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      The Unsettling Truth About Trump’s First Great Victory

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      Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory continues to confound election experts. How could American voters put such a fractious figure into the White House?This is more than an academic question. For the third time, Trump is the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.Three books, published in the years following Trump’s election — “Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America” by John Sides of Vanderbilt, Michael Tesler of the University of California-Irvine and Lynn Vavreck of U.C.L.A.; “White Identity Politics” by Ashley Jardina of George Mason University; and “Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity” by Lilliana Mason of Johns Hopkins — shed light on Trump’s improbable political longevity.Each points to the centrality of racial animosity.Sides, Tesler and Vavreck, for example, cite 2016 American National Election Studies data that asked four questions in order to explore dimensions of white identity: “the importance of white identity, how much whites are being discriminated against, the likelihood that whites are losing jobs to nonwhites, and the importance of whites working together to change laws unfair to whites.”The authors combine these questions into a “scale capturing the strength of white identity and found that it was strongly related to Republicans’ support for Donald Trump.”“Strongly related” is an understatement. On a 17-point scale ranking the strength of Republican primary voters’ white identity from lowest to highest, support for Trump grew consistently at each step — from 2 percent at the bottom to 81 percent at the highest level.Now, this earlier scholarship notwithstanding, three political scientists are presenting an alternative interpretation of the 2016 election. In their Feb. 28 paper “Measuring the Contribution of Voting Blocs to Election Outcomes,” Justin Grimmer of Stanford, William Marble of the University of Pennsylvania and Cole Tanigawa-Lau, also of Stanford, write:We assess claims that Donald Trump received a particularly large number of votes from individuals with antagonistic attitudes toward racial outgroups (Sides, Tesler and Vavreck, 2017; Mason, Wronski and Kane, 2021). Using the ANES, however, we show that in 2016 Trump’s largest gains in support, compared to Mitt Romney in 2012, came from whites with moderate racial resentment. This result holds despite the fact that the relationship between vote choice and racial resentment was stronger in 2016 and 2020 than in other elections.How could these two seemingly contradictory statements both be true? Grimmer, Marble and Tanigawa-Lau write:Decomposing the change in support observed in the ANES data, we show that respondents in 2016 and 2020 reported more moderate views, on average, than in previous elections. As a result, Trump improved the most over previous Republicans by capturing the votes of a larger number of people who report racially moderate views.In an email, Marble provided more detail:Whites with high levels of racial resentment supported Trump at a historically high rate compared to prior Republican presidential candidates. Yet, between 2012 and 2016, the number of people who scored at the high end of the racial resentment scale declined significantly. As a result, there were simply fewer high racial resentment voters for Trump to win in 2016 and 2020 than there were in earlier eras. At the same time, the number of people scoring at moderate levels of racial resentment increased. Trump was not as popular among this voting bloc, compared to those with high racial resentment. But because this group is larger, whites with moderate racial resentment scores ended up contributing more net votes to Trump.I asked Grimmer to explain the significance of his work with Marble and Tanigawa-Lau.Responding by email, Grimmer wrote:Our findings provide an important correction to a popular narrative about how Trump won office. Hillary Clinton argued that Trump supporters could be placed in a “basket of deplorables.” And election-night pundits and even some academics have claimed that Trump’s victory was the result of appealing to white Americans’ racist and xenophobic attitudes. We show this conventional wisdom is (at best) incomplete. Trump’s supporters were less xenophobic than prior Republican candidates’, less sexist, had lower animus to minority groups, and lower levels of racial resentment. Far from deplorables, Trump voters were, on average, more tolerant and understanding than voters for prior Republican candidates.The data, Grimmer continued,point to two important and undeniable facts. First, analyses focused on vote choice alone cannot tell us where candidates receive support. We must know the size of groups and who turns out to vote. And we cannot confuse candidates’ rhetoric with the voters who support them, because voters might support the candidate despite the rhetoric, not because of it.I asked Sides, Tesler and Vavreck for their assessment of the Grimmer, Marble and Tanigawa-Lau paper. They provided a one-paragraph response affirming, in the phrase “identity-inflected issues,” the crucial role of racial resentment:There are of course many complexities in characterizing changes in aggregate election outcomes over time. Several pieces of research into the 2016 election, including our book, “Identity Crisis,” and this interesting paper by Grimmer, Marble and Tanigawa-Lau, find that people’s vote choices in that election were more strongly related to their views on “identity-inflected issues” than they had been in prior elections. That is why our book argues that these issues are central to how we interpret the outcome in 2016.John Kane, a political scientist at N.Y.U. and a co-author with Lilliana Mason and Julie Wronski of “Activating Animus: The Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support,” which was cited in the Grimmer paper, suggested that the Grimmer paper in fact provides a key corrective to the debate over the 2016 election. In an email, Kane pointed to a key section that reads:Trump’s surprising win in 2016 was not due to a large increase in Republican votes among the most racially resentful Americans. Instead, Trump’s support grew the most, relative to prior Republican candidates’, among whites with relatively moderate racial resentment scores. This potentially surprising finding is explained by the shifting distribution of racial resentment in the population.Grimmer’s point, Kane wrote, isto highlight the fact that, if we don’t account for a group’s size in the population (e.g., how many racially resentful people there are) and how many of them actually turn out to vote, we could incorrectly infer that certain groups have become more or less supportive of particular parties over time. I fully agree with this point and really do think it’s extremely important for people to understand.That said, Kane continued,The point about Trump voters being less racially resentful on average than voters for previous Republican candidates, while likely true, should, I think, be interpreted as a statement about why it’s important to be mindful of over-time changes in groups’ sizes in the population, and NOT as a statement about Trump being successful in attracting racially liberal voters (indeed, those lowest in racial resentment turned away from him, per Grimmer-Marble-Tanigawa-Lau’s own findings).Other scholars who have explored issues of race and politics were generally supportive of the Grimmer paper.Andrew Engelhardt, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, wrote by email:I find this argument persuasive because understanding election outcomes requires not just understanding what contributes to vote choice (e.g., racial group attachments, racial prejudice), but also how many people with that particular attitude turned out to vote and what share of the electorate that group makes up.The Grimmer paper, Engelhardt continued, “encourages us to take a step back and focus on the big picture for understanding elections: where do most votes come from and are these patterns consistent across elections?” Along these lines, according to Engelhardt,Discussion of racial resentment driving support for Trump could miss how folks low in racial resentment were actually critical to the election outcome. The paper makes just this clarifying point, noting, for instance, that White Democrats low in racial resentment were even more influential in contributing votes to Clinton in 2016 than to Obama in 2012. Change between 2012 and 2016 is not exclusively due to the behavior of the most prejudiced.