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      Giorgia Meloni May Lead Italy, and Europe Is Worried

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      The hard-right leader has excoriated the European Union in the past, and she regularly blasts illegal immigrants and George Soros. But she is closer than ever to becoming prime minister.CAGLIARI, Sardinia — Giorgia Meloni, the hard-right leader of a party descended from post-Fascist roots and the favorite to become Italy’s next prime minister after elections this month, is known for her rhetorical crescendos, thundering timbre and ferocious speeches slamming gay-rights lobbies, European bureaucrats and illegal migrants.But she was suddenly soft-spoken when asked on a recent evening if she agreed, all caveats aside, with the historical consensus that the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini — whom she admired in her youth as a “good politician” — had been evil and bad for Italy.“Yeah,” she said, almost inaudibly, between sips of an Aperol Spritz and drags on a thin cigarette during an interview in Sardinia, where she had completed another high-decibel political rally.That simple syllable spoke volumes about Ms. Meloni’s campaign to reassure a global audience as she appears poised to become the first politician with a post-Fascist lineage to run Italy since the end of World War II.Such a feat seemed unimaginable not so long ago, and to pull it off, Ms. Meloni — who would also make history as the first woman to lead Italy — is balancing on a high-stakes wire, persuading her hard-right base of “patriots” that she hasn’t changed, while seeking to convince international skeptics that she’s no extremist, that the past is past, not prologue, and that Italy’s mostly moderate voters trust her, so they should, too.On Sept. 25, Italians will vote in national elections for the first time since 2018. In those years, three governments of wildly different political complexions came and went, the last a broad national unity government led by Mario Draghi, a technocrat who was the personification of pro-European stability.Ms. Meloni led the only major party, the Brothers of Italy, to stay outside that unity government, allowing her to vacuum up the opposition vote. Her support in polls steadily expanded from 4 percent in 2018 to 25 percent in a country where even moderate voters have grown numb to Fascist-Communist name calling, but remain enthusiastic about new, and potentially providential, leaders.As populism swept Italy in the last decade, Ms. Meloni adopted harsher tones and created the hard right’s latest iteration, the Brothers of Italy.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesMs. Meloni said her skyrocketing popularity did not mean the country had “moved to the extremes,” but that it had simply grown more comfortable with her and confident in her viability, even as she has tried to reposition herself closer to the European mainstream. Ms. Meloni, whose campaign slogan is “Ready,” has become a staunch supporter of NATO and Ukraine, and says she backs the European Union and the euro. The State of the WarDramatic Gains for Ukraine: After Ukraine’s offensive in its northeast drove Russian forces into a chaotic retreat, Ukrainian leaders face critical choices on how far to press the attack.How the Strategy Formed: The plan that allowed Ukraine’s recent gains began to take shape months ago during a series of intense conversations between Ukrainian and U.S. officials.Putin’s Struggles at Home: Russia’s setbacks in Ukraine have left President Vladimir V. Putin’s image weakened, his critics emboldened and his supporters looking for someone else to blame.Southern Counteroffensive: Military operations in the south have been a painstaking battle of river crossings, with pontoon bridges as prime targets for both sides. So far, it is Ukraine that has advanced.Global markets and the European establishment remain wary. “I fear the social and moral agenda of the right wing,” Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s vice president, said recently about the threat Ms. Meloni’s coalition posed to E.U. values. As recently as last month, she called for a naval blockade against migrants. She has depicted the European Union as an accomplice to “the project of ethnic replacement of Europe’s citizens desired by the great capitals and international speculators.”She has in the past characterized the euro as the “wrong currency” and gushed with support for Viktor Orban of Hungary, Marine Le Pen of France and the illiberal democracies in Eastern Europe. She excoriated “Brussels bureaucrats” and “emissaries” of George Soros, a favorite boogeyman of the nationalist right and conspiracy theorists depicting a world run by Jewish internationalist financiers.There remains concern that, once in power, Ms. Meloni would toss off her pro-European sheep’s wool and reveal her nationalist fangs — reverting to protectionism, caving in to her Putin-adoring coalition partners, rolling back gay rights and eroding liberal E.U. norms.Ms. Meloni called for a naval blockade against migrants as recently as last month.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesInternational investors and global leaders are wrong to be “afraid,” said Ms. Meloni, who is as affable and easygoing in private as she is vitriolic in public. Even in the midst of a heated campaign, she refused to take the bait from a desperate leader of the divided Italian left, who sounded “the alarm for Italian democracy.”“They’ll accuse me of being a Fascist my whole life,” Ms. Meloni said. “But I don’t care because in any case the Italians don’t believe anymore in this garbage.”She is delivering rations of red meat to her base (mass immigration is “an instrument in the hands of big great powers” to weaken workers, she growled in Cagliari) and is trying to mend fractures with the other right-wing leaders she is running with in a coalition.Her chief ally, Matteo Salvini, became the darling of the hard right in 2018 when he pivoted his once-secessionist northern-based League party into a nationalist force. But Ms. Meloni said those hard-right voters “came back home, because I am of that culture, so no one can do it better than I can.”Even so, Mr. Salvini is already creating problems for Ms. Meloni by urging a reconsideration of sanctions against Russia.Ms. Meloni acknowledged that her other coalition partner, Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister who famously named a bed after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, had put her “in difficulty as a woman” during his Bunga Bunga sex scandals with young women, when she was herself a young woman in his government. Neither of her partners, she suspects, wants a woman in charge.“I would like to say, ‘No, it’s not a problem that I’m a woman,’” Ms. Meloni said. “But I’m no more sure about that.”Ms. Meloni suspects that her coalition partners don’t want a woman in charge.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesBut when it comes to being a woman in politics, Ms. Meloni has leaned in. Her veneer of Roman-accented authenticity and her escalating and incensed style have become a part of the Italian political, and pop, landscape.In 2019, her hard-line defense of the traditional family, and against L.G.B.T.Q. marriage and adoption — while herself being an unwed mother — prompted D.J.s to mockingly put one of her furious refrains, “I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian,” to a beat. It went viral. Ms. Meloni used it as a calling card. She titled her best-selling book “I am Giorgia.”Ms. Meloni grew up without her father, who when she was a toddler set sail for the Canary Islands, where she learned Spanish on summer visits. After a fire that she and her older sister accidentally started, her mother, who at one point wrote romance novels to make ends meet, moved the family into the working class and left-leaning Garbatella neighborhood of Rome.Ms. Meloni was overweight and introverted, but as a 15-year-old fan of fantasy books (and Michael Jackson, from whom she said she learned her good English) found what she has called a second family in the hard-right Youth Front of the post-Fascist Italian Social Movement.She considered herself a soldier in Rome’s perpetual, often violent and sometimes fatal ideological wars between Communist and post-Fascist extremists, where everything from soccer games to high schools was politicized. Her party leader went to Israel to renounce the crimes of Fascism at the same time as she was rising quickly, later becoming the republic’s youngest-ever minister.But as populism swept Italy in the last decade, Ms. Meloni adopted harsher tones and created the hard right’s latest iteration, the Brothers of Italy. She said she resented its members’ being depicted as “nostalgic imbeciles,” because she had worked hard to purge Fascists and build a new history.An activist was detained by law enforcement agents for interrupting Ms. Meloni’s rally in Cagliari.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesLike Mr. Salvini, she turned her social media accounts into populist pasta on the wall as she desperately sought traction. In the town of Vinci she accused the French of trying to claim Leonardo da Vinci as one of their own. She went to a grappa distillery to call the president then of the E.U., Jean-Claude Juncker, a drunk. She warned about an “empire” of “invaders” consisting of President Emmanuel Macron of France, Angela Merkel of Germany, Mr. Soros and Wall Street.At her annual political conference in 2018, she hosted Stephen K. Bannon and said that she supported his effort “to build a network that goes beyond the European borders,” and that “I look with interest at the phenomenon of Donald Trump” and at the “phenomenon of Putin in Russia.” She added, “And so the bigger the network gets, the happier I am.”But on the threshold of running Italy, Ms. Meloni has pivoted. After years of fawning over Ms. Le Pen, she is suddenly distancing herself. (“I haven’t got relations with her,” she said.) Same for Mr. Orban. (“I didn’t agree with some positions he had about Ukrainian war.”) She now calls Mr. Putin an anti-Western aggressor and said she would “totally” continue to send offensive arms to Ukraine.But critics say she revealed her true self during a recent speech at a conference supporting Spain’s hard-right Vox party. “There is no possible mediation. Yes to the natural family. No to the L.G.B.T. lobbies,” she bellowed in Spanish. “No to the violence of Islam, yes to safer borders, no to mass immigration, yes to work for our people. No to major international finance.”A supporter of the Brothers of Italy in Cagliari.Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times“The tone, that was very wrong,” she said in the interview. “But it happens to me when I’m very tired,” she said, adding that her passionate delivery “becomes hysteric.”There are things she won’t give up on, including the tricolor flame she inherited as her party symbol. Many historians say it evokes the flickers over the tomb of Mussolini.The flame, she has said, has “nothing to do with fascism but is a recognition of the journey made by the democratic right in our Republican history.”“Don’t extinguish the flame, Giorgia,” a supporter shouted as Ms. Meloni commanded the stage in Cagliari, where she reserved her sharpest invective for leftist attacks that she said tried to depict her as “a monster.”“They don’t scare me,” she screamed above chants of “Giorgia, Giorgia, Giorgia.” “They don’t scare me.” More

