantis is hoping for some fresh momentum in Iowa this week with the endorsement of the state’s governor, Kim Reynolds. But without bold new arguments from Mr. DeSantis, Ms. Haley or other rivals, it seems as though Donald Trump is increasingly inevitable as the Republican nominee. A shame, too; there is a sizable portion of the Republican electorate that likes Mr. Trump but claims to be open to a new direction. In early states like Iowa and New Hampshire, CBS News polling recently found that less than a quarter of primary voters are “Trump only” voters. The vast majority are “Trump and …” voters — people who are considering the former president but also alternatives.However, these voters aren’t hearing anyone clearly lay out the case for why a new direction is so critical — and they need to on Wednesday night in the third G.O.P. primary debate.To defeat Mr. Trump, something significant must change. Toughness is required. The math is clear. Mr. Trump’s opponents must take some of his voters from him. Republican candidates must make the case that Mr. Trump is also not the best that voters can do. That means directing at least as much fire at the front-runner as they do at their other adversaries. Mr. Trump’s strongest rivals have not compellingly answered this question: “If you support Donald Trump’s policies so much, why are you running against him?” It’s time they start giving an answer to voters.Candidates have avoided doing so because striking the right tone in this campaign is incredibly challenging. An attack that is too scathing can inspire a sort of antibody response in Republican voters, backfiring by activating the instinct to defend Mr. Trump. Chris Christie was booed at the Florida Freedom Summit last weekend and hasn’t gained traction in the polls because Republican voters are not looking for a candidate whose primary message is that they have been duped and that Donald Trump is a bad man.At the same time, the rest of the field has treated Mr. Trump far too gently. Speeches like one Mr. DeSantis gave on Saturday, which try to draw a contrast with Mr. Trump without saying his name, haven’t yet moved the needle. Vague platitudes about “fresh leadership” and “someone who can win” have not yet been paired with an effective explanation of why Mr. Trump is neither of those things, and as a result Republican voters don’t believe either is true.To beat Mr. Trump, the strategy can’t be weak or astringent. It should not scold, and certainly not demean the majority of Republican voters who do like Trump. It should take a tone more akin to “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed” — and lay out why, in a sustained and convincing way every week from now through the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses.Critically, it must echo and amplify the things that I’ve heard Trump voters who are still shopping around say to each other:But his mouth, they’ll say.“I don’t like when he makes things like a circus.”“It’s just tiring.”These are not attacks from the right flank on policy, nor attacks from centrists on his legal woes — these are truths that many of Mr. Trump’s own supporters will acknowledge in private conversation.Mr. Trump’s opponents should not shy away from pointing out how things were far from perfect during his presidency. As one Trump voter acknowledged in one of our recent Times Opinion focus groups, “He always said everything is wonderful and everything is beautiful and everything is amazing. Come on.”In Wednesday’s debate, even with Mr. Trump absent from the stage, he is looming over his rivals, and it is past the hour for them to act like it. They can try to raise more money, but they cannot raise more time.Take Ms. Haley. She can, for instance, make a strong case for her actions defending Israel during her tenure as U.N. ambassador, noting that while the world may have felt safer under Mr. Trump, his own personal drama with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has blinded him to the importance of supporting one of our most critical allies — and that this kind of self-interested behavior will keep Mr. Trump from doing what is necessary to support our friends and go after our enemies on the world stage in a second term. Based on new polling from The Times and Siena College, she can now also make a clear electability case that has thus far eluded Mr. DeSantis, and note that she is the safer, stronger bet against Mr. Biden in 2024.Taking Mr. Trump on directly is no easy task in a party that would vastly prefer him to be in the White House today. But avoiding the hard road has thus far put his adversaries on the path to defeat. At this stage of the primary, with the lead Mr. Trump holds, there is no longer an excuse for candidates to dance around the question of “Why you … and not Donald Trump?”Kristen Soltis Anderson is a Republican pollster and a moderator of the Times Opinion focus group series.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

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      A Report Card for Bidenomics