“I like this piece,” Alexander George Theodoridis, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, wrote. “It is a nice reminder for scholars and, especially, the media, that it is important to think carefully about base rates.”In his email, Theodoridis argued:Donald Trump’s candidacy in 2016 was a stress test for Republican partisanship, and Republican partisanship passed with flying colors. The election was close enough for Trump to win because the vast majority of G.O.P. voters found the idea of either sitting it out or voting for a Democrat they had spent 20+ years disliking so distasteful that Trump’s limitations, liabilities and overt racism and misogyny were not a deal-breaker.Theodoridis noted that his oneminor methodological and measurement critique is that this sort of analysis has to take seriously what the racial resentment scale actually means. It may be that race is actually quite salient for those in the middle part of the scale, but they are just less overtly racist than those at the top of the scale. Also, the meaning of the racial resentment scale changes over time in ways that are not independent of politics, and especially of presidential politics. Position on the scale is not immutable in the way some descriptive characteristics may be.Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth, was explicitly supportive of the Grimmer-Marble-Tanigawa-Lau methodology. Writing by email, Westwood argued:It is an interesting academic exercise to predict who will win the vote within a specific group, but it is more fundamental to elections to understand how many voters candidates will gain from each group. The limitation in Sides-Vavreck-Mason-Jardina is that they find a strong relationship between racial attitudes and Trump support, but while predictive of individual vote choice these results lead to relatively few total votes for Trump.Westwood contends thatthe important contribution from Grimmer et al is that there was a big change in the attitudes of the white electorate. A small number of whites with high levels of racial resentment did support Trump in 2016 at a higher rate than in prior elections, but the bulk of support for Trump came from more moderate whites. Trump managed to pull in support from racists, but he was able to pull in much more support from economically disadvantaged whites.The Grimmer paper, according to Westwood, has significant implications for those making “general claims about the future Republican Party,” specifically challenging those who believethat Republicans can continue to win by appealing to white Americans’ worst attitudes and instincts. While it is true Trump support is largest for the most racist voters, this group is a shrinking part of the electorate. Republicans, as Grimmer et al. show, must figure out how to appeal to moderate whites who hold more moderate attitudes in order to win. Racist appeals can win votes, but it is critical to remember that this number is smaller than the votes gained by speaking on economic concerns of moderate white voters (many of whom were uncomfortable with Trump’s racist rhetoric and were voting solely based on economic policy).Trump, Westwood concluded, “found support from both racists and moderates, but with the pool of racists voters shrinking, it is clear this is not a path to future victory.”Other scholars were more cautious in their response to the Grimmer paper. Daniel Hopkins, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, commented by email:The 2016 presidential election included ballots cast by more than 128 million Americans, and so any one narrative used to explain that election will be partial and incomplete. So I think it’s critical to avoid the idea that there is a single skeleton key that can explain all the varied undercurrents that led to Trump’s 2016 victory, or that any one paper will provide a definitive explanation. That said, I published an article in 2021 in Political Behavior titled “The Activation of Prejudice and Presidential Voting,” which I entirely stand by.Hopkins said his paper demonstrates thatwhite Americans’ prejudice against Black Americans was more predictive of their vote choice in 2016 than it had been in 2012. Importantly, it also shows that levels of prejudice against Black Americans were more predictive of voting in the 2016 G.O.P. primary than in the 2016 general election. But Grimmer and colleagues are looking at a different question using different data, so I don’t consider the analyses to be contradictory.One clear benefit emerging from the continuing study of Trump’s 2016 victory is a better understanding of the complexity and nuance of what brought it about.Marc Hetherington, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, pointed out in an email that the presence of racial resentment among Republican voters emerged long before Trump ran for president, while such resentment among Democratic voters has been sharply declining:I think what Justin Grimmer would say is that racial resentment didn’t do more for Trump than it did for Romney. The highly racially resentful have, with reason, been voting for Republicans for a long time. Trump’s more explicit use of race didn’t make supporters more racially resentful. Levels of racial resentment among Republicans are no higher now than they were before Trump. In fact, they are slightly lower. And the highly racially resentful already knew full well that their home was in the G.O.P.While the focus of attention has been on those who fall at the high end of the distribution on racial resentment, Hetherington wrote,Almost all the change has taken place among Democrats, as they moved to lower and lower levels of resentment. In a statistical sense, the fact that there are now so many more people at the low end of the distribution than before will produce a larger coefficient for the effect of racial resentment on voting behavior. Put another way, racial resentment has a bigger effect. But that does not mean that those high in racial resentment are now even more likely to vote for Republicans or that there are more people high in resentment. In this case, I think it reflects that there are more people low in resentment than before and that they are even less likely to vote for Republicans than before. So the low end of the scale is doing the work.I began my examination of the Grimmer paper concerned that he and his co-authors might be drawing large conclusions from statistical oddities. After further examining the data and going over the commentary of the scholars I contacted, my own view is that Grimmer, Marble and Tanigawa-Lau have made a significant contribution to understanding the Trump phenomenon.Most important, they make the case that explanations of Trump’s victory pointing to the role of those at the extremes on measures of racial resentment and sexism, while informative, are in their own way too comforting, fostering the belief that Trump’s triumph was the product of voters who have drifted far from the American mainstream.In fact, the new analysis suggests that Trumpism has found fertile ground across a broad swath of the electorate, including many firmly in the mainstream. That Trump could capture the hearts and minds of these voters suggests that whatever he represents beyond racial resentment — anger, chaos, nihilism, hostility — is more powerful than many recognize or acknowledge. Restoring American politics to an even keel will be far tougher than many of us realize.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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      The Politics of a Trump Indictment