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      Previewing the Next NYT/Siena Poll

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      In our July survey, the president’s approval rating was 33 percent. A lot has changed in the last two months, so will it show up in this week’s survey?It’s a busy week in New York Times election-land — we’re wrapping up our second national poll of the cycle.The last interviews will be complete by the time you read this — the poll is still in the field as I write this — and it should be interesting to see how it contrasts (or doesn’t) with our last poll. In July, in our last survey, President Biden’s approval rating was 33 percent, one of his worst results of the cycle.But a lot has changed in the last few months. Gas prices have plummeted. Mr. Biden’s legislative agenda was suddenly revived. According to FiveThirtyEight, Democrats have gained around a net three percentage points in the generic ballot, while Mr. Biden’s approval rating has risen by five percentage points.This Times/Siena poll also has a twist: a Hispanic “oversample,” which is a fancy way of saying that we surveyed a lot more Hispanic voters than we normally do. We’ll have more on this in coming days.If you’re subscribed to this newsletter — and you should be! — we’ll send you an email with our findings as soon as we get them. We’re probably still a few days from publishing the results, so no need to refresh your inbox just yet.A good analogy to Roe?On Tuesday, I asked whether anyone had a good historical analogy for the way the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade had shaken up this year’s midterm elections — an example in which the party out of power achieved the biggest policy success of a president’s first term.It’s not an exact analogy, but here’s a good answer from Matt Grossmann, a professor at Michigan State University who often has great insights into the dynamics of American electoral politics.His comparison: the backlash against the Republican effort to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998.No, it’s not exactly a policy triumph like the court’s overturning of Roe. But if we think of the impeachment through Congress as something like a legislative initiative, you can see the similarity: Republicans were making a major push to change the status quo in Washington, and a backlash against a Republican-favored initiative became a key point in the election.For Democrats, it’s a pretty favorable analogy: Democrats picked up five seats in 1998, making it the first time the president’s party gained House seats in a midterm since 1934.Is a good poll for Republicans in Wisconsin good news for polls?Yesterday, the venerable Marquette Law School poll found the incumbent Republican senator Ron Johnson leading the Democrat Mandela Barnes by one percentage point among likely voters.Key Findings From the Times/Siena College PollCard 1 of 7The first poll of the midterm cycle. More

