Polls and Public Opinion

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Election Software Executive Arrested on Suspicion of Theft

      by

      The executive, Eugene Yu, and his firm, Konnech, have been a focus of attention among election deniers.The top executive of an elections technology company that has been the focus of attention among election deniers was arrested by Los Angeles County officials in connection with an investigation into the possible theft of personal information about poll workers, the county said on Tuesday.Eugene Yu, the founder and chief executive of Konnech, the technology company, was taken into custody on suspicion of theft, the Los Angeles County district attorney, George Gascón, said in a statement.Konnech, which is based in Michigan, develops software to manage election logistics, like scheduling poll workers. Los Angeles County is among its customers.The company has been accused by groups challenging the validity of the 2020 presidential election with storing information about poll workers on servers in China. The company has repeatedly denied keeping data outside the United States, including in recent statements to The New York Times.Mr. Gascón’s office said its investigators had found data stored in China. Holding the data there would violate Konnech’s contract with the county.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Trouble for Nevada Democrats: The state has long been vital to the party’s hold on the West. Now, Democrats are facing potential losses up and down the ballot.Democrats’ House Chances: Democrats are not favored to win the House, but the notion of retaining the chamber is not as far-fetched as it once was, ​​writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Latino Voters: A recent Times/Siena poll found Democrats faring far worse than they have in the past with Hispanic voters. “The Daily” looks at what the poll reveals about this key voting bloc.Michigan Governor’s Race: Tudor Dixon, the G.O.P. nominee who has ground to make up in her contest against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, is pursuing a hazardous strategy in the narrowly divided swing state: embracing former President Donald J. Trump.The county released few other details about its investigation. But it said in its statement that the charges related only to data about poll workers — and that “the alleged conduct had no impact on the tabulation of votes and did not alter election results.”“Data breaches are an ongoing threat to our digital way of life,” the district attorney’s office said in the statement. “When we entrust a company to hold our confidential data, they must be willing and able to protect our personal identifying information from theft. Otherwise, we are all victims.”In a statement, a spokesman for Konnech said that the company was trying to learn the details “of what we believe to be Mr. Yu’s wrongful detention,” and that it stood by statements it made in a lawsuit against election deniers who had accused the company of wrongdoing.“Any L.A. County poll worker data that Konnech may have possessed was provided to it by L.A. County and therefore could not have been ‘stolen’ as suggested,” the spokesman said.The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said in an emailed statement that it had cause to believe that personal information on election workers was “criminally mishandled.” It was seeking to extradite Mr. Yu, who lives in Michigan, to Los Angeles.Konnech came under scrutiny this year by several election deniers, including a founder of True the Vote, a nonprofit that says it is devoted to uncovering election fraud. True the Vote said its team had downloaded personal information on 1.8 million American poll workers from a server owned by Konnech and hosted in China. It said it obtained the data by using the server’s default password, which it said was “password,” according to online accounts from people who attended a conference about voter fraud where the claims were made. The group provided no evidence that it had downloaded the data, saying that it had given the information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.The claims quickly spread online, with some advocates raising concerns about China’s influence on America’s election system.Claims about Konnech reached Dekalb County in Georgia, which was close to signing a contract with the company. The county’s Republican Party chairwoman, Marci McCarthy, raised concerns during a public comment period at the county’s elections board meeting on Sept. 8, questioning where the company stored and secured its data.Konnech rebutted the claims, telling The New York Times that it had records on fewer than 240,000 workers at the time and that it had detected no data breach. Konnech owned a subsidiary in China that developed and tested software. The company said programmers there always used “dummy” test data. The subsidiary was closed in 2021.Last month, Konnech sued True the Vote and Catherine Engelbrecht, its founder, as well as Gregg Phillips, an election denier who often works with the group. Konnech claimed the group had engaged in defamation, theft and a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act — which made it illegal to access a computer without authorization — among other charges.The judge in the case granted Konnech’s request for an emergency restraining order, which required True the Vote to disclose who had allegedly gained access to Konnech’s data. True the Vote released the name in a sealed court filing. “The organization is profoundly grateful to the Los Angeles district attorney’s office for their thorough work and rapid action in this matter,” the group said in a statement.The Los Angeles district attorney’s office said it was unaware of True the Vote’s investigation and said it had no input on the county’s investigation. More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Poll Update: Republicans Gain in the Senate