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      If you intend to indict and try a former president of the United States, especially a former president of the United States whose career has benefited from the collapse of public trust in the neutrality of all our institutions, you had better have clear evidence, all-but-obvious guilt and loads of legal precedent behind your case.The case that New York prosecutors are apparently considering bringing against Donald Trump, over hush-money payments made to Stormy Daniels that may have violated campaign finance laws, does not have the look of a slam dunk. The use of the phrase “novel legal theory” in descriptions of what the case might entail is not encouraging.Neither are the doubts raised by writers and pundits not known for their sympathy to Trump. Or the fact that we have a precedent of a presidential candidate indicted over a remarkably similar offense — the trial of John Edwards for his payments to Rielle Hunter — that yielded an acquittal on one count and a hung jury on the rest.The Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky precedent is a little less legally relevant, involving perjury rather than campaign-finance law. But the Clinton scandals established a general principle that presidents are above the law as long as the lawbreaking involved minor infractions covering up tawdry sex. If a potential Trump prosecution requires overturning that principle, then prosecutors might as well appear in court wearing Democratic Party campaign paraphernalia; the effect will be the same.That effect does not need to benefit Trump politically to make such a prosecution unwise or reckless. An indictment could hurt him at the polls and still be a very bad long-term idea — setting a precedent that will pressure Republican prosecutors to indict Democratic politicians on similarly doubtful charges, establish a pattern of legal revenge‌ seeking against the out-of-power party and encourage polarization’s continued transformation into enmity.But of course, the political question is inescapable: Will an indictment help Trump or hurt him in his quest to reclaim the Republican nomination and the presidency?Two generalizations are relatively easy to make. Even a partisan-seeming indictment won’t do anything to make Trump more popular with the independent voters who swing presidential elections; it will just be added baggage for a politician already widely regarded as chaotic and immoral and unfit for the office.At the same time, even an airtight indictment would be regarded as persecution by Trump’s most devoted fans. So whether or not there’s a wave of MAGA protests now, you would expect the spectacle of a prosecution to help mobilize and motivate his base in 2024.Alexander Burns of Politico argues that these two points together are a net negative for Trump. After all, he doesn’t need to mobilize his base. They will mostly be there for him, no matter what; he needs to persuade the doubtful and exhausted that he’s their man in 2024. And if even a few of these voters get weary of another round of Stormy Daniels sleaze, then he’s worse off. Burns writes, “If each scandal or blunder binds 99 percent of his base closer to him and unsettles 1 percent, that is still a losing formula for a politician whose base is an electoral minority. Trump cannot shed fractional support with every controversy but make it up on volume.”I’m not sure it’s quite that simple. That’s because in addition to the true base voter (who will be with Trump in any case) and the true swing voter (who probably pulled the lever for Joe Biden last time), there’s the Republican primary swing voter: the voter who’s part of Trump’s base for general election purposes but doesn’t love him absolutely, the voter who’s open to Ron DeSantis but swings between the two Florida Republicans, depending on the headlines at the moment.I can tell you two stories about how this kind of voter reacts to an indictment. In one, Trump does well with this constituency when he’s either out of the news or on the offensive and does worse when he seems weakened, messy, a loser. Hence the DeSantis bump in polling immediately after the 2022 midterms, when the underperformance of Trump’s favored candidates damaged his mystique and his flailing afterward made him look impotent. Hence his apparent recovery in polling more recently, as he’s taken the fight to DeSantis without the Florida governor striking back, making Trump look stronger than his not-yet-campaigning rival.Under this theory, even a politicized and partisan indictment returns Trump to a flailing position, making him seem like a victim rather than a master of events, a stumbling loser caught in liberal nets. So the Republican swing voter behaves like the general-election swing voter and recoils, and the disciplined DeSantis benefits.But there’s an alternative story, in which our Republican swing voter is invested not in specific candidates so much as in the grand battle with the liberal political establishment. In this theory the DeSantis brand is built on his being a battler, a scourge of cultural liberalism in all its forms, while Trump has lost ground by appearing more interested in battling his fellow Republicans, even to the point of hurting the G.O.P. cause and helping liberals win.What happens, though, when institutional liberalism seems to take the fight to Trump? (Yes, I know a single prosecutor isn’t institutional liberalism, but that’s how this will be perceived.) When the grand ideological battle is suddenly joined around his person, his position, his very freedom?Well, maybe that seems like confirmation of the argument that certain Trumpists have been making for a while — that there’s nothing the establishment fears more than a Trump restoration, that “they can’t let him back in,” as the former Trump White House official Michael Anton put it last year. And so if you care most about ideological conflict, it doesn’t matter if you don’t love him as his true supporters do; where Trump stands, there you must stand as well.This is the rally-to-Trump effect that seems most imaginable if an indictment comes — not a burst of zeal for the man himself but a repetition of the enemy-of-my-enemy dynamic that’s been crucial to his resilience all along.Of course, since at least some Democrats would be happy to see Trump rather than DeSantis as the nominee, you could argue that in this scenario the spoiling-for-a-fight conservatives would be essentially letting themselves be manipulated into fighting on the wrong battlefield, for the wrong leader, with the wrong stakes.But persuading them of that will fall to DeSantis himself, whose own campaign will make one of these two narratives of Republican psychology look prophetic ‌— the first in victory, the second in defeat.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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      Macron Appears Ready to Tough Out France’s Pension Crisis