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      Voters’ negative perceptions about the economy are weighing on President Biden’s poll numbers. Here’s what his economic policies have, and haven’t, accomplished.President Biden is finding it hard to sell Americans on his economic track record.Kent Nishimura for The New York TimesWhere the economy is working (and where it isn’t) With a year to go before Election Day, polls increasingly show that American voters believe next year will be a rematch between President Biden and Donald Trump — with the former president in the lead in key battleground states despite his legal troubles (more on that below).Biden’s troubles stem in large part from negative perceptions about the economy, even as several indications show that it is performing strongly. Here’s a deeper look at what “Bidenomics” has, and hasn’t, accomplished.On the positive side: jobs. Since Biden took office, employers have created 14 million jobs, and the unemployment rate has been hovering around a 50-year-low for months.The president has also been talking up signature economic accomplishments like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which he argues have helped rebuild rural America and invigorated the economy. “Bidenomics is just another way of saying the American dream,” he said in a speech. It’s not a stretch. The economy grew last quarter at nearly 5 percent, belying a global slowdown.On the negative side: inflation. Wages have been growing slowly, but they’ve been offset by rising prices, Biden’s Achilles’ heel. Republicans have blamed the White House’s economic policies for soaring consumer prices, which hit a 40-year high in the summer of 2022.Many economists say global factors are probably more to blame. But the perception of Biden’s culpability here is hurting him.A partial win: the markets. Investors tend to give high marks to presidents whose tenures coincide with strong investment returns. The S&P 500 has gained nearly 15 percent since Biden’s inauguration, weathering much of the slump set off by the Fed’s historic rates-tightening policy. (The bond market has gone in the opposite direction.)That’s decent, but pales in comparison with the Trump years, when the benchmark index climbed more than 65 percent.Biden has been touring the country — on Monday, he was in Delaware to promote federal money flowing to Amtrak, the rail operator — to refocus the public’s perceptions of his economic achievements. Meanwhile, questions swirl over whether Biden can eventually overtake Trump.A reminder: The DealBook Summit is on Nov. 29. Among the guests are Bob Iger of Disney; Lina Khan of the F.T.C.; and David Zaslav of Warner Bros. Discovery. You can apply to attend here.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Uber’s latest earnings miss expectations. The ride-hailing giant said on Tuesday that it had earned 10 cents per share in the third quarter, below the 12 cents that analysts had forecast. But the company argued that its business showed strong growth in its core mobility division.OpenAI seeks to build on its runaway success. The Microsoft-backed A.I. start-up said that its chatbot, ChatGPT, now had over 100 million weekly active users, giving it a formidable lead in the race to capture artificial intelligence customers. The company also introduced an online store that will let users build customized chatbots.Striking Hollywood actors push back on studios’ latest contract offer. The SAG-AFTRA union said that the “last, best and final” bid still fell short on key issues like the use of A.I., making it unclear when its nearly four-month strike will end. In other labor news, Starbucks will raise the average salary of hourly workers by at least 3 percent.Trump puts his legal liabilities on displayDonald Trump may be handily leading the 2024 election polls. But his appearance in court on Monday, testifying in a civil fraud lawsuit filed by New York State, appeared to do him no favors in efforts to hold onto his business empire.It was a reminder that, while he’s riding high in the presidential race, the former president still faces a thicket of legal battles that could cost him financially and, perhaps, politically.Here are some notable moments from Trump’s testimony:Trump conceded that he had played a role in valuing his company’s properties, an issue at the heart of the case. (New York prosecutors argue that Trump illicitly inflated his net worth to defraud banks and insurers.) Of the company’s financial statements, he said, “I would look at them, I would see them, and I would maybe on occasion have some suggestions.”But Trump also sought to underplay the importance of those statements, saying they were so riddled with disclaimers that they were “worthless.” He promised, unprompted, that some of his bankers would testify in his defense.Trump also assailed the presiding judge, Arthur Engoron, for having decided before the trial that fraud was committed. Engoron appeared exasperated, telling the former president to answer questions and stop delivering speeches.The testimony was a reminder of his political baggage, which was also an undercurrent of the endorsement of Ron DeSantis on Monday by Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s popular governor. Reynolds, whose state’s caucuses could be crucial in bolstering a Trump rival, said that the U.S. needed a president “who puts this country first and not himself” — a thinly veiled rebuke of Trump.His legal issues don’t appear to have dented his popularity. He has contended that he is being politically persecuted — “People like you go around and try to demean me and try to hurt me,” he told a state lawyer on Monday — an argument that