      by

      A closer look at Pennsylvania and Nevada, and some Democratic leads that seem vulnerable.John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, has seen his lead in the polls dwindle, perhaps because Republican voters are coming home to their party. Hannah Beier/ReutersTwo weeks ago, we noted early signs that Republicans were making gains in the race for the Senate.Now it’s clear the race has shifted toward Republicans in important ways. Democrats might still lead enough races to hold the chamber, but their position is starting to look quite vulnerable.On average, Republicans have gained three points across 19 post-Labor Day polls of the key Senate battleground states, compared with pre-Labor Day polls of the same states by the same pollsters.The shift is similar to what we observed a few weeks ago. What’s changed with more data: We can be sure that the polling shift is real, and we have more clarity about where Republicans are making their biggest gains — Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.We focused on Wisconsin last time we talked about Republican gains, so today we’ll focus on Pennsylvania.PennsylvaniaIf you’re a Democrat, there’s still one very important thing you can cling to in Pennsylvania: the lead.John Fetterman still leads Dr. Mehmet Oz in the polls taken since Labor Day. In fact, he basically leads in every one of them, by an average of around four percentage points.But Dr. Oz has nonetheless made significant gains. On average, he has closed by a net of six percentage points in post-Labor Day polling, compared with surveys by the same pollsters taken before Labor Day.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Trouble for Nevada Democrats: The state has long been vital to the party’s hold on the West. Now, Democrats are facing potential losses up and down the ballot.Democrats’ House Chances: Democrats are not favored to win the House, but the notion of retaining the chamber is not as far-fetched as it once was, ​​writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Latino Voters: A recent Times/Siena poll found Democrats faring far worse than they have in the past with Hispanic voters. “The Daily” looks at what the poll reveals about this key voting bloc.Michigan Governor’s Race: Tudor Dixon, the G.O.P. nominee who has ground to make up in her contest against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, is pursuing a hazardous strategy in the narrowly divided swing state: embracing former President Donald J. Trump.Why has Dr. Oz surged back into the race? There are two ways to tell the story — one might leave Democrats feeling OK; the other might leave Republicans giddy. This is one of those cases where the best interpretation draws on both cases.If you’re a Democrat, the optimistic interpretation is that Dr. Oz is merely and belatedly consolidating Republican support after a damaging primary. In this view, Dr. Oz’s gains were inevitable and there’s not much for Democrats to worry about. With Mr. Fetterman still enjoying a lead, Democrats can tell themselves that Dr. Oz has mainly won over folks who were going to come around to him eventually.There’s truth to this interpretation: Dr. Oz came out of the primary with terrible favorability ratings. Many would-be Republican voters were not prepared to say they would support him. Back in a July poll from Fox News, Dr. Oz had just 73 percent support among Republicans. Now, it’s 83 percent. Realistically, many of those Republicans were going to rally behind Dr. Oz once the general election campaign got underway and once Republicans started judging him compared with a Democrat, rather than against Republicans.But there’s another interpretation that might be more encouraging for Republicans: Mr. Fetterman has endured forceful attacks related to his health — he had a stroke in May — as well as his views about crime and the economy. There’s reason to think those attacks are taking a toll.A Franklin and Marshall poll last week found Mr. Fetterman’s favorability ratings under water, with 46 percent saying they have an unfavorable view of him compared with 40 percent with a favorable view. Back in August, the numbers were nearly reversed: Just 36 percent had an unfavorable view of him, compared with 43 percent with a favorable view.Dr. Oz’s favorability ratings are still worse than Mr. Fetterman’s. And so far, most voters say they’re not concerned about Mr. Fetterman’s health. But there’s no doubt that Mr. Fetterman, rather than Dr. Oz, has become the focal point of the race over the last month. With Mr. Fetterman still struggling — by his own admission — to recover fully from the stroke, there’s no reason to assume that the spotlight will relent. As long as that’s true, Republicans can hope that Dr. Oz might continue to gain.Nevada?Wisconsin and Pennsylvania aren’t necessarily the only places where the G.O.P. is gaining in the polls.Republicans have picked up about 1.4 points in post-Labor Day Senate surveys in states other than Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The story isn’t always so clear in these other states — there are either fewer polls than in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, or the polls are a little less consistent about the size of Republican gains.Of the other states, it’s Nevada where the Republicans seem closest to assembling convincing evidence of a breakthrough. The recent polling there is fragmentary, but all of the recent polls show the Republican Adam Laxalt leading the Democratic Senate incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto. In the (only two) post-Labor Day surveys with a pre-Labor Day counterpart, Mr. Laxalt has gained nearly three points.Although it’s still too soon to say whether Mr. Laxalt has inched into a lead, Nevada has loomed as an obvious weak point for the Democrats this cycle.President Biden won the state by only two percentage points in 2020, and it’s not a state where Democrats can draw on their demographic strengths. College-educated voters represent a smaller share of the electorate here than in any other battleground state.Instead, Democrats depend on the state’s large and heavily Democratic Hispanic population. But Hispanics may be trending toward Republicans, and they would also probably be expected to turn out at relatively low numbers in a midterm, even if Democrats retained their margin of victory with the group.The big picture is … murkyThe scope of Republican gains isn’t just murky in the Senate races outside Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. It’s murkier beyond the Senate as well.Over the last few weeks, there haven’t been a lot of generic ballot polls, which ask voters whether they prefer Democrats or Republicans for Congress. But there are mounting signs of a rightward shift on this measure.On Monday, a new Monmouth poll added to the pile. Republicans led by two points among registered voters, a pretty sizable shift from its last poll, when Democrats led by three points. Looking back over the last two weeks, there are a lot more Republican leads on the generic ballot than there used to be.There are still a few dissenting data points, so it’s still too soon to be too confident about whether or to what extent Republicans have picked up ground nationwide, but it would be no surprise if Republicans were pulling back into the lead. With economic concerns on the rise and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade moving farther into the rearview mirror, the opportunity for Republicans to reclaim lost ground might be at hand. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      The Latino Voters Who Could Decide the Midterms