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      Amid protests in the streets and in Parliament, the French leader shows no sign of scrapping a law that raises the retirement age.PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron’s re-election program last year was short on detail. His mind seemed elsewhere, chiefly on the war in Ukraine. But on one thing he was clear: He would raise the retirement age in France to 65 from 62.“You will have to work progressively more,” he said during a debate in April 2022 with the extreme-right candidate, Marine Le Pen. She attacked the idea as “an absolutely unbearable injustice” that would condemn French people to retirement “when they are no longer able to enjoy it.”France heard both candidates. Soon after, Mr. Macron was re-elected with 58.55 percent of the vote to Ms. Le Pen’s 41.45 percent. It was a clear victory, and it was clear what Mr. Macron would do on the question of pensions.Yet his ramming the overhaul through Parliament last week without a full vote on the bill itself culminated in turmoil, mayhem on the streets and two failed no-confidence votes against his government on Monday, even as polls have consistently shown about 65 percent of French people are opposed to raising the retirement age.Had they not heard him? Had they changed their minds? Had circumstances changed? Perhaps the answer lies, above all, in the nature of Mr. Macron’s victory, as he himself acknowledged on election night last year.Looking somber, speaking in an uncharacteristically flat monotone, Mr. Macron told a crowd of supporters in Paris: “I also know that a number of our compatriots voted for me today not to support the ideas that I uphold, but to block the extreme right. I want to thank them and say that I am aware that I have obligations toward them in the years to come.”“Those ‘obligations’ could only be a promise to negotiate on major reforms,” Nicole Bacharan, a social scientist, said on Tuesday. “He did not negotiate, even with moderate union leaders. What I see now is Macron’s complete disconnection from the country.”Marine Le Pen, center, of the far-right National Rally party, says the pension plan would condemn French people to retirement “when they are no longer able to enjoy it.”Thomas Samson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOpposition parties on both the left and the right have vowed to file challenges against the pension law before the Constitutional Council, which reviews legislation to ensure it complies with the French Constitution.“The goal,” said Thomas Ménagé of Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally party, “is to ensure that this text falls into the dustbin of history.”But the chances of that appear remote.After a long silence, Mr. Macron is set to address the turmoil on Wednesday. He will try to conciliate; he will, according to officials close to him, portray the current standoff as a battle between democratic institutions and the chaos of the street, orchestrated by the extreme left and slyly encouraged by the extreme right. He has decided to stick with his current government, led by Élisabeth Borne, the prime minister, and he will not dissolve Parliament or call new elections, they say.In short, it seems Mr. Macron has decided to tough out the crisis, perhaps offering some blandishments on improving vocational high schools and broader on-the-job training. But certainly no apology appears to be forthcoming for using a legal tool, Article 49.3 of the Constitution, to avoid a full parliamentary vote on a change that has split the country. (Only the Senate, the upper house, voted to pass the bill this month.)This approach appears consistent with Mr. Macron’s chosen tactics on the pension overhaul. Since the debate with Ms. Le Pen 11 months ago, inflation has risen, energy prices have gone up, and the pressures, particularly on the poorer sectors of French society, have grown.French lawmakers held up protest placards after the result of the first no-confidence motion against the French government at the National Assembly on Monday.Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersYet, while he has made some concessions, including setting the new retirement age at 64 rather than 65, Mr. Macron has remained remote from the rolling anger. Most conspicuously, and to many inexplicably, after the government consulted extensively with unions in the run-up to January, Mr. Macron has refused to negotiate with the powerful moderate union leader Laurent Berger, who had supported Mr. Macron’s earlier attempt at pension changes in 2019 but opposes him now.“Macron knows the economy better than he knows political psychology,” said Alain Duhamel, a political scientist. “And today, what you have is a generalized fury.”A large number of Macron voters, it is now clear, never wanted the retirement age raised. They heard Mr. Macron during the debate with Ms. Le Pen. They just did not loathe his idea enough to vote for a nationalist, anti-immigrant ideologue whose party was financed in part by Russian loans.Mr. Macron is adept at playing on such contradictions and divisions. Because his presidential term is limited, he is freer to do as he pleases. He knows three things: He will not be a candidate for re-election in 2027 because a third consecutive term is not permitted; the opposition in Parliament is strong but irreconcilably divided between the far left and extreme right; and there is a large, silent slice of French society that supports his pension overhaul.All this gives him room to maneuver even in his current difficult situation.When Mr. Macron opted last week for the 49.3 and the avoidance of a parliamentary vote, he explained his decision this way: “I consider that in the current state of affairs the financial and economic risks are too great.”Protesters in Nantes, in western France, on Tuesday.Loic Venance/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOn the face of it, speaking about risks to financial markets while pushing through an overhaul deeply resented by blue-collar and working-class French people seemed politically gauche. It appeared especially so at a moment when Mr. Macron was turning away from the full parliamentary vote his government had unanimously said it wanted.“Saying what he said about finance at that moment, in that context, was just dynamite,” said Ms. Bacharan.It was also an unmistakable wink to the powerful French private sector — with its world-class companies like LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton — and to the many affluent and middle-class French people who do not like the growing piles of uncollected garbage or the protests in the streets, and who view retirement at 62 as an unsustainable anomaly in a Europe where the retirement age has generally risen to 65 or higher.If Mr. Macron has cards to play, and perhaps broader support than is evident as protesters hurl insults at him day after day, his very disconnection may make it hard for him to judge the country’s mood.Last week, Aurore Bergé, the leader of Mr. Macron’s Renaissance party in Parliament, wrote to Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, to request police protection for lawmakers.“I refuse to see representatives from my group, or any national lawmaker, afraid to express themselves, or to vote freely, because they are afraid of reprisals,” she said.It was a measure of the violent mood in France.“If we have had 15 Constitutions over the past two centuries, that means there have been 14 revolutions of various kinds,” Mr. Duhamel said. “There is an eruptive side to France that one should not ignore.”The National Assembly in Paris. Opposition parties on the left and the right have vowed to file challenges against the pension law. Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAurelien Breeden More

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      DeSantis, on Defense, Shows Signs of Slipping in Polls