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      Sweden’s Far Right Just Made History. Is It the Country’s Future?

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      The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats beat out more moderate right-wing parties in a country famed for liberal governance. It is the latest example of the right’s staying power across Europe.The final results of Sweden’s elections made history on Wednesday: The Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigrant far-right party with a recent history of overtly Nazi ideology, has won its best result ever. With 20.6 percent of the vote, it is in second place in Sweden’s multiparty system, beating out all of the more mainstream right-wing parties.There are two ways to think about this. The first is as something new and unusual: to focus on the party’s unprecedented success, and what it signals about a changing Sweden.But the other way to look at it is as the latest example of a pattern that has become typical across Europe: far-right parties’ winning substantial portions of the vote, if not actual power. (That is still likely to be the case in Sweden, where even though the bloc of right-wing parties together won a majority of parliament seats, the more mainstream of them are expected to form a government without the Sweden Democrats.)The NewThe Sweden Democrats won three percent more of the vote than their previous record of 17.5 percent in the 2018 election, continuing a trajectory of steady growth since it first entered parliament in 2010.This would grab attention in any country, but especially in Sweden, a country that is known for egalitarian social democracy.“Relative to other countries in Europe, when we look at cross-national surveys, Sweden always exhibits the highest or among the highest rates of tolerance for diversity — of, for instance, support for immigration, support for offering asylum,” said Jennifer Fitzgerald, a political scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studies the Swedish far right. “For years, when other countries were experiencing the growth of the far right, Sweden didn’t. And so I think maybe there was an expectation that there would be an exception there.”It is now clear that there isn’t.No single factor explains the rise of the far right in Sweden, said Sirus Hafstrom Dehdari, a political scientist at Stockholm University who studies the radical right and political identity.Police riot vans respond to the site of a far-right demonstration in Malmo, Sweden, in April.Johan Nilsson/TT News Agency, via ReutersThe 2008 financial crisis gave the party an early boost: Dehdari’s research found that each crisis-induced job loss translated into half a vote for the Sweden Democrats. Demographic change may be another factor: 20 years ago, about 10 percent of Sweden’s population was foreign-born. Now that number is more like 20 percent. More recently, heavy media coverage of an increase in gang-related killings, many of which occurred within immigrant communities, have connected immigration to crime in the public consciousness.But while there are many pathways to the far right, once there, its voters have appeared to be remarkably loyal, Dehdari said. People may have begun voting for the Sweden Democrats in the wake of the financial crisis, but they “didn’t go back to mainstream parties once they got a new job,” he said. A similar pattern may hold for more recent events too, such as the spike in crime, but it is too soon to say for sure.The PatternSweden is just the latest European democracy with a far right that is regularly able to command electoral support, joining a list that already included France, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Estonia, and others.“In many European countries, it seems like they get to 20 percent and then they hit the ceiling,” Dehdari said. “There needs to be some rather large change in society for them to grow a lot beyond 20 or 22 percent.”Twenty is a lot less than 50: such a party cannot expect to win an outright majority any time soon. But 20 percent is enough to be a major partner in a coalition — making the far right’s votes increasingly tempting for other parties seeking to form a government.So the most significant political question for Sweden is not how many votes the far right can get, but how the rest of the political system will respond to its growing popularity.So far, Sweden’s mainstream parties have maintained a so-called “cordon sanitaire,” agreeing among themselves that they will shut the far right out of governing coalitions and government posts. It is a strategy that has been used in other European countries, such as France, Germany, and Greece, to keep the far right out of power.But such pacts can be hard to maintain, particularly for mainstream right-wing parties, which often must choose between entering into agenda-diluting coalitions with center-left parties, or staying in the opposition because they refuse to join with the far right. Sometimes ambition beats out resolve: In Germany in 2020, two mainstream parties broke the cordon sanitaire to form a short-lived coalition with the far right in the state of Thuringia, prompting a political backlash and local government crisis.Counting the final ballots in Stockholm on Wednesday.Jonathan Nackstrand/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd even when mainstream parties do maintain the red line against far-right parties, that does not necessarily equal a blockade against far-right policies. In many countries, parties of the mainstream right have adopted hard-line positions on immigrants and refugees in an attempt to win votes back from insurgent far-right parties.That strategy has backfired in Sweden, however, Dehdari said, because validating far-right parties’ policies tends to reduce the stigma of voting for them. “Why don’t the voters go back?” he said. “Well, it’s because why vote for the copy when you can vote for the original?”In some other countries, including Italy, Austria and Sweden’s neighbor Finland, far-right parties have been allowed into governing coalitions. “Across countries where that boundary has been crossed and where far-right parties have become members of governing coalitions, it does seem to confer a certain level of legitimacy onto those parties,” Fitzgerald said.Counterintuitively, far-right parties themselves can sometimes pay a steep price for that kind of access to government, Dehdari said. In Finland, the far-right party then called the True Finns underwent a bitter internal split after conflict with its coalition partners over its election of new, more extremist party leadership.In Sweden, as the final election results trickle in, the cordon sanitaire seems to be holding. But as right-wing parties try to put together a coalition with razor-thin margins, they will face decisions about whether to allow the Sweden Democrats to become part of the government’s voting coalition — even if the party does not formally become a coalition member with cabinet posts — or to keep them out entirely.But the bigger picture, Fitzgerald said, is not just about mainstream parties’ treatment of the far right, but the health of the political system as a whole. She noted that early reports suggest that voter turnout was unusually low in this election, a sign of broader voter dissatisfaction. (Something similar happened in France’s presidential election last April, which saw low turnout, as well as record numbers of abstentions and blank ballots.)“I was just thinking, ‘Amanda’s going to call and I’m going to tell her something really boring about turnout,’” she joked during our conversation. “But to me, that absolutely should be part of the story here.”Research, including her own, is clear on that point, she said: “Far-right parties do better when turnout is low.” Which means that the real question might not be what Sweden’s mainstream parties can do about the far right, but whether they can persuade their own voters to show up to stop them. More