some of his supporters have embraced.In a sign of his enduring political strength, the betting site PredictIt puts Trump’s odds of winning the nomination on Monday at more than four times that of his nearest competitor in its market, Nikki Haley.Dina Powell McCormick, in 2017, when she was a deputy national security adviser during the Trump presidency.Al Drago for The New York TimesExxon Mobil taps a Wall Street and D.C. power player Dina Powell McCormick, a former Goldman Sachs executive and onetime Trump administration official, is joining the board of Exxon Mobil effective Jan. 1. Her appointment comes as energy groups have embarked on a series of big deals on the back of soaring oil prices and bumper profits.Powell McCormick has long been one of the most senior women on Wall Street. Before joining BDT & MSD partners, an investment and advisory firm, earlier this year, she spent 16 years at Goldman Sachs. Powell McCormick led the Wall Street giant’s global sovereign business and sustainability, and she was a member of its management committee, among other roles.Powell McCormick has also been a Washington power player. She has spent more than a dozen years working in government. From 2017 to 2018, she was a deputy national security adviser to Trump and played a significant role on Middle East policy, including efforts to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. (Her husband, David McCormick, is a former C.E.O. of the hedge fund Bridgewater and was a Treasury Department official under Hank Paulson. He is running for Senate in Pennsylvania as a Republican.)Powell McCormick’s appointment even won backing from Mike Bloomberg, who is spending billions to fight climate change — a sign of how wide-ranging her political and business relationships are.“Dina has been a close partner for years through her role as global head of sustainability at Goldman Sachs,” Bloomberg said, “and we have teamed up to create new partnerships that invest in market-driven ways to create clean energy and advance climate transition goals.”Energy giants are on a deal spree. Exxon reported quarterly profits of $9.1 billion last month, as oil prices have surged and demand has skyrocketed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In October, Exxon agreed to acquire the shale oil specialist Pioneer Natural Resources for around $60 billion and Chevron struck a $53 billion deal to buy Hess. Exxon’s board had been in the spotlight over the energy transition. Engine No. 1, an activist investor, won three seats after targeting the company over its governance and environmental track record. But two years later, the firm changed course, saying that Exxon had made big changes. Exxon, however, has resisted calls to pour more money into renewable energy, arguing that its money is better on low-carbon investments.Tracing WeWork’s rise and spectacular fallWeWork finally filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, after years of struggling with crushing debt and the coronavirus pandemic’s emptying out of office spaces — and that’s even after it had abandoned the runaway growth it pursued under its co-founder, Adam Neumann.The company that sought Chapter 11 is a shell of the real estate juggernaut that first sought to go public at a $47 billion valuation. (Its stock is down 98 percent this year.) Here’s how the business once lauded by the Japanese tech investor SoftBank as a revolution went astray.WeWork has been on its heels since it scrapped its I.P.O. plans in 2019. The company had been riding high, buoyed by Neumann’s promises that the start-up — whose business involved leasing out office space for co-working — would “elevate the world’s consciousness.” But then:Prospective investors blanched at the company’s steep losses, lax corporate governance and the controversies that dogged Neumann. (Activities on private jets were among them.) And the S.E.C. criticized the company’s disclosure involving mismatches between long-term financial obligations and its short-term assets. Neumann stepped down after WeWork shelved its I.P.O., and SoftBank provided it with a multibillion-dollar lifeline.Under a new C.E.O., Sandeep Mathrani, WeWork confronted the devastating effect of pandemic lockdowns and the rise of remote working. The company went public — via a blank-check vehicle — in 2021, while it started closing locations and renegotiating leases.Mathrani left in May, reportedly after clashing with SoftBank. His replacement, David Tolley, has kept trying to right the ship, but WeWork warned in August that there was “substantial doubt” about its future. Last month, it said it would miss interest payments on its debt.WeWork’s filing raises questions about the fate of commercial real estate. The company noted on Monday that it had reached agreements with about 92 percent of creditors holding secured debt. Its restructuring involves reducing its real estate portfolio.The company is one of the largest corporate tenants in New York and London, and any move to shed more of its leases would hurt commercial landlords that are themselves struggling to pay their debts.THE SPEED READ DealsResearch analysts at some of the banks that took Birkenstock public wrote in their initial reports on the sandal maker that its I.P.O. was valued too high. (Bloomberg)“Warring Billionaires, a Rogue Employee, a Divorce: One Hedge Fund’s Tale of Woe” (NYT)PolicyIntel is reportedly the leading candidate to land billions of dollars in federal funding to build secure plants to make chips for use by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies. (WSJ)A man who posed as a billionaire rabbi and made a $290 million takeover bid for the retailer Lord & Taylor was sentenced to more than eight years in prison. (Bloomberg)Best of the restDisney hired Hugh Johnston, the longtime finance chief at PepsiCo, as its new C.F.O. (CNBC)The founder of the dating app Bumble, Whitney Wolfe Herd, is stepping down as C.E.O. (NYT)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      RFK Jr. Reveals How Voters Are Dreading a Trump-Biden Rematch