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      For now, the Florida governor isn’t firing back at Trump.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida with Donald J. Trump in 2019. He has not attacked Mr. Trump, who has not hesitated to attack him. Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated PressIt’s been a tough few months for Ron DeSantis.Donald J. Trump and his allies have blasted him as “Meatball Ron,” “Ron DeSanctimonious,” a “groomer,” disloyal and a supporter of cutting entitlement programs. Now, he’s getting criticism from many mainstream conservatives for calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “territorial dispute.”Is all of this making a difference in the polls? There are signs the answer is yes.In surveys taken since the Trump offensive began two months ago, Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor, has steadily lost ground against Mr. Trump, whose own numbers have increased.It can be hard to track who’s up and who’s down in the Republican race, since different pollsters have had such wildly divergent takes on Mr. Trump’s strength. In just the last few days, a CNN/SSRS poll showed a tight race, with Mr. DeSantis at 39 percent and Mr. Trump at 37 percent among registered voters, while a Morning Consult poll found Mr. Trump with nearly a two-to-one lead, 52 percent to 28 percent.In this situation, the best way to get a clear read on recent trends is to compare surveys by the same pollsters over time.Over the last two months, we’ve gotten about a dozen polls from pollsters who had surveyed the Republican race over the previous two months. These polls aren’t necessarily of high quality or representative, so don’t focus on the average across these polls. It’s the trend that’s important, and the trend is unequivocal: Every single one of these polls has shown Mr. DeSantis faring worse than before, and Mr. Trump faring better.A Widening Gap Between Trump and DeSantisEvery recent poll has shown Mr. DeSantis faring worse than he did two months ago — around the time Mr. Trump began publicly attacking him. More

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      Dutch Pro-Farmer Party Sweeps Elections, Upsetting the Status Quo

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      The surprise victory is widely seen as a protest vote against Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government and some of his policies, including a goal to slash nitrogen emissions, which many say will imperil farming operations.A small pro-farmers party has swept provincial elections in the Netherlands to become the biggest in the Senate by channeling wide dissatisfaction with the Dutch government, in a sharp challenge to Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s administration.The results put the party, the Farmer Citizen Movement, which has fewer than 11,000 members, according to its website, on track to become a major player in a government body that approves or rejects legislation that comes out of the House of Representatives.Some Dutch voters said they viewed the party’s success as a victory against the country’s elites as well as the government. They said it showed support for the preservation of rural life in the Netherlands and the farming economy, in particular, though voters from all parts of the country, including suburban areas, supported the party.But the victory could make it difficult for Mr. Rutte’s government to pass a strict law to cut nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands by 50 percent by 2030, to fight climate change and place it in line with European Union requirements to preserve nature reserves. The prime minister’s party, which does not have a majority in the Senate or the House, needs a coalition vote to pass laws.The pro-farmers party, known by its Dutch acronym BBB, opposes the plan, saying it could imperil farmers’ operations in a country renowned for its agricultural industry. To reach the government’s emission-reduction goals, thousands of farmers would have to significantly reduce the number of their livestock and the size of their operations, farmers and their supporters say. If they cannot help meet the government’s target, they may have to close down their operations altogether, they say.Mr. Rutte, who is not up for election for a few more years and is one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders, having been elected in 2010, called the results a “scream at politics,” according to the Dutch wire service ANP.Caroline van der Plas, the co-founder and leader of BBB, said after the vote: “They already couldn’t ignore us. But now, they definitely can’t.”Ben Apeldoorn, a dairy farmer in the Utrecht Province who voted for the pro-farmers party, said the win felt like “a victory of the common man over the elite.”“I’m pleasantly surprised,” he said. “As farmers, we felt abandoned by the political society.”The Farmer Citizen Movement did not exist until four years ago. The party, which had zero seats going into the election, won at least 16 in the 75-seat Senate, according to exit polls and projections. A bloc formed by left-of-center Labor and Green parties had 15 seats, local news reports said. (BBB holds one seat in the 150-member House of Representatives.)Now, BBB, which presents itself as a party of the countryside, appears to be on track to become the largest party in all but one province, according to the Dutch public broadcaster NOS. Vote counting was still wrapping up late Thursday night.Prime Minister Mark Rutte in Den Bosch, the Netherlands, on Wednesday, called the election results a “scream at politics.”Robin Van Lonkhuijsen/EPA, via ShutterstockIn Dutch provincial elections, held every four years, voters choose the lawmakers for the country’s 12 provinces, who then pick members of the Senate, which will be done in May. With BBB’s victory, the fate of the government’s plan to drastically cut nitrogen emissions is in question.Bart Kemp, the chairman of Agractie, a farmers interest group founded in 2019, says the party’s victory means “the Netherlands has taken a big step toward being more reasonable.” He added, “The government has unrealistic plans.”Research from 2019 shows that the Netherlands produces, on average, four times as much nitrogen as other European countries. The agricultural industry is responsible for the largest share of nitrogen emissions in the country, much of it from the waste produced by the estimated 1.6 million cows that provide the milk used to make the country’s famed cheeses, like Gouda and Edam.Scientists have long sounded the alarm about the urgent global need to reduce harmful emissions. Too much nitrogen acidifies the ground, which reduces the amount of nutrients for plants and trees. That, in turn, means that fewer kinds of plants can grow together. Nitrogen emissions also cause less fungus in the ground, which makes it more vulnerable to extreme weather such as drought or rain.Excess nitrogen in the ocean can also help create conditions in which vital organisms cannot survive.The nitrogen-reduction plan led to nationwide protests last year, with people burning manure and hay bales and hanging upside-down flags along highways.Police officers used a water cannon on environmental activists protesting against tax breaks for fossil fuel use in The Hague this month.Piroschka Van De Wouw/ReutersChristianne van der Wal, the minister for nature and nitrogen in Mr. Rutte’s government and a member of his People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, acknowledged that many Dutch residents were against the government’s nitrogen emissions plan.“We’ve known that for a long time,” she said, calling it a complicated issue that would have a major effect on people’s lives. But, she added, “at the same time, there’s no choice.”Farmers say they have always followed the rules, trying to find innovative and more sustainable ways of producing and ensuring safe and high-quality food. They say the government’s plan, which includes the possibility of forced buyouts, made them feel unwanted.“Everyone in the Netherlands cares about nature, including farmers,” said Ms. van der Plas, who occupies BBB’s only seat in the House. The Netherlands simply has to follow European rules for preserving its nature preserves, she added, even though the bloc has not stipulated how exactly to do so.A Dutch dairy farmer in Oldetrijne, in the Friesland Province, on Wednesday. Farmers say they may have to reduce their livestock under the government’s emissions-reduction plan.Piroschka Van De Wouw/ReutersWhether the government’s proposal will come up for a vote in its current form in the Senate is unclear.Ms. van der Wal, the nitrogen minister, said it was up to the provinces to find policies to prepare for the reduction of nitrogen emissions.“All parties, left or right, pro- or anti- the nitrogen approach, have plans for their provinces: the building of houses or energy transition,” she said through a spokesperson.“But without the reduction of nitrogen emissions,” she said, “that simply won’t be possible.” More