      by

      Diana Nguyen and Rachel Quester and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherLatino voters have never seemed more electorally important than in the coming midterm elections: the first real referendum on the Biden era of government.Latinos make up 20 percent of registered voters in two crucial Senate races — Arizona and Nevada — and as much or more in over a dozen competitive House races.In the past 10 years, the conventional wisdom about Latino voters has been uprooted. We explore a poll, conducted by The Times, to better understand how they view the parties vying for their vote.On today’s episodeJennifer Medina, a national politics reporter for The New York Times.Dani Bernal, born in Bolivia and raised in Miami, described herself as an independent who’s in line with Democrats on social issues but Republicans on the economy.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesBackground readingTwo years after former President Donald Trump made surprising gains with Hispanic voters, Republican dreams of a major realignment have failed to materialize, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Jennifer Medina More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      It’s Time to Take Democrats’ Chances in the House Seriously

      by

      No, they are not favored. But the notion of retaining the chamber is not as far-fetched as it once was.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, before the memorial service last month for Queen Elizabeth II in Washington. Republicans are favored to retake the House. Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated PressThere were more than a few Democrats who were a little miffed about my Friday newsletter on gerrymandering, which argued that Democrats aren’t at a terribly significant structural disadvantage in the race for the House.I understand why Democrats don’t love reading that the obstacles they face — especially unjust ones — aren’t so bad. But underneath what some might read as a dismissal of the seriousness of gerrymandering is a kernel of good news for Democratic readers: Republican control of the House is not a foregone conclusion.No, I’m not saying Democrats are favored. The likeliest scenario is still that Republicans will find the five seats they need to take control. And no one should be surprised if Republicans flip a lot more than that — especially with early signs that the political winds may be starting to shift in ways that might yield some Republican gains in key races (more on this tomorrow).But the idea that Democrats can hold the House is not as ridiculous, implausible or far-fetched as it seemed before the Dobbs ruling overturned Roe v. Wade. It is a real possibility — not some abstraction in the sense that anything can happen.In fact, not much would need to happen at all.If the polls are “right” and Election Day were today, the fight for the House would be very close. It would be a district-by-district battle for control, one in which the race might come down to the strengths and weaknesses of individual candidates and campaigns. With a few lucky breaks, Democrats could come out ahead.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Sensing a Shift: As November approaches, there are a few signs that the political winds may have begun to blow in a different direction — one that might help Republicans over the final stretch.Focusing on Crime: Across the country, Republicans are attacking Democrats as soft on crime to rally midterm voters. Pennsylvania’s Senate contest offers an especially pointed example of this strategy.Arizona Senate Race: Blake Masters, a Republican, appears to be struggling to win over independent voters, who make up about a third of the state’s electorate.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.Those are two huge “ifs,” of course. But with five weeks to go until the election, those “ifs” aren’t exactly a good enough reason to justify writing off the race for the House.How could this be? It’s more straightforward than you might think. Democrats hold a narrow lead on the generic congressional ballot, a poll question asking whether voters would prefer Democrats or Republicans for Congress. If Republicans don’t have a robust structural advantage, as I wrote last Friday, then why wouldn’t the Democrats at least be competitive in the race for Congress? On paper, the Democratic disadvantage is fairly comparable to their disadvantage in the Senate — which most everyone agrees Democrats have a decent chance to hold this cycle.Of course, the reason we think Democrats might overcome their obstacles in the Senate is because we have dozens of polls in critical Senate races. Thanks to those polls, we know Democrats lead in Pennsylvania and Arizona, which we might have assumed were tossups otherwise. In contrast, we have no idea whether Democrats are leading in equivalent races for the House: There are almost no nonpartisan House polls at all, and they’re spread out across many more races.But if Democrats can do what they appear to be doing in the Senate, there’s no reason to assume they couldn’t already be doing something similar in the House. If we had as many House polls as we do in the Senate, perhaps Democrats would appear to be ahead in the race for the House as well.On this point, it’s worth pausing on the decision by House Republicans to pull adds in Ohio’s Ninth District. This district voted for former President Donald J. Trump by three percentage points in 2020; it was redrawn to defeat the longtime Democratic incumbent, Marcy Kaptur. But Republicans nominated J.R. Majewski, a stop-the-steal candidate who misrepresented his military service for good measure. The Republicans canceled nearly $1 million in scheduled advertisements.Mr. Majewski may well win in the end, but this is exactly the sort of story we see playing out in the Senate — weak Republican candidates failing to capitalize on their underlying advantages, with well-funded Democratic incumbents positioned to pounce. The district is now characterized as “lean Democratic” by the Cook Political Report.I asked my friend Dave Wasserman, House editor of the Cook Political Report, whether he thought Democrats would appear to lead in the race for the House today if there were robust polling averages in every district, as there are in the Senate. He said they would, with Democrats leading the polls “in maybe 220 to 225 seats,” more than the 218 needed for a majority.The fragmentary nonpartisan House polling we do have is intriguing. These polls don’t say much about any particular district (with the exception of Alaska’s At-Large, another race where the Republicans may be forfeiting what little remains of their structural advantage). But on average, Democrats are running a net 3.9 points behind President Biden — a number that’s essentially consistent with a tied national vote (Mr. Biden won by 4.5 points in 2020) — across the 29 districts where there have been polls since Aug. 1.In the end, most analysts — including me and Mr. Wasserman — still think Republicans are favored to win the House. In this national environment, it would be no surprise if the polls trended toward the Republicans over the next few weeks. If they don’t, we’ll be nervous that the polls are about to be off yet again. That’s not just because the polls have underestimated Republicans in recent cycles, but also because the long history of out-party success in midterm elections weighs heavily on our thinking.But until or unless the polls shift more clearly in the G.O.P.’s favor, there’s no reason to dismiss the prospect of a Democratic House. Not anymore. More