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      Why Things May Really Be Different for This Midterm Election

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      This cycle, the arguments for Democratic strength cut against the conventional wisdom that the party in power struggles in midterms.Just about every election cycle, there’s an argument for why, this time, things might be different — different from expectations based on historical trends and key factors like the state of the economy or the president’s approval rating.The arguments are often pretty plausible. After all, every cycle is different. There’s almost always something unprecedented about a given election year — in just the last few cycles, the pandemic, the first female presidential major party nominee and the first Black president were all truly novel. There’s always a way to spin up a rationale for why old rules won’t apply.In the end, history usually prevails. That’s a good thing to keep in mind right now as Democrats show strength that seems entirely at odds with the long history of the struggles of the president’s party in midterm elections.But this cycle, there really is something different — or at the very least, there is something different about the reasons “this cycle might be different.”This cycle, the arguments for Democratic strength cut at the heart of the underlying theories for why the party in power struggles in midterms.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries winding down, both parties are starting to shift their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Democrats’ Dilemma: The party’s candidates have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, while not distancing themselves from President Biden’s base or agenda.Intraparty G.O.P. Fight: Ahead of New Hampshire’s primary, mainstream Republicans have been vying to stop a Trump-style 2020 election denier running for Senate.Abortion Ballot Measures: First came Kansas. Now, Michigan voters will decide whether abortion will remain legal in their state. Democrats are hoping referendums like these will drive voter turnout.Oz Sharpens Attacks: As the Pennsylvania Senate race tightens, Dr. Mehmet Oz is trying to reboot his campaign against his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, with a pair of pointed attack lines.And that gives me a little more pause about blowing them off.A choice, not a referendumIf there’s a saying that captures why midterms go so poorly for the president’s party, it’s the idea that “midterms are a referendum, not a choice.” If it’s a referendum, the Democrats are in trouble. After all, President Biden’s approval rating is in the low 40s.But this year, there’s a pretty good reason to think this won’t just be a referendum: Donald J. Trump.Consider this: “Donald Trump” still earns more Google search interest than “Joe Biden.” It’s nothing like prior midterms, when the attention was focused all but exclusively on the president. These midterms certainly are different. More

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      Prime Minister Liz Truss’s Dizzying First Week