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      Trump and DeSantis Could Both Lose

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      There are two different narratives running through the Republican Party right now. The first is the Trumpian populist narrative we’re all familiar with: American carnage … the elites have betrayed us … the left is destroying us … I am your retribution.On the other hand, Republican governors from places like Georgia, Virginia and New Hampshire often have a different story to tell. They are running growing, prospering states. (Seven of the 10 fastest growing states have Republican governors while eight of the 10 fastest shrinking states have Democratic governors.)So their stories are not about the left behind; they can tell stories about the places people are leaving for. Their most appealing narrative is: Jobs and people are coming to us, we’ve got the better model, we’re providing businesslike leadership to keep it going.These different narratives yield different political messages. The bellicose populists put culture war issues front and center. The conservative governors certainly play the values card, especially when schools try to usurp the role of parents, but they are strongest when emphasizing pocketbook issues and quality of life issues.Gov. Brian Kemp, for example, is making Georgia a hub for green manufacturing, attracting immense investments in electric vehicle technologies. In his inaugural address he vowed to make Georgia “the electric mobility capital of America.” As Alexander Burns noted in Politico, Kemp doesn’t sell this as climate change activism; it’s jobs and prosperity.The two narratives also produce radically different emotional vibes. The Donald Trump/Tucker Carlson orbit is rife with indignation and fury. Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin and the previous Arizona governor, Doug Ducey, are warm, upbeat people who actually enjoy their fellow human beings.The former resemble the combative populism of Huey Long; the latter are more likely to reflect the optimism of F.D.R.If American politics worked as it should, then the Republican primaries would be contests between these two different narratives and governing styles — between populism and conservatism.But that’s not happening so far. The first reason is that Trump’s supporters are so many and so loyal, and his political style is so brutal, he may be deterring governors from entering the campaign. My educated guess is that Youngkin will not run for president in 2024; he wants to focus on Virginia. And Kemp may not, either. Kemp has taken on Trump in the past, but who wants to get into a gutter brawl with a front-runner when you already have a fantastic job governing the state you love? It could be that the G.O.P. presidential field will be much smaller than many of us thought a couple of months ago.The second reason we’re not seeing the two narratives face off is Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor should be the ultimate optimistic, businesslike conservative. His state is growing faster than any other in the country. But instead, he’s running as a dour, humorless culture war populist — presumably because that’s what he is.So right now the G.O.P. has two leading candidates with similar views, and the same ever-present anti-woke combativeness. The race is between populist Tweedledum and populist Tweedledee.The conventional wisdom is that it will stay that way — but maybe not. At this point in earlier election cycles, Jeb Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Scott Walker and Mike Huckabee were doing well in their polls. None became the nominee.Furthermore, the conservative managerial wing of the party is not some small offshoot of the Tucker Carlson universe. In 2022, the normies did much better than the populists. Look at Gov. Mike DeWine’s landslide win in Ohio. Millions and millions of Republicans are voting for these people.In Georgia Kemp took on Trump about the Big Lie and cruised to victory. As Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report has pointed out, Kemp had almost 90 percent approval among his state’s Republican voters in a January poll, whereas Trump’s favorability rating was nearly 20 points lower among those voters. Kemp’s overall approval rating among Georgia voters was a whopping 62 percent, including 34 percent of Democrats. Trump’s favorability rating was a pathetic 38 percent in this swing state.The Republican donor class is mobilizing to try to prevent a Trump nomination, and DeSantis is overpriced.Do we really think a guy with a small, insular circle of advisers and limited personal skills is going to do well in the intimate contests in Iowa and New Hampshire? As voters focus on the economy, DeSantis massively erred in playing culture war issues so hard.The conclusion I draw is that the Trump-DeSantis duopoly is unstable and represents a wing of the party many people are getting sick of.What does that mean? Maybe somebody like Kemp is coaxed into running. Maybe eyes turn to Tim Scott, an effective, optimistic senator from South Carolina. Maybe the former governor of New Jersey Chris Christie enters the race and takes a sledgehammer to Trump in a way that doesn’t help his own candidacy but shakes up the status quo.The elemental truth is that the Republican Party is like a baseball team that has tremendous talent in the minor leagues and a star pitcher who can’t throw strikes or do his job. Sooner or later, there’s going to be a change.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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      In Iowa, Kamala Harris Says Republicans Won’t Stop at Abortion

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      “If politicians start using the court to undo doctors’ decisions, imagine where that can lead,” Ms. Harris said at a discussion on abortion with local lawmakers and medical officials.DES MOINES — Vice President Kamala Harris said on Thursday that a lawsuit seeking to overturn federal approval of a widely used abortion pill amounted to an attack on “our public health system as a whole.”During her first trip to Iowa as vice president, Ms. Harris portrayed Republican attempts to impose a nationwide ban on abortion as immoral and extreme.“If politicians start using the court to undo doctors’ decisions, imagine where that can lead,” Ms. Harris said as a judge in Texas considered whether he would issue a preliminary injunction that could take the pill, mifepristone, off the market.Ms. Harris has taken a lead role on abortion as President Biden prepares to announce an expected run for re-election. Without the votes in Congress to enshrine abortion protections into law, the White House hopes Ms. Harris can help sustain the sort of anger that motivated Democratic voters during the midterm elections.In her appearance Thursday at Grand View University, Ms. Harris framed the abortion issue as part of a broader struggle for health care and privacy, a strategy aimed at galvanizing the broadest coalition of voters.“This is not only about reproductive health,” Ms. Harris said, adding that overturning F.D.A. approval for abortion medication could set a dangerous precedent, potentially affecting the availability of other medications.The last-minute trip to Iowa, planned by the vice president’s team only in the past few days, is part of a push by Ms. Harris to get out into the country more to overcome an impression from allies and critics alike that she has not forged a definitive role in the administration.Top Republicans have flocked to Iowa in recent weeks in anticipation of the 2024 Iowa caucuses, including former President Donald J. Trump; former Vice President Mike Pence; Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador; Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.Democrats have overhauled their primary calendar, replacing Iowa with South Carolina as the party’s first nominating contest. But the rush of Republicans to Iowa presented an opportunity for Ms. Harris to call attention to restrictions that could be imposed by Republican-led legislatures.