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      Frustration with the two men likely to be the major parties’ nominees has led voters to entertain the idea of other options, New York Times/Siena College polls found.A looming rematch next year between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump has left voters deeply dissatisfied with their options, longing for alternatives and curious about independent candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to new polls of six battleground states conducted by The New York Times and Siena College.Both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are viewed unfavorably by a majority of voters in these states, one-fifth of voters don’t like either of them, and enthusiasm about the coming election is down sharply compared with a poll conducted before the 2020 contest.That frustration and malaise have prompted voters to entertain the idea of other options. When asked about the likeliest 2024 matchup, Mr. Biden versus Mr. Trump, only 2 percent of those polled said they would support another candidate. But when Mr. Kennedy’s name was included as an option, nearly a quarter said they would choose him.That number almost surely inflates the support of Mr. Kennedy, the political scion and vaccine skeptic, because two-thirds of those who said they would back him had said earlier that they would definitely or probably vote for one of the two front-runners.The polling results include registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The findings suggest that Mr. Kennedy is less a fixed political figure in the minds of voters than he is a vessel to register unhappiness about the choice between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump.A Fifth of Voters in Battleground States Dislike Both Leading CandidatesRespondents’ opinions of President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump More

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      With Poll Results Favoring Trump, Should Biden Step Aside?

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      More from our inbox:Reducing I.R.S. FundingHealth Insurance, SimplifiedPoll results show President Biden losing to Donald J. Trump by margins of four to 10 percentage points in key battleground states.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Voters in 5 Battlegrounds Favor Trump Over Biden” (front page, Nov. 6):When will the Democratic Party stop sitting on its hands and do something about the dire reality of the coming presidential election?The most recent New York Times/Siena College poll has President Biden behind Donald Trump in five of six swing states while his approval ratings among youth and minorities — two essential demographics for the party — continue to plummet.There comes a time when we have to say, “Dad, you’ve been a wonderful father and we love you dearly, but we are taking away the car keys.”We can all see it: the shuffle, the drifting focus, the mental confusion during a news conference in Vietnam. Mr. Biden’s handlers keep him under close wraps now, but the gasps among the electorate are going to be frequent when he gets out on the campaign trail debate circuit.This is no time to nominate an octogenarian who refuses to acknowledge his visibly dwindling abilities. The fact that Mr. Trump is only three years younger is irrelevant. Facts, logic and even multiple criminal proceedings are nonfactors when your opponent is a cult figure whose worshipers are willing to follow him blindly into authoritarianism.What the Democrats need to win is vigor, freshness and the hope of positive change. This is no time to cling to gentlemanly traditions of incumbency.Mr. Biden should go down in history as the president who led us out of our darkest hours, but if he refuses to pass the torch to a younger generation, he will be remembered as just another aging politician who refused to let go.If the Democratic Party sits back idly, pleading helplessness in our moment of need, it will prove that this country has not one but two dysfunctional parties.Bill IbelleProvidence, R.I.To the Editor:I read this headline, “Voters in 5 Battlegrounds Favor Trump Over Biden,” and was shocked; then I looked at the charts and graphs in the paper, and was depressed, and turned to my application for Canadian citizenship. Then finally, on Page A13 (they will have to pry the print paper out of my dying hands), I see in large print: “Polls have often failed to predict results of elections this far out.”I really hate polls, but believe they have the power to sway people significantly. So, why publish them this far out if they are lousy predictors at this stage?Betsy ShackelfordDecatur, Ga.To