    • 50 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Gerrymandering, the Full Story

      by

      A Times analysis finds that the House of Representative has its fairest map in 40 years, despite recent gerrymandering.If you asked Americans to describe the ways that political power has become disconnected from public opinion, many would put the gerrymandering of congressional districts near the top of the list. State lawmakers from both parties have drawn the lines of House districts in ways meant to maximize the number that their own party will win, and Republicans in some states have been especially aggressive, going so far as to ignore court orders.Yet House gerrymandering turns out to give Republicans a smaller advantage today than is commonly assumed. The current map is only slightly tilted toward Republicans, and both parties have a legitimate chance to win House control in the coming midterm elections.My colleague Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, explains this situation in the latest version of his newsletter. “In reality, Republicans do have a structural edge in the House, but it isn’t anything near insurmountable for the Democrats,” Nate writes. “By some measures, this is the fairest House map of the last 40 years.”Republican advantage in how districts lean More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Which Midterm Polls Should We Be Taking With a Grain of Salt?

      by

      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report and Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster, to discuss the state of polling and of Democratic anxiety about polls ahead of the midterms.Frank Bruni: Amy, Patrick, as if the people over at Politico knew that the three of us would be huddling to discuss polling, it just published a long article about the midterms with the gloomy, spooky headline “Pollsters Fear They’re Blowing It Again in 2022.”Do you two fear that pollsters are blowing it again in 2022?Patrick Ruffini: It’s certainly possible that they could. The best evidence we have so far that something might be afoot comes from The Times’s own Nate Cohn, who finds that some of the Democratic overperformances seem to be coming in states that saw large polling errors in 2016 and 2020.Amy Walter: I do worry that we are asking more from polling than it is able to provide. Many competitive Senate races are in states — like Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that Joe Biden won by supernarrow margins in 2020. The reality is that they are going to be very close again. And so an error of just three to four points is the difference between Democratic and Republican control of the Senate.Ruffini: This also doesn’t mean we can predict that polls will miss in any given direction. But it does suggest taking polls in states like Ohio, which Donald Trump won comfortably but where the Republican J.D. Vance is tied or slightly behind, with a grain of salt.Bruni: So what would you say specifically to Democrats? Are they getting their hopes up — again — in a reckless fashion?Walter: Democrats are definitely suffering from political PTSD. After 2016 and 2020, I don’t think Democrats are getting their hopes up. In fact, the ones I talk with are hoping for the best but not expecting such.Ruffini: In any election, you have the polls themselves, and then you have the polls as filtered through the partisan media environment. Those aren’t necessarily the same thing. On Twitter, there’s a huge incentive to hype individual polling results that are good for your side while ignoring the average. I don’t expect this to let up, because maintaining this hype is important for low-dollar fund-raising. But I do think this has led to a perhaps exaggerated sense of Democratic optimism.Bruni: Great point, Patrick — in these fractured and hyperpartisan times of information curation, polls aren’t so much sets of numbers as they are Rorschachs.But I want to pick up on something else that you said — “polls will miss in any given direction” — to ask why the worry seems only to be about overstatement of Democratic support and prospects. Is it possible that the error could be in the other direction and we are understating Republican problems and worries?Ruffini: In politics, we always tend to fight the last war. Historically, polling misses have been pretty random, happening about equally on both sides. But the last big example of them missing in a pro-Republican direction was 2012. The more recent examples stick in our minds, 2020 specifically, which was actually worse in percentage terms than 2016.Walter: Patrick’s point about the last war is so important. This is especially true when we are living in a time when we have little overlap with people from different political tribes. The two sides have very little appreciation for what motivates, interests or worries the other side, so the two sides over- or underestimate each other a lot.As our politics continue to break along educational attainment — those who have a college degree are increasingly more Democratic-leaning, those with less education increasingly more Republican-leaning — polls are likely to overstate the Democratic advantage, since we know that there’s a really clear connection between civic voting behavior and education levels.Ruffini: And we may be missing a certain kind of Trump voter, who may not be answering polls out of a distrust for the media, polling and institutions generally.Bruni: Regarding 2016 and 2020, Trump was on the ballot both of those years. He’s not — um, technically — this time around. So is there a greater possibility of accuracy, of a repeat of 2018, when polling came closer to the mark?Ruffini: The frustrating thing about all of this is that we just don’t have a very good sample size to answer this. In polls, that’s called an n size, like n = 1,000 registered voters. There have been n = 2 elections where Trump has been on the ballot and n = 1 midterm election in the Trump era. That’s not a lot.Bruni: We’ve mentioned 2016 and 2020 versus 2018. Are there reasons to believe that none of those points of reference are all that illuminating — that 2022 is entirely its own cat, with its own inimitable wrinkles? There are cats that have wrinkles, right? I’m a dog guy, but I feel certain that I’ve seen shar-pei-style cats in pictures.Walter: First, let’s be clear. Dogs are the best. So let’s change this to “Is this an entirely different breed?”I’m a big believer in the aphorism that history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.Ruffini: Right. Every election is different, and seeing each new election through the lens of the previous election is usually a bad analytical strategy.Walter: But there are important fundamentals that can’t be dismissed. Midterms are about the party in charge. It is hard to make a midterm election about the out-party — the party not in charge — especially when Democrats control not just the White House but the House and Senate as well.However, the combination of overturning Roe v. Wade plus the ubiquitous presence of Trump has indeed made the out-party — the G.O.P. — a key element of this election. To me, the question is whether that focus on the stuff the Republicans are doing and have done is enough to counter frustration with the Democrats.Ruffini: 2022 is unique in that it’s a midterm cycle where both sides have reasons to be energized — Republicans by running against an unpopular president in a time of high economic uncertainty and Democrats by the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning Roe. It’s really unique in the sweep of midterm elections historically. To the extent there is still an energized Republican base, polls could miss if they aren’t capturing this new kind of non-college, low-turnout voter that Trump brought into the process.Bruni: Patrick, this one’s for you, as you’re the one among us who’s actually in the polling business. In the context of Amy’s terrific observation about education levels and the Democratic Party and who’s more readily responsive to pollsters, what are you and what is your firm doing to make sure you reach and sample enough Republican and Trump-inclined voters?Ruffini: That’s a great question. Nearly all of our polls