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      Ms. Truss took over a British government facing an economic emergency. But those problems have been eclipsed by the queen’s death, an epochal event that has put politics on hold.LONDON — Last Tuesday, Prime Minister Liz Truss was moving into Downing Street and puzzling over how to help people pay their soaring gas bills. Two days later, she stepped out of her new home to pay tribute to a revered queen, Elizabeth II, and tell the country that Britain’s new king would henceforth be known as Charles III.Has any British leader had as head-spinning a first week on the job as Ms. Truss?Anointed by the queen in the last act of her 70-year reign, Ms. Truss took over a government facing an economic emergency. But those problems have been all but eclipsed by the queen’s death, an epochal event that has put Parliament on hold, moved the spotlight from the cost-of-living crisis to a monarch’s legacy, and handed Ms. Truss, 47, an unexpected new job as the government’s chief mourner.It’s a delicate assignment, one that could elevate Ms. Truss’s stature internationally but also trip her up at home. The crosscurrents were evident on Monday, when Downing Street walked back a news report that she would be joining King Charles on a mourning tour of the four nations of the United Kingdom.The report had raised eyebrows among some opposition lawmakers, who viewed her plans as presumptuous. A spokesman for Ms. Truss quickly clarified: The prime minister, he told The Guardian, would attend memorial services for the queen in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, along with Charles, but would not be “accompanying” the king on a tour.King Charles III and Prime Minister Liz Truss last week, during their first meeting at Buckingham Palace.Pool photo by Yui Mok“I don’t know what led to anyone thinking it was a good decision for either of them that she go to the capitals of the U.K. nations with Charles,” said Alastair Campbell, who was director of communications for Tony Blair when he was prime minister, and advised him on his response to the death of Princess Diana in 1997.“It’s not as though he is a novice at these kinds of visits,” Mr. Campbell said of the 73-year-old king. “She would have been far better advised getting her feet under the table in No. 10 and beginning to focus on the enormous challenges that are going to be there when the mourning is over.”Among those challenges: double-digit inflation, a looming recession, labor unrest and deteriorating public finances. On Monday, new data showed that Britain’s growth stagnated in the three months through July. Hours before the news of the queen’s death, Ms. Truss announced a sweeping plan to freeze energy rates for millions of households for two years at a probable cost of more than $100 billion in its first year.It was a startling policy response right out of the gate, underscoring the depth of the crisis. But the round-the-clock coverage of the queen has meant the plan has barely been mentioned since. Parliament has been suspended until after the queen’s state funeral on Sept. 19. Lawmakers are scheduled to go into recess again on Sept. 22 for their parties’ conferences, putting politics on hold even longer.Fears about how the government plans to finance the aid package — with huge increased borrowing rather than by imposing a windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies — are wearing on the bond market and the pound, which has recently plumbed its lowest levels against the dollar since 1985.“It is a problem that there has effectively been no proper public scrutiny or political debate around a spending package of 5 to 6 percent of G.D.P.,” said Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London.Shoppers at a supermarket in London last month, when inflation rose to 10.1 percent.Frank Augstein/Associated Press“In principle, that could be remedied after the funeral,” he said. “But I do worry a bit that the government will get used to the lack of scrutiny of their proposals and will attempt to carry on the same vein.”A lack of scrutiny can provide a temporary respite, but over the long term it can be lethal: Jill Rutter, a former official in the Treasury, recalled that the government published details of a new poll tax in January 1986, hours before the Challenger space shuttle exploded in the United States. It was utterly lost in the news of that disaster, and when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher later imposed the tax, it proved so unpopular that it triggered her downfall.There is no question that Ms. Truss’s role in the 10 days of national mourning will give her rare visibility for a new leader. She has become a dignified daily fixture on television, shaking hands with the king at an audience in Buckingham Palace, walking out of Westminster Hall after his address to Parliament on Monday and speaking at Downing Street about the dawn of a new Carolean age.She will get a big introduction on the global stage when dozens, or even hundreds, of leaders converge on London for the funeral, putting her at the center of one of the greatest such gatherings since the funeral of John F. Kennedy.Like Ms. Truss, Mr. Blair was quite new in the job when Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris. His description of her as the “people’s princess” become one of the most memorable phrases of his decade in office. He also reaped credit for nudging a reticent queen into a more public display of sorrow over Diana’s death.How the World Reacted to the Queen’s DeathQueen Elizabeth II’s death elicited an array of reactions around the globe, from heartfelt tributes to anti-monarchist sentiment.In Britain: As Britons come to terms with the loss of the woman who embodied the country for 70 years, many are unsure of their nation’s identity and role in the world.In the U.S.: In few places outside Britain was the outpouring of grief so striking as in the faraway former British colony, which she never ruled and rarely visited.In Scotland: At a time of renewed mobilization for Scottish independence, respect for the queen could temporarily dampen the heated debate.In the Commonwealth: For nations with British colonial histories, the queen’s death is rekindling discussions about a more independent future.In Africa: Though the queen was revered by many on the continent, her death reignited conversations about the brutality the monarchy meted out there.But this time, the royal family does not seem to need public-relations advice. Prince William, Prince Harry, and their spouses appeared in a carefully managed walk outside Windsor Castle on Saturday. A day earlier, Charles stepped out of his vintage Rolls-Royce at Buckingham Palace to shake hands with well-wishers.The Prince and Princess of Wales, and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex paying their respects on Saturday to Queen Elizabeth outside Windsor Castle.Mary Turner for The New York Times“You could argue it helps her to be visible at these events,” Mr. Campbell said, “but in all honesty, the public are very focused on the royals and not the politicians.”For Ms. Truss, experts agree, the success of her economic policy will matter far more in the long run than her performance over the next week.“It’s almost impossible to predict the impact of the queen’s passing and the long period of mourning on Truss’s political fortunes, mainly because we’ve got little to compare it with,” said Timothy Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London.The last leader in this position was Winston Churchill, who was in office when Elizabeth’s father, George VI, died in 1952 and played the role of mentor to the young queen in their weekly meetings. But as Professor Bale noted, “He was already firmly entrenched in the public mind as an iconic national hero.”Based on the limited polling data available from that period, he said, the government’s approval ratings did not rise in the transition from George to Elizabeth.“Those assuming there might be some kind of rally round the flag effect for Truss and the Tories might need to think again,” Professor Bale said.Eshe Nelson More

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      Introducing ‘The Tilt,’ a Newsletter About Elections and Polling