the Editor:The media’s coverage of President Biden is the principal reason the latest poll shows him behind Donald Trump in five of six critical states.Mr. Biden inherited the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and the gravest public health crisis in a century. He got off to the fastest start of any president since F.D.R., creating over six million jobs in his first year and reaching his goal of the vaccination of over 200 million Americans in fewer than 100 days. Yet the bulk of the reporting for most of his presidency since then has involved inflation and his age.Underreported is the impact of Mr. Biden’s other achievements: the largest investment in green energy in American history; a $1 trillion investment in infrastructure; the first federal gun safety legislation in nearly three decades; and the biggest expansion of veterans’ benefits in over three decades.Michael K. CantwellDelray Beach, Fla.To the Editor:The latest polls showing President Biden losing support from minority and youth voters should prompt leading Democrats to urge him not to seek a second term. It’s time for a high-level delegation, including Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, to visit the White House for a reality check.Yes, Joe Biden is a patriotic American and a good president. But the specter of Donald Trump back in the Oval Office demands that he step aside and pass the torch to preserve our democracy.Judith BishopMiami BeachTo the Editor:Your article about the latest poll was frightening but not surprising. How many times and in how many ways does the leadership of the Democratic Party have to be told that President Biden is unpopular?Are they backing him because, according to the book, an incumbent is more electable than a challenger? Are they relying on the fact that Mr. Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020? If so, they need to take another look at that election.I am a lifelong Democrat surrounded by the same, but neither I nor any of my friends voted for Mr. Biden; we all voted against Mr. Trump. That may not be enough in 2024.It’s entirely possible that many of the people I know — and large sections of the electorate — won’t vote at all. And very few of us have the energy and enthusiasm it takes to campaign effectively.Claudia Miriam ReedMcMinnville, Ore.To the Editor:“Why Biden Is Behind, and How He Could Come Back,” by Nate Cohn (The Upshot, nytimes.com, Nov. 5), misses a critical point.It seemingly assumes that any Biden loss of voter support from 2020 will only move to the Donald Trump column. I believe there is an increasing possibility that a significant portion of any Biden losses will instead go to a third party. Not since Ross Perot in the 1992 election have I perceived such support for a viable third-party candidate.The No Labels movement seems to be making genuine progress and gaining increasing public awareness, if not outright support.While the Democrats are panicking that any gain in No Labels support will come from their candidate, I’m not so sure, as there is evidence that Mr. Trump’s numbers may be just as affected, if not more.Mr. Cohn should start digging deeper into the third-party movements and their likely impact on the election outcome.Kenneth GlennLangley, Wash.Reducing I.R.S. Funding Kenny Holston/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Holding National Security Hostage to Help Tax Cheats,” by Paul Krugman (column, Nov. 3):As usual, Mr. Krugman provides a valuable perspective on an important initiative with serious policy as well as economic implications. I believe that there is a longer-term goal that the Republicans are serving by a proposed reduction in funding for the I.R.S. in addition to protecting tax cheats and suspect enterprises.Part of the funding for the I.R.S. is also scheduled to be used for major upgrades in equipment and staffing so that the I.R.S. operates more efficiently and effectively, including being available to answer questions and assist ordinary taxpayers.By reducing the funding for the I.R.S., the Republicans are deliberately undermining improved, consumer-helpful government services so that ordinary taxpayers (and voters) become increasingly frustrated with, and resentful or angry at, the I.R.S.Sowing and fertilizing dissatisfaction with government services among the voting populace appear to be a “growth industry” for the Republicans in Congress.David E. JoseIndianapolisHealth Insurance, Simplified Haik AvanianTo the Editor:Re “It’s Just This Easy to Lose Your Health Insurance,” by Danielle Ofri (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 31):Dr. Ofri rightly condemns the “illogical patchwork of plans and regulations” of the American health care system.The solution, as Dr. Ofri suggests, is to make fundamental health insurance automatic for all Americans, allowing them to opt out but not requiring them (as happened to Dr. Ofri) to opt in.Paul SorumJamaica Plain, Mass.The writer is professor emeritus of internal medicine and pediatrics, Albany Medical College. More

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      Black Voters’ Shift to Trump Is a Warning Sign for Biden, Strategists Say