are off the voter file, which means we have a much larger set of variables — like voting history and partisan primary participation — to weight on than you might typically see in a media poll (with the exception of the Times/Siena polls, which do a great job in this regard). We’ve developed targets for the right number of college or non-college voters among likely voters in each congressional district. We’re also making sure that our samples have the right proportions of people who have registered with either party or have participated in a specific party’s primary before.But none of this is a silver bullet. After 2016, pollsters figured out we needed to weight on education. In 2020 we weighted on education — and we got a worse polling error. All the correct weighting decisions won’t matter if the non-college or low-turnout voter you’re getting to take surveys isn’t representative of those people who will actually show up to vote.Bruni: Does the taking of polls and the reporting on polls and the consciousness of polls inevitably queer what would have happened in their absence? I will go to my grave believing that if so many voters hadn’t thought that Hillary Clinton had victory in the bag, she would have won. Some 77,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — the margin of her Electoral College loss — are easily accounted for by overconfident, complacent Clinton supporters.Walter: In 2016, there were two key groups of people that determined the election. Those who never liked Clinton and those who disliked Trump and Clinton equally. At the end, those who disliked both equally broke overwhelmingly for Trump. And, those Democratic-leaning voters who didn’t like her at all were never fully convinced that she was a worthy candidate.Ruffini: I don’t worry about this too much since the people most likely to be paying attention to the daily movement of the polls are people who are 100 percent sure to vote. It can also work in the other direction. If the polls are showing a race in a red or blue state is close, that can motivate a majority of the party’s voters to get out and vote, and that might be why close races in those states usually resolve to the state fundamentals.Bruni: Evaluate the news media in all of this, and be brutal if you like. For as long as I’ve been a reporter, I’ve listened to news leaders say our political coverage should be less attentive to polls. It remains plenty attentive to polls. Should we reform? Is there any hope of that? Does it matter?Ruffini: I don’t think there’s any hope of this getting better, and that’s not the media’s fault. It’s the fault of readers (sorry, readers!) who have an insatiable appetite for staring at the scoreboard.Walter: We do pay too much attention to polls, but polls are the tool we have to capture the opinions of an incredibly diverse society. A reporter could go knock on 3,000 doors and miss a lot because they weren’t able to get the kind of cross-section of voters a poll does.Ruffini: Where I do hope the media gets better is in conducting more polls the way campaigns conduct them, which are not mostly about who is winning but showing a candidate how to win.In those polls, we test the impact of messages on the electorate and show how their standing moved as a result. It’s possible to do this in a balanced way, and it would be illuminating for readers to see, starting with “Here’s where the race stands today, but here’s the impact of this Democratic attack or this Republican response,” etc.Bruni: Let’s finish with a lightning round. Please answer these quickly and in a sentence or less, starting with this: Which issue will ultimately have greater effect, even if just by a bit, in the outcome of the midterms — abortion or gas prices?Walter: Abortion. Only because gas prices are linked to overall economic worries.Ruffini: Gas prices, because they’re a microcosm about concerns about inflation. When we asked voters a head-to-head about what’s more important to their vote, reducing inflation comes out ahead of protecting abortion rights by 67 to 29 percent.Bruni: Which of the competitive Senate races will have an outcome that’s most tightly tethered to — and thus most indicative of — the country’s mood and leanings right now?Walter: Arizona and Georgia were the two closest races for Senate and president in 2020. They should both be indicative. But Georgia is much closer because the G.O.P. candidate, Herschel Walker, while he’s still got some problems, has much less baggage and much better name recognition than the G.O.P. candidate in Arizona, Blake Masters.Ruffini: If Republicans are going to flip the Senate, Georgia is most likely to be the tipping-point state.Bruni: If there’s a Senate upset, which race is it? Who’s the unpredicted victor?Walter: For Republicans, it would be Don Bolduc in New Hampshire. They’ve argued that the incumbent, Senator Maggie Hassan, has low approval ratings and is very weak. It would be an upset because Bolduc is a flawed candidate with very little money or history of strong fund-raising.Ruffini: I’d agree about New Hampshire. The polling has shown a single-digit race. Republicans are also hoping they can execute a bit of a sneak attack in Colorado with Joe O’Dea, though the state fundamentals look more challenging.Bruni: You (hypothetically) have to place a bet with serious money on the line. Is the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis or “other”?Walter: It’s always a safer bet to pick “other.” One of the most difficult things to do in politics is what DeSantis is trying to do: not just to upend someone like Trump but to remain a front-runner for another year-plus.Ruffini: I’d place some money on DeSantis and some on “other.” DeSantis is in a strong position right now, relative to the other non-Trumps, but he hasn’t taken many punches. And Trump’s position is soft for a former president who’s supposedly loved by the base and who has remained in the fray. Time has not been his friend. About as many Republicans in the ABC/Washington Post poll this weekend said they didn’t want him to run as did.Bruni: Same deal with the Democratic presidential nominee — but don’t be safe. Live large. To the daredevil go the spoils. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or “other”?Walter: History tells us that Biden will run. If he doesn’t, history tells us that it will be Harris. But I feel very uncomfortable with either answer right now.Ruffini: “Other.” Our own polling shows Biden in a weaker position for renomination than Trump and Democrats less sure about who the alternative would be if he doesn’t run. I also think we’re underestimating the possibility that he doesn’t run at the age of 81.Bruni: OK, final question. Name a politician, on either side of the aisle, who has not yet been mentioned in our conversation but whose future is much brighter than most people realize.Walter: If you talk to Republicans, Representative Patrick McHenry is someone they see as perhaps the next leader for the party. There’s a lot of focus on Kevin McCarthy now, but many people see McHenry as a speaker in waiting.Ruffini: He’s stayed out of the presidential conversation (probably wisely until Trump has passed from the scene), but I think Dan Crenshaw remains an enormously compelling future leader for the G.O.P. Also in Texas, should we see Republicans capitalize on their gains with Hispanic voters and take at least one seat in the Rio Grande Valley, one of those candidates — Mayra Flores, Monica De La Cruz or Cassy Garcia — will easily be in the conversation for statewide office.Bruni: Thank you, both. I just took a poll, and 90 percent of respondents said they’d want to read your thoughts at twice this length. Then again, the margin of error was plus or minus 50 percent, and I’m not sure I sampled enough rural voters in the West.Frank Bruni (@FrankBruni) is a professor of public policy and journalism at Duke, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter and can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) is a co-founder of the Republican research firm Echelon Insights. Amy Walter (@amyewalter) is the publisher and editor in chief of The Cook Political Report.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