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      Ahead of the 2020 election, I wrote a daily article on the latest polls — internally, we called it my “polling diary.” To my surprise, tens of thousands of people signed up to be notified whenever we published a new diary entry. You might be one of them!This cycle, we’re taking email all the way. We’re launching The Tilt, a newsletter on elections and polling in the run-up to the November midterm elections — and beyond.You can sign up for it here.The subject matter will be no surprise to longtime followers: analysis of the latest surveys and electoral trends. This year’s fight for control of Congress will be our major focus, but longer-term electoral trends, partisan polarization, threats to American democracy, voting laws and — gulp — the 2024 presidential campaign will also be on our radar.We’ll also visit wonkier subjects, like polling methodology. Yes, it’s arcane, but after the last decade of high-profile polling misfires, it’s worth a deeper exploration of what pollsters are doing right or wrong. We hope to write accessibly enough to lure the uninitiated. If not, we’ll flag it as “wonky” — as Paul Krugman’s newsletter often does — and you can skip it whenever your eyes start to glaze over.We’ll also try to have some fun.There are a lot of newsletters nowadays, but I think electoral analysis is especially well suited to this format. We can cover a flashy new poll number that may not be worth a full article, but does deserve to be put into context. And we can be more informal in offering provisional and uncertain takes.This newsletter will also be a natural home for work that doesn’t always have a spot on the Times home screen, like announcements about our coming polls (we’re in the field now, by the way); musings about the big decisions that underlie our work; debates on where to conduct our next survey; or the findings of our autopsy into our 2020 polling. Over the years, many of you have expressed interest in the inner workings of our operation. Hopefully, we can pull back the curtain. On a personal note, I’m also hoping it’s a way to sustain a conversation with people who care deeply about elections — without the vitriol often found on Twitter. We’ll try to figure out a way to engage with serious criticism, alternative perspectives and your questions. If you already have a topic you’d like us to address, feel free to email us at dear.upshot@nytimes.com.And please sign up! With Democrats showing rare strength for the president’s party at the start of a midterm campaign, it’s bound to be a wild few months. More

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      Are the Polls Wrong Again?

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      Are Democrats again about to be disappointed by overly optimistic polling? The final polls in the 2020 presidential election overstated Joe Biden’s strength, especially in a handful of states.The polls reported that Biden had a small lead in North Carolina, but he lost the state to Donald Trump. The polls also showed Biden running comfortably ahead in Wisconsin, yet he won it by less than a percentage point. In Ohio, the polls pointed to a tight race; instead, Trump won it easily.In each of these states — and some others — pollsters failed to reach a representative sample of voters. One factor seems to be that Republican voters are more skeptical of mainstream institutions and are less willing to respond to a survey. If that’s true, polls will often understate Republican support, until pollsters figure out how to fix the problem. (I explained the problem in more depth in a 2020 article.)This possibility offers reason to wonder whether Democrats are really doing as well in the midterm elections as the conventional wisdom holds. Recent polls suggest that Democrats are favored to keep control of the Senate narrowly, while losing control of the House, also narrowly.But the Democrats’ strength in the Senate campaign depends partly on their strength in some of the same states where polls exaggerated Democratic support two years ago, including the three that I mentioned above: North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin.Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, calls it “a warning sign” — for both the Democratic Party and for the polls. Nate goes into more depth in one of the first editions of a newsletter that he will be writing a couple of times a week for the rest of the midterm campaign.(If you’re fascinated by politics, I encourage you to sign up. It’s available to Times subscribers, and Nate is one of the sharpest political analysts working today. He helps oversee Times polls and has a record of noticing trends before many others do. One example was in June 2016, when he wrote: “There are more white voters than people think. That’s good news for Trump.”)Or is 2022 different?Nate is also careful to acknowledge what he doesn’t know, and he emphasizes that the polls may not be wrong this year in the same way that they were wrong in 2020. It’s even possible that pollsters are understating Democratic support this year by searching too hard for Republican voters in an effort to avoid repeating recent mistakes.The unavoidable reality is that polling is both an art and a science, requiring hard judgments about which kinds of people are more or less likely to respond to a survey and more or less likely to vote in the fall. There are still some big mysteries about the polls’ recent tendency to underestimate Republican support.The pattern has not been uniform across the country, for instance. In some states — such as Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania — the final polls have been pretty accurate lately. This inconsistency makes the problem harder to fix because pollsters can’t simply boost the Republican share everywhere.There is also some uncertainty about whether the problem is as big when Trump is not on the ballot — and he is obviously not running for office this year. Douglas Rivers, the chief scientist of the polling firm YouGov, told me that he thought this was the case and that there is something particular about Trump that complicates polling. Similarly, Nate noted that the polls in the 2018 midterms were fairly accurate.Finally, as Nate points out, the 2022 campaign does have two dynamics that may make it different from a normal midterm and that may help Democrats. The Supreme Court, dominated by Republican appointees, issued an unpopular decision on abortion, and Trump, unlike most defeated