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      New York Times/Siena College polling painted a worrisome picture of the president’s standing with a crucial constituency. Democratic strategists warned that the erosion could threaten his re-election.Black voters are more disconnected from the Democratic Party than they have been in decades, frustrated with what many see as inaction on their political priorities and unhappy with President Biden, a candidate they helped lift to the White House just three years ago.New polls by The New York Times and Siena College found that 22 percent of Black voters in six of the most important battleground states said they would support former President Donald J. Trump in next year’s election, and 71 percent would back Mr. Biden.The drift in support is striking, given that Mr. Trump won just 8 percent of Black voters nationally in 2020 and 6 percent in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. A Republican presidential candidate has not won more than 12 percent of the Black vote in nearly half a century.Mr. Biden has a year to shore up his standing, but if numbers like these held up across the country in November 2024, they would amount to a historic shift: No Democratic presidential candidate since the civil rights era has earned less than 80 percent of the Black vote.The new polling offers an early warning sign about the erosion of Mr. Biden’s coalition, Democratic strategists said, cautioning that the president will probably lose his re-election bid if he cannot increase his support from this pivotal voting bloc.A number of Democratic strategists acknowledged that the downbeat numbers in battleground states extended beyond Black voters to the party’s core constituencies, warning that the Biden campaign had to take steps to improve its standing, particularly with Black, Latino and younger voters. The Times/Siena polls surveyed registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster for Mr. Biden’s campaign in 2020, said the president’s political operation had not been “present enough” for Black Americans and younger voters.“I don’t think we’ve been voicing what we delivered to the African American community and particularly among younger African American men,” she said. “We have to get the numbers up and we have to get African American voters out to vote, and we have to get the numbers up with young people and we have to get them out to vote.”Mr. Biden’s numbers in the polling were particularly low among Black men. Twenty-seven percent of Black men supported Mr. Trump, compared with 17 percent of Black women.Still, there are signs that Democrats’ hurdles with Black voters, however alarming for the party, leave room for improvement. About a quarter of Black voters who said they planned to support Mr. Trump said there was some chance they would end up backing Mr. Biden.Cornell Belcher, who worked as a pollster for former President Barack Obama, said he doubted that many Black voters would switch their support to Mr. Trump. His bigger fear, he said, is that they might not vote at all.“I’m not worried about Trump doubling his support with Black and brown voters,” said Mr. Belcher, who focuses particularly on surveying voters of color. “What I am worried about is turnout.”He added: “But that’s what campaigns are for. We build a campaign to solve for that problem.”Karen Wright, a business consultant in McDonough, Ga., who immigrated to the United States from Jamaica in 1982, said she had always voted for Democrats, seeing them as the best option for younger immigrants, particularly those from predominantly Black countries like hers.Now, though, she believes Mr. Biden has not followed through on his campaign promises on immigration, worries that Democrats have gone too far in their embrace of L.G.B.T.Q. issues and faults them for books used in public education that she believes are too sexually explicit.Next year, Ms. Wright, 53, said that she planned to support Republicans up and down the ballot — and that she was not alone.“My clients are mostly Black,” she said. “They voted Democrat last year and they all said next election they’re going to vote Republican.”Angela Lang, the executive director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, a group that aims to mobilize Black voters in Milwaukee, said canvassers who worked with her organization had encountered an overwhelming number of Black voters who did not want to vote or did not see the value in turning out again.“People are like: ‘Why should I vote? I don’t feel like voting. Voting doesn’t do anything. My life hasn’t changed,’” she said, adding that the group had found that high prices and housing instability had fed people’s pessimism. “If your basic needs aren’t being met, it’s difficult to pay attention to politics and it’s difficult to have faith in that system when you voted before but you’re still struggling day to day.”Still, Cliff Albright, a veteran progressive organizer and a co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said Democrats had time to get back on track. Black voters, he said, are responding to the same fears about economic and global uncertainty that many Americans are confronting.