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Gov. Hochul Solidifies Lead Over Lee Zeldin in Latest Poll

      by

      Gov. Kathy Hochul has expanded her commanding lead over Representative Lee Zeldin, her Republican challenger in the New York race for governor, according to a Siena College poll released on Wednesday that showed her leading by 17 percentage points.The poll suggested that Ms. Hochul, a Democrat from Buffalo vying for her first full term, has improved her standing among voters since a Siena College survey in August that had her up by 14 points.With six weeks until Election Day, Ms. Hochul has held a comfortable lead in most public polls, buoyed by a seemingly insurmountable fund-raising edge that has allowed her to spend freely on television ads attacking Mr. Zeldin over the past few weeks.The poll was but the latest indication of the uphill battle that Mr. Zeldin faces to capture the governor’s office in New York, where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans two to one. The state hasn’t elected a Republican governor since George E. Pataki, who left office in 2006.Notably, Ms. Hochul made significant gains in the New York City suburbs: She was beating Mr. Zeldin by five percentage points in the poll, which was conducted last week, compared with the August poll, which had her trailing Mr. Zeldin by three points in the suburbs.Ms. Hochul also modestly improved her favorability rating among Republicans, while Mr. Zeldin lost some support among his party’s voters, with 77 percent of Republicans saying they would vote for him, down from 84 percent in August. Even so, Mr. Zeldin continued to hold a slim lead among independent voters and is virtually tied with Ms. Hochul in upstate New York, according to the poll, which surveyed 655 likely voters.The poll found Ms. Hochul holds a commanding lead in vote-rich New York City, with Mr. Zeldin well short of the 30 percent of votes he has said he will need to win.Mr. Zeldin, an ally of former President Donald J. Trump who has represented Suffolk County in Congress since 2015, would have to make significant inroads among independent and suburban voters in the final weeks of the campaign to overcome Ms. Hochul’s strong support in New York City and among women, Latino and Black voters.Ms. Hochul began spending heavily on television and digital advertisements in early September, many of them trying to define Mr. Zeldin as “extreme and dangerous” based on his view on abortion and his votes on Jan. 6 to overturn election results in key states. By the end of the week, her campaign will have spent roughly $7 million on the ads, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm.Mr. Zeldin, who has struggled to replenish his campaign reserves after a costly primary, had spent just under $1 million during the same period, the firm has found. Ronald S. Lauder, the conservative cosmetics heir, has funneled more than $3 million into a pair of pro-Zeldin super PACs to try to narrow the gap, but the bulk of the groups’ ad buys attacking the governor as being soft on crime only began airing in recent days.While Mr. Zeldin has sought to amplify a handful of Republican-friendly polls showing the race as far tighter, the high-dollar donors who could reverse his financial fortunes could conclude that victory is simply slipping out of reach and put away their checkbooks, leaving him unable to defend himself from Ms. Hochul’s onslaught.The poll, which had a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points, found that other top Democrats running statewide — Senator Chuck Schumer; Thomas DiNapoli, the state comptroller; and Letitia James, the state attorney general — were also dominating their Republican opponents in their races. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Blake Masters Strains to Win Over Arizona’s Independent Voters