presidents, continues to receive a large amount of attention.As a result, this year’s election may feel less like a referendum on the current president and more like a choice between two parties. Biden, for his part, is making this point explicitly. “Every election’s a choice,” he said recently. “My dad used to say, ‘Don’t compare me to the Almighty, Joey. Compare me to the alternative.’”As Nate told me:Just about every election cycle, there’s an argument for why, this time, things might be different — different from the expectations set by historical trends and key factors like the state of the economy or the president’s approval rating.The arguments are often pretty plausible. After all, every cycle is different. There’s almost always something unprecedented about a given election year. There’s always a way to spin up a rationale for why old rules won’t apply.In the end, history usually prevails. That’s a good thing to keep in mind right now as Democrats show strength that seems entirely at odds with the long history of the struggles of the president’s party in midterm elections.But this cycle, there really is something different — or at the very least, there is something different about the reasons “this cycle might be different.”More on politicsPresident Biden remembering 9/11.Al Drago for The New York TimesBiden visited the Pentagon for a Sept. 11 anniversary ceremony. “I know for all those of you who lost someone, 21 years is both a lifetime and no time at all,” he said.An Atlanta prosecutor has emerged as a consequential legal threat to Trump while presiding over the justice system in Georgia’s most populous county.THE LATEST NEWSWar in UkraineThe Kharkiv region this weekend.Juan Barreto/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRussia acknowledged that it had lost much of Kharkiv, a military stronghold, as Ukraine’s lightning advance took back more than 1,000 square miles.Russian cruise missiles knocked out power to regions in eastern and northeastern Ukraine in apparent retaliation.Ukraine drew on U.S. intelligence to plan its counterassault. The gains in the northeast have been the most important advances of the war, American officials said.The QueenAntigua and Barbuda announced that it would hold a referendum on becoming a republic, one of several countries considering a split with the British monarchy.The queen’s beloved corgis will stay in the family.Other Big StoriesFloodwaters cover around a third of Pakistan, including its agricultural belt. The economic losses will be felt for years, officials warn.Torrential, unrelenting rains swept through Chicago, taking the city by surprise.Improved weather conditions allowed firefighters to make progress on some of California’s blazes. But the battles are far from over.A New York education board will vote on new rules to keep private schools accountable to academic standards. (Read The Times’s investigation into New York yeshivas.)Alcohol deaths rose in the pandemic. Activists in Oregon say higher taxes could save lives.OpinionsGail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss Trump and the queen.To soften its Senate candidates’ images, the G.O.P. is turning to their wives. It’s trite and insulting, Michelle Cottle writes.The killing of a Memphis kindergarten teacher is a tragedy, not a talking point, Margaret Renkl says.MORNING READSDragon Con: Redefining what nerd culture looks like.No longer taboo: For better or worse, student debt has become normalized.Still rolling: Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone, wants to reveal it all.Metropolitan Diary: The cabby and the cat food.Quiz time: The average score on our latest news quiz was 9.4. See if you can beat it.A Times classic: Don’t try to walk off a sprained ankle.Advice from Wirecutter: The best over-the-counter hearing aids.Lives Lived: Thomas Carney tended bar at Elaine’s for decades. The Times once wrote that he kept alive the traditions of saloons: “wit, tact, patience and a boundless tolerance for drunks.” He died at 82.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICA new era in men’s tennis: Teen phenom Carlos Alcaraz seized his first Grand Slam title in a four-set win over the Norwegian player Casper Ruud at the U.S. Open. The Spaniard’s stunning tournament might even have left tennis fans feeling optimistic about the post-Big Three future. Panic time for the Dallas Cowboys? Quarterback Dak Prescott exited yesterday’s 19-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with an injury to his throwing hand. He will undergo surgery and miss several weeks. Here are the other takeaways from Week 1 of the N.F.L. season.W.N.B.A. finals get underway: The typically high-scoring Las Vegas Aces narrowly edged the Connecticut Sun 67-64 at home in Game 1. It was the game the Sun wanted, but MVP A’ja Wilson lifted the Aces to a win. Game 2 is tomorrow at 9 p.m. Eastern.ARTS AND IDEAS Tasting menus for the peopleMore chefs are embracing tasting menus, while rejecting the grandiose conventions and price tags that usually accompany them, Brett Anderson writes in The Times.Tasting menus can be surprisingly thrifty. Because they tend to require reservations, with meals chosen in advance, chefs can purchase the precise amount of ingredients. That has allowed aspiring restaurateurs to branch off on their own, serving food to small groups without much overhead.At Southern Soigné in Jackson, Miss., Zacchaeus Golden offers a multicourse dinner for $95, a fraction of the cost of most lavish tasting-menu marathons. One way he keeps it affordable: The only other employee is his mother, Margie.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookRikki Snyder for The New York TimesThe trick to this chicken salad is the method for poaching chicken.AwardsThe Emmy Awards are tonight, with Kenan Thompson of “Saturday Night Live” hosting.What to WatchIn “The Fabelmans,” Steven Spielberg himself is the star. But Michelle Williams steals the show.Now Time to PlayNYTThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was devotion. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Unattractive (four letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. After, use our bot to get better.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — DavidP.S. Katie Baker is joining The Times from BuzzFeed News to cover the social and cultural conflicts dividing the U.S.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about Serena Williams.Lauren Hard, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      in Elections