“We’re a year out from the election,” Mr. Albright said. “If you ask the very same people the same question a year from now, when the choice is very clear, the same 22 percent might have a very different answer.”He added: “Is there work to be done? Yes. But is the sky falling? No.”Black voters have long powered Democratic presidential victories. Their support in South Carolina in 2020 set Mr. Biden on the path to becoming the nominee. During the general election, Black voters were again crucial to his victory.Officials with Mr. Biden’s campaign acknowledge that they have work to do to shore up the president’s standing with Black voters. Erin Schaff for The New York TimesBiden campaign officials now say they recognize they have work to do with Black voters, and they and their allies have begun multimillion-dollar engagement campaigns targeting them.Last month, the Biden campaign started an organizing program in Black neighborhoods in Milwaukee. The campaign has dispatched top surrogates to hold events aimed at Black voters and has bought advertising on Black radio programs that promotes the “real difference for Black America” his policies have made. “President Biden is getting it done,” a narrator says. “For us. And that’s the facts.”Quentin Fulks, the deputy campaign manager for Mr. Biden, said, “We know we have to get to work and we have to communicate with these voters and we have to do it earlier than ever before.”In interviews, Black voters said they had seen little progress from the Biden administration on some of their top priorities, including student loan debt relief, affordable housing and accountability for the police.Some worried that Mr. Biden was more focused on foreign policy than on domestic issues like inflation. In the Times/Siena poll, 80 percent of Black voters rated the economy as “only fair” or “poor.”A few said that their openness to supporting Mr. Trump, despite his offensive comments about Black communities and the 91 felony charges he faces in several criminal cases, reflected their disaffection with Mr. Biden and his party more than any real affinity for the former president.Keyon Reynolds-Martin, a father of one in Milwaukee, praised what he saw as Mr. Trump’s prioritizing of the economy and domestic policy, recalling the stimulus checks he received during the pandemic. Mr. Trump initially did not support the relief checks, which were spearheaded by Democrats. He later affixed his signature to them, representing the first time a president’s name had appeared on an Internal Revenue Service disbursement.Mr. Reynolds-Martin, 25, said he planned to vote for Mr. Trump next fall, when he casts his first ballot ever.Of Mr. Biden, he said, “He’s not giving money to help the United States, but he’s giving money to other countries,” adding, “At least Donald Trump was trying to help the United States.”Talitha McLaren, 45, a home health aide in Philadelphia, said she was undecided about whether to vote in 2024.She worries about a total erosion of democracy under a second Trump administration, but she is also frustrated with Mr. Biden and his party for failing to tackle rising costs that have not kept pace with her income and for not providing help with her student loan debt. On Tuesday, she plans to vote for the Democrat running for mayor of her hometown.“Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to support the Democrats,” she said. “But they haven’t won me over yet on what they’re trying to do for the country. Because what they’re doing now ain’t working.”Alyce McFadden More

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      Times/Siena College Polls: Methodology and How We Conducted Them

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      The Times/Siena College battleground polls released on Sunday and Monday were conducted over the past week in six swing states that are likely to decide the election: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Five of the states were won by Donald J. Trump in 2016 and then flipped by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020. Nevada, which has always been a close state, came down to less than one percentage point in the 2022 U.S. Senate election.These states also contain some of the coalitions that will be crucial next fall: younger, more diverse voters in states like Arizona, Georgia and Nevada; and white working-class voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin who helped swing the election to Trump in 2016, and were central to Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory. They also provide some geographic diversity.We interviewed 600 respondents in each state to ensure we had a large enough sample to speak to specific subgroups of voters within these states, including age, race and ethnicity, income, education level, and party affiliation. Taken together, these 3,600 respondents represent our largest sample size of swing state voters to date. This also includes more than 700 undecided voters, a group that will be even more consequential within these crucial states.This is not the first time we have focused on swing states this early in an election cycle. In 2019, the poll explored a similar set of states, reflecting the battleground at the time. The political moment was slightly different, with Democrats in the thick of a nominating contest that split the party between liberals like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and a moderate in Mr. Biden — and Mr. Trump was the incumbent president to beat.However, the goals of that poll were similar to this one. As Americans in key states across the political spectrum weigh their options, these polls shed light on the issues driving the election and voters’ appetites for the leading candidates. More