“We need to show the difference that while Republicans are taking health care rights away from them, we in the Democratic Party are saying that is not acceptable,” said Elizabeth Naftali, a deputy finance chair of the Democratic National Committee.Ms. Naftali said that Democrats could not allow a “steamroll by Republicans” just because the primary calendar had changed.Most abortions are now banned in more than a dozen states following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year. While Iowa has not banned abortion, it is one of many states the administration fears could soon enact more severe abortion restrictions.Last year, the Iowa Supreme Court found that there was no right to an abortion under the state’s constitution. A ban on the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy has been blocked by a state judge since 2019 but Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, has appealed the decision to the higher court. The state currently bans abortion after 20 weeks.Most Iowans — 61 percent — believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll last fall. Thirty-three percent say it should be illegal in most or all cases, and 6 percent are not sure.“We have just seen a lot of panic and fear among patients who are worried,” said Mazie Stilwell, the director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Iowa.White House officials acknowledged that there was only so much that they could do to protect abortion access without Congress, but many abortion advocates are calling for policies that would protect both medical officials providing abortions and those seeking them.“What I know feels frustrating for me and many organizers on the ground is we keep having meetings but there’s not any action,” said Renee Bracey Sherman, the founder and executive director of the reproductive rights advocacy group We Testify.No major policy announcements came on Thursday. But Ms. Harris described those pushing for abortion restrictions as “extremist so-called leaders who purport and profess to hail themselves as a beacon of freedom and opportunity.”Stefanie Brown James, a co-founder of the Collective PAC, an organization dedicated to electing African American officials, said such blunt messaging would be imperative for both Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden in the months ahead.“In the event Kamala Harris continues to be his second in command, it’s important for her now to be out having conversations as much as it is for him to be,” Ms. James said. “This issue is not going away anytime soon.” More

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      Why Fox’s Call on Arizona, Which Was Right, Was Still Wrong

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      It was more a risky guess than a sound decision, and easily could have led to a missed call.The Fox News election-night call that Joe Biden would win Arizona in 2020 proved correct but wasn’t based on sound principles.Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIf you’re a subscriber to this newsletter, my guess is you’d be interested in my colleague Peter Baker’s article about the drama at Fox News in the aftermath of its decision to call Arizona for Joe Biden on election night.Here’s the short version: Fox News executives, news anchors and pundits were enraged over the call, with messages and a recording showing they thought it hurt ratings and threatened to “impact the brand” by alienating Donald J. Trump’s supporters.Most people would agree that political and branding concerns shouldn’t dictate an election call by a news organization. But the article has nonetheless rekindled an old debate about whether Fox News was really “right” to call Arizona for Mr. Biden on election night in 2020.This debate can be a little confusing, since Fox was right in the most important sense: It said Mr. Biden would win Arizona, and he ultimately did.But a race call is not an ordinary prediction. It’s not like calling heads or tails in a coin toss. A race call means that a candidate has something like a 99.9 percent chance of winning. As a result, a call can be wrong, even if the expected outcome ends up happening. If you assert that there’s a 99.9 percent chance that a coin flip will come up heads, you’re wrong — regardless of what happens next.Of course, everyone knows heads or tails is a 50-50 proposition. It’s much harder to know whether Mr. Biden had a 50.1 percent or 99.9 percent chance of winning Arizona based on the data available at 11:20 p.m. Eastern on election night, when Fox called the state for Mr. Biden. Most other news organizations didn’t think so; only The Associated Press, a few hours later, joined Fox in making the call so quickly. And in the end, Mr. Biden won Arizona by just three-tenths of a percentage point — a margin evoking a coin flip.Was the Fox call the result of the most sophisticated and accurate modeling, or more like being “right” when calling heads in a coin flip? It appears to be the latter — a lucky and dangerous guess — based on a review of televised statements by the Fox News decision team and publicly available data about the network’s modeling.The Fox team believed Mr. Biden would win Arizona by a comfortable margin at the time the call was made, based on erroneous assumptions and flawed polling. While it worked out for Fox in the end, similarly risky decisions could have easily led to a missed call, with potentially dire consequences for trust in American elections.I should disclose that I’m not an entirely disinterested party. Here at The Times, we rejected the A.P. call on Arizona (The Times usually accepts A.P. calls, but we independently evaluate A.P. projections in very important races) because we couldn’t rule out a Trump victory based on the available data. I believe we were right about that decision. But much as the Fox team has an incentive to argue its case, readers may believe that I have an incentive to argue against the Arizona call. I should also disclose that I know and like the Fox News decision desk director Arnon Mishkin.In a recording of a Fox Zoom meeting two weeks after the election obtained by The Times, Mr. Mishkin acknowledged that the Arizona call appeared “premature” but that “it did land correctly.”A Fox spokesperson on Sunday said that “Fox News continues to stand by its decision desk’s accurate call of Arizona.”Still, there is a compelling body of publicly available evidence suggesting that Fox, when it called the state, fundamentally misunderstood the remaining votes. It did not imagine that Mr. Trump could come so close to winning.Why Fox made the callAt the time Fox called Arizona, Mr. Biden led Mr. Trump by 8.5 percentage points, with an estimated 73 percent of the expected vote counted. The tabulated votes were mainly mail ballots received well ahead of the election. To win, Mr. Trump needed to take about 61 percent of the remaining votes.In addition to the tabulated vote, the Fox decision desk also had the Fox News Voter Analysis, otherwise known as the A.P. VoteCast data — a pre-election survey fielded by The Associated Press and NORC at the University of Chicago. The AP/NORC data showed Mr. Biden ahead by six percentage points in Arizona.A person with knowledge of how the call was made, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the Fox team believed that the early returns confirmed the Fox News Voter Analysis. Indeed, Mr. Biden’s early lead seemed to match the survey’s findings among early voters, who broke for Mr. Biden by 10 points in the survey, 54 percent to 44 percent. The implication was that Mr. Biden was on track for a clear victory.When asked on election night on Fox to explain the Arizona call, Mr. Mishkin rejected the notion that Mr. Trump would do well in the outstanding ballots. Instead, he said he expected Mr. Biden to win the remaining vote:“We’ve heard from the White House that they