      by

      PHOENIX — Blake Masters, the Republican nominee for Senate in Arizona, has brightened the music and tone of his television ads. He has erased from his website some of his most emphatically right-wing stances on immigration, abortion and the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.But on a recent afternoon in Scottsdale, an affluent Phoenix suburb, Kate Feo, a 40-year-old independent voter, was not buying the shift.“I just don’t think he has an opinion on much until he is pressed for it, and then he kind of just comes up with whatever is popular at the moment,” she said as she strolled through a park with her three young children. She called Mr. Masters “a flip-flopper.”Skepticism from voters in the political center is emerging as a stubborn problem for Mr. Masters as he tries to win what has become an underdog race against Senator Mark Kelly, a moderate Democrat who leads in the polls of one of the country’s most important midterm contests.Independents and voters unaffiliated with either major party matter more in Arizona than in nearly any other battleground state. After roughly tripling in number over the past three decades to 1.4 million, they have helped push the state from reliably red to tossup, and now make up about a third of the voting population. And with early voting beginning in two weeks, it is among this critical electoral bloc that Mr. Masters appears to be struggling the most.Polls show Mr. Kelly leading his rival comfortably among independents: In a survey released this week by The Arizona Republic and Suffolk University, he was ahead by 51 percent to 36 percent. Another September survey, by the Phoenix firm OH Predictive Insights, found that more than half of independents had a negative view of Mr. Masters, and that only 35 percent saw him favorably.In nearly a dozen interviews in Phoenix and Tucson, as well as in the purplish Phoenix suburbs of Arcadia, Chandler and Scottsdale, most independent voters expressed views of Mr. Masters as inauthentic, slippery on the issues and not truly dedicated to Arizona.“I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him,” said Thomas Budinger, 26, an assistant manager at a store in a Tucson mall. A few other independents scrunched their noses or rolled their eyes at the mention of the candidate’s name.Mr. Masters, 36, a venture capitalist and political newcomer once seen as a rising far-right figure, persuaded Republican voters in Arizona to nominate him with help from the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump and the hefty financial backing of Peter Thiel, his billionaire former boss. But now he must win over the kinds of ticket-splitters, moderates and independents who powered the 2018 victories of Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, and Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat.Kate Feo, 40, in Scottsdale, Ariz., said of Mr. Masters, “I just don’t think he has an opinion on much until he is pressed for it.”Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesMr. Masters’s allies still see a path to victory in a state where Trump loyalists have taken over the Republican Party machinery and energized base voters in recent years, fueling prolonged efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.A Focus on Crime: In the final phase of the midterm campaign, Republicans are stepping up their attacks about crime rates, but Democrats are pushing back.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.Megastate G.O.P. Rivalry: Against the backdrop of their re-election bids, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida are locked in an increasingly high-stakes contest of one-upmanship.Rushing to Raise Money: Senate Republican nominees are taking precious time from the campaign trail to gather cash from lobbyists in Washington — and close their fund-raising gap with Democratic rivals.In another marquee Arizona race, Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor, is trying the opposite strategy from Mr. Masters, relentlessly leaning into her far-right persona and Trump-aligned message. Ms. Lake, a former TV news anchor, is seen as more charismatic than Mr. Masters, and her Democratic opponent as weaker than Mr. Kelly, but Ms. Lake appears to have tapped into a powerful Republican strain.Stan Barnes, a Republican consultant and former Arizona state legislator, said that reawakened movement could be just enough to carry Mr. Masters over the finish line. The more relevant question, he said, might not be, “Where are independents?” but instead, “How big is the ‘America First’ phenomenon?”Mr. Masters’s campaign declined requests for comment. In interviews, he has downplayed or denied any change in his approach to win over moderate and independent voters.Asked by Laura Ingraham of Fox News this month whether he had tweaked his view on abortion, he replied: “More propaganda. I’ve been consistent throughout the whole primary.