need to get just 61 percent of the expected vote and they’ll be getting that.” He added: “But the reality is that’s just not true. They’re likely to only get 44 percent of the outstanding vote.” These figures were repeated by Daron Shaw, a Republican pollster on the Fox decision desk, and Mr. Mishkin in subsequent appearances. At the various times these statements were made, Mr. Biden would have been on track to win the state by between four and nine percentage points if the outstanding vote had gone so heavily in his favor.Through a Fox News spokesperson, Mr. Mishkin said he “misspoke on election night” when he said Fox expected Mr. Biden to win the remaining vote. If Mr. Mishkin did misspeak, there was still no indication that the Fox team expected Mr. Trump to win the remaining votes by a meaningful margin — let alone an overwhelming margin.On air on election night, Mr. Mishkin offered two main reasons to expect Mr. Biden to fare well in the remaining vote:“Yes, there are some outstanding votes in Arizona. Most of them are coming from Maricopa, where Biden is currently in a very strong position. And many of them are mail-in votes, where we know from our Fox News Voter Analysis that Biden has an advantage.”On their face, these arguments weren’t outlandish. Mr. Biden won Maricopa County, which is the home of Phoenix and a majority of Arizona voters. He won the mail vote in Arizona as well.In the end, Mr. Trump won 59 percent of the remaining vote, all but erasing Mr. Biden’s advantage.What Fox missedHow could a group of mostly mail-in and mostly Maricopa ballots break for Mr. Trump by such a wide margin? The reason was foreseeable before election night.While “mail” votes sound monolithic, there can be important differences between mail ballots counted before and after the election. That’s because Arizona counts mail ballots in roughly the order in which they are received, and different kinds of voters return their ballots at different times.Ahead of the election, it was clear that Democrats were turning in their ballots earlier than Republicans. As a result, the mail ballots counted on election night — those received at least a few days before the election — were likely to break for Mr. Biden by a wide margin.The flip side: The voters who received mail ballots but had not yet returned them were very Republican. If they ultimately returned their ballots, these so-called “late” mail ballots counted after the election would break heavily for Mr. Trump.It wasn’t inevitable, of course, that Mr. Trump would win these ballots by as wide a margin as he ultimately did. It was possible that many of these Republicans would simply vote on Election Day. In the midterms last November, for instance, Republicans failed to decisively win the “late” mail vote under fairly similar circumstances.But in 2020, whether the late ballots would be overwhelmingly Republican was nonetheless “the big question,” as I wrote before the election. As a result, we never contemplated the possibility of a call in Arizona on election night; it was an easy decision for us to reject the A.P. call without knowing exactly how the “late” mail ballots would break.When asked on television the day after the election if the so-called late mail voters could back Mr. Trump with more than 60 percent support, Mr. Mishkin dismissed the possibility, saying it could happen “if a frog had wings.”Mr. Mishkin said he did not “ascribe any significance” to whether mail voters turned in their ballots on Election Day. Instead, he expected the “late” ballots would “confirm” their call. He was confident the late data “would look like the data we’ve noticed throughout the count in Arizona,” which to that point had shown Mr. Biden with a clear lead.Similarly, Mr. Shaw said in a radio interview the day after the election that “we don’t have any evidence” that “late” early voters would break for Mr. Trump.In fairness to Fox News and The A.P., it was hard to anticipate the difference between early and late mail ballots ahead of the election. It required marrying a detailed understanding of absentee ballot returns with an equally deep understanding of the mechanics of how Arizona counts mail ballots.The Fox News Voter Analysis was a factor here again as well. The survey offered no indication that mail voters surveyed near the election were likelier to back Mr. Trump, according to the person with knowledge of the call. And previously, late-arriving mail ballots in Arizona had benefited Democrats.But the ballot return data showed that this time could be very different. In the end, it was.Models and polls that missed the markAnalytical and research failures are inevitable. No one can perfectly anticipate what will happen on election night, especially in the midst of a pandemic. What matters is whether these failures yield a bad projection, and here the quality of statistical modeling — and especially whether the model properly quantifies uncertainty — becomes an important factor.Fox’s statistical modeling was highly confident about its Arizona call. On election night, Mr. Mishkin said, “We’re four standard deviations from being wrong” in Arizona. This implied that the Fox model gave Mr. Trump a 1-in-10,000 chance of victory.It’s hard to evaluate why the model was so confident. What’s clear is that it provided a basis for Fox to call the race, even as there were mounting nonstatistical reasons to begin to doubt the estimates.By the time of the Arizona call, it was already clear that the AP/NORC survey data — along with virtually all pre-election polling — had overestimated Mr. Biden. In North Carolina, for example, Mr. Trump had already taken the lead after AP/NORC data initially showed Mr. Biden ahead by five points. The same data initially showed Mr. Biden ahead by seven points in Florida, where Mr. Trump was by then the projected winner.As a result, there was already reason to be cautious about estimates showing great strength for Mr. Biden. But rather than become a source of uncertainty, Mr. Biden’s positive numbers in the AP/NORC data appeared to become a source of confidence — as Mr. Biden’s strength in the early vote appeared to confirm expectations.One indication that Fox’s modeling was prone to overestimate Mr. Biden was its publicly available probability dials, which displayed the likelihood that Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump would win the key battleground states.At various points, these estimates gave Mr. Biden at least an 87 percent chance of winning Ohio and at least a 76 percent chance of winning Iowa; Mr. Trump ultimately won both by nearly 10 points.Maybe most tellingly, Fox gave Mr. Biden a 95 percent chance to win North Carolina — even at a point when it was quite obvious that Mr. Trump would win the state once the Election Day vote had been counted.Through a Fox News spokesperson, Mr. Mishkin said, “The program that translated the decision desk’s numbers into the probability dials was not working properly at times.” Fox stopped using the probability dials on air, though they remained available online.But even if the dials were erroneously overconfident or otherwise not exactly to Fox’s liking, they nonetheless erred in almost exactly the same way as the Arizona call. In all four states, including Arizona, the AP/NORC data greatly overestimated Mr. Biden; the early vote count leaned heavily toward Mr. Biden; and the Fox estimates confidently swung toward Mr. Biden.Whether it was inaccurate AP/NORC data, misunderstanding the “late” mail vote, technical issues or overconfident modeling, there’s not much reason to believe that there was a factual basis for a projection in Arizona. It came very close to being wrong. If it had been, it could have been disastrous.The public’s confidence in elections would have taken another big hit if Mr. Trump had ultimately taken the lead after a call in Mr. Biden’s favor. It would have fueled the Trump campaign’s argument that he could and would eventually overturn the overall result. After all, he would have already done so in Arizona. More