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Mr. Masters entered Arizona politics after years of working with Silicon Valley start-ups, rising to become the president of Mr. Thiel’s foundation and the chief operating officer of Thiel Capital, the billionaire’s investment firm. He received $15 million from his former boss as he campaigned in the Republican primary, portraying himself as an internet-savvy insurgent and playing to xenophobic and racist fears among some base voters.In some of Mr. Masters’s earliest television and digital ads, he claimed without evidence that Mr. Trump had won the 2020 election and called for a militarization of the United States’ border with Mexico. His immigration ads had a video game-like quality, featuring ominous music, stark desert backdrops and faceless masses of migrants.On his website, as in speeches and podcasts, he echoed a sanitized version of the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, claiming that Democrats were trying to bring more immigrants into the country to change its demographics and give the party an edge.But since the Aug. 3 primary, Mr. Masters has tried to soften his tone, seeking to focus his bid on inflation, crime and illegal immigration. Before the primary, three of the four television ads that were paid for by his campaign captured him alone in the desert. Since then, two of his campaign’s three ads have featured his wife and children.His website has also undergone a cleanup: A line about Democrats purportedly importing immigrant voters has been removed, and he was one of several Republicans to take down false claims of a rigged 2020 election. His site deleted mentions of his support for some of the most stringent abortion restrictions, including “a federal personhood law (ideally a Constitutional amendment) that recognizes that unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed.”A person close to Mr. Masters told CNN last month that the candidate wanted his website to be seen as a “living document,” and he told the radio station KTAR News this month that any changes to it reflected “a new way that we’re talking about something, but it’s not a backtrack or anything like that.”Mr. Masters, who often appears with Ms. Lake, has not completely abandoned his combative instincts. He recently drew criticism for describing Vice President Kamala Harris as a beneficiary of an “affirmative action regime.” This month, he declined to commit to accepting this year’s election results.Mr. Masters’s supporters are unfazed by his attempts at moderation. They still see him as a potential bulwark against President Biden and what they describe as “radical” Democrats who want to regulate guns, open the border and take control away from parents in schools.At her home in Arcadia recently, Barbara Bandura, 42, said her support for Mr. Masters came down to her stances against abortion and new gun safety laws. “He’s not Mark Kelly,” she said, adding that she did not entirely believe news reports that Mr. Masters had deleted old positions from his website.Kirk Adams, a Republican former speaker of the Arizona House and a former chief of staff to Mr. Ducey, said that Mr. Masters was smartly trying to appeal to moderate Republicans in the image of former Senator John McCain, as well as the party’s Trump wing. “Blake, I think, is working hard to build a coalition, and time will tell if it is enough,” Mr. Adams said.Kirk Adams, a Republican former speaker of the Arizona House, said, “Blake, I think, is working hard to build a coalition, and time will tell if it is enough.” Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesThere are signs Republicans see the race as less winnable than other key Senate matchups. Mr. Thiel has rebuffed requests from Republicans to spend any more on the contest, though he is hosting a campaign fund-raiser for Mr. Masters this month.In a letter, Arizona Republicans recently urged Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, to shore up his support for Mr. Masters. But the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with Mr. McConnell, has canceled $17.6 million in television ads, backing out of eight weeks of reserved airtime from Sept. 6 until Election Day. Last week, it cut a further $308,000 in time reserved for radio ads. (Steven Law, the group’s chief executive, contended that money from other Republican groups would help Mr. Masters make up the difference.)The moves have left Mr. Masters short on cash. He ended the last campaign finance reporting period, in July, with only about $1.6 million in cash on hand, compared with $24.8 million for Mr. Kelly. Democrats have far outspent Republicans in television ads on the race. Mr. Kelly has combined with Senate Democrats’ super PAC and campaign arm to spend nearly $60 million alone.In interviews, some independents waved off concerns about Mr. Masters. Smoke Hinson, 53, a natural gas pipeline inspector in Phoenix, said he planned to vote for him, arguing that children should not be taught about gender identity or “how to pray in the Muslim religion” in schools, that illegal immigration was out of control and that the F.B.I. was headed in the wrong direction.“Blake Masters is about law enforcement, the border, parents’ rights, the Second and First Amendment,” Mr. Hinson said.But more common were perceptions of Mr. Masters like that of Hector Astacio, another independent who called him a “flip-flopper.” Mr. Astacio, 62, a manufacturing engineer in Chandler, said he did not like that Mr. Masters seemed to echo Mr. Trump’s bigotry in his immigration messaging.Originally from Puerto Rico, Mr. Astacio said he had been kicked out of bars in Georgia because of his skin color and had been racially profiled by the police in Arizona. “I see the racism — if you are Hispanic, if you are of a different color,” he said. “It does not sit well with me.” More