      Democrats Didn’t Conjure Up the Demand for MAGA Candidates

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      In my column this week, I tackled some of the major objections to President Biden’s Philadelphia speech on MAGA Republicans and the threat they pose to democracy, including the view that it was too divisive.Even if it was, most Americans land on Biden’s side of the argument — in a Reuters poll conducted just a few days after the speech, 58 percent of respondents, including a quarter of Republicans, said that Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement is “threatening America’s democratic foundations.”What I didn’t address was the charge that Biden, and Democrats in general, are acting in bad faith when they condemn Trump and his allies. If Democrats truly believe that MAGA Republicans are a threat to democracy, goes the argument, why are they spending tens of millions of dollars to elevate them in Republican primaries? My colleagues Ross Douthat and Bret Stephens both made a version of this point in their respective columns this week.They are keyed into something real: that it is a bit unsavory, if not outright hypocritical, for Democrats to spend huge sums to help nominate MAGA Republicans at the expense of their more moderate, pro-democracy colleagues while condemning those same candidates, and the movement they represent, as a threat to the constitutional order.Where I part ways with my colleagues is in their conclusion that Democrats are therefore crying alligator tears when they condemn MAGA extremists. If the top priority is depriving the Republican Party of power and influence, then the most important thing for Democrats to do, right now, is win elections. And if the most Trump-aligned candidates tend to be the weakest challengers in a general election, then it is entirely consistent with the argument in Biden’s speech to want to elevate those candidates over more moderate alternatives.At the end of the day, a more moderate Republican in Congress is still a vote for Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House or Mitch McConnell as Senate majority leader. It is still a vote, in other words, for a coalition that includes MAGA Republicans.I could leave it there, except that I think that this answer concedes too much to the premise. Implicit in the question is the factual claim that Democratic spending in Republican primaries is either responsible for — or a significant factor in — the success of MAGA candidates with Republican voters. Otherwise, why would Democrats spend the money and why would conservatives complain about the outcome?I think it is true that Democratic spending has had an effect. But I think the more significant reason that Republican voters keep nominating MAGA candidates is that Republican voters like MAGA candidates. All you have to do is look at the results of the Republican primaries in question and ask if Democratic money really mattered that much.Did Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, spend millions to give a boost to Darren Bailey, the Trumpiest candidate in the Republican gubernatorial primary? Yes. But Bailey led the Republican field before Pritzker’s intervention, swamping his opponents in an October 2021 poll. Democrats may have nudged some undecided voters into Bailey’s camp, but that alone does not explain how the hard-right Republican won more than 57 percent of the vote in a six-way primary. The more likely answer, given his early lead, is that Republican voters liked what Bailey was selling.The same goes for Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, the pro-insurrection Republican candidate for governor. Democrats gave him a boost as well. But he led the Republican pack for much of the race and his final tally — nearly 44 percent of the vote in an eight-way contest — reflects his very real popularity with Republican voters in the state.The other thing to consider is the actual content of Democratic ads on behalf of MAGA Republican candidates. The ad meant to support Mastriano, for example, simply stated his conservative views and emphasized his support for Trump. The ad said that Mastriano wanted to “outlaw abortion” and is “one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters.” It also points out that Mastriano “wants to end vote by mail, and he led the fight to audit the 2020 election. If Mastriano wins, it’s a win for what Donald Trump stands for.”It is not the Democratic Party’s fault that Republicans are attracted to this message, and nothing forced Republicans in Pennsylvania or Illinois (or Michigan or Arizona) to nominate the most MAGA candidates in the field. Republicans voters like Trump and they want Trumpist candidates, and where there’s demand, supply usually follows.Which is to say that even with Democratic intervention in Republican primaries, the thrust of Biden’s story about the Republican Party still holds up. The party has been captured by extremists, and it’s up to the rest of us to ensure that it doesn’t win more power than it already has.What I WroteMy Friday column was on President Biden’s Philadelphia speech, why I think the objections to it are misguided, and what, if anything, was missing from his argument that the MAGA movement is a threat to American democracy.To divide against a radical minority that would attack and undermine democratic self-government is to divide along the most inclusive lines possible. It is to do a version of what Franklin Roosevelt did when he condemned“organized money,” “economic royalists” and the “forces of selfishness and lust for power.”And in the latest episode of my podcast with John Ganz, Unclear and Present Danger, we discussed the 1992 crime thriller “Deep Cover” with special guest Adam Serwer of The Atlantic.Now ReadingAdam Serwer on free speech for The Atlantic.Jerusalem Demsas on “Black flight” for The Atlantic.Blair McClendon on Jordan Peele’s “Nope” for Mubi.Andrew Elrod on Watergate for N+1 magazine.Rick Perlstein on the assault on public schools for The Forum.Keisha N. Blain on objectivity in history for The New Republic.Feedback If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to your friends. They can sign up here. If you want to share your thoughts on an item in this week’s newsletter or on the newsletter in general, please email me at jamelle-newsletter@nytimes.com. You can follow me on Twitter (@jbouie), Instagram and TikTok.Photo of the WeekJamelle BouieI went to a car show in nearby Culpepper, Va., and took a few photos. This was one of the better ones. I used Ilford black and white film and a Voigtlander 35mm lens.Now Eating: Farro Broccoli Bowl with Lemony TahiniI’ve been on a real grain salad kick — they’re easy to make for lunch — and this is the latest one. I have no real changes to make. I used more broccoli than the recipe called for and also added a bunch of cilantro. Personally, I would go heavy on the tahini, but I like tahini quite a bit. Your mileage may vary. Recipe comes from NYT Cooking.IngredientsKosher salt1½ cups farro, rinsed and drained4 large eggs, scrubbed under hot running water1 large head broccoli, cut into florets, tender stems sliced2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil1 teaspoon soy sauce, plus more for serving2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil1 tablespoon sesame seeds1 scallion, thinly slicedHot sauce or thinly sliced green chiles, for serving (optional)2½ tablespoons fresh lemon juice, plus more for serving1 garlic clove, finely grated or minced¼ teaspoon kosher salt, plus more as needed⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more as needed3 tablespoons tahiniDirectionsBring a medium pot of salted water to a boil. Add farro and eggs. Cook eggs for 6 minutes for very runny centers and 7 minutes for medium-runny. Use a slotted spoon to transfer eggs to a bowl of cold water. Let them sit for 2 minutes, then crack and carefully peel the eggs.Continue to let the farro cook until done according to package directions, usually a total of 20 to 40 minutes. Drain farro.As farro cooks, prepare the dressing: In a medium bowl, whisk together lemon juice, garlic and ¼ teaspoon salt. Let sit for 1 minute, then whisk in oil, a few drops at a time, until emulsified. Whisk in tahini and set aside.Broil the broccoli: Position the rack underneath your broiler so that it’s at least 4 inches away from the heating element; heat the broiler.On a rimmed baking sheet, toss broccoli with olive oil and soy sauce, then spread the pieces out into an even layer. Broil until slightly charred in spots, 2 to 5 minutes, watching closely so that it doesn’t burn all over (a few burned spots are OK). Let cool slightly, then toss with sesame oil and sesame seeds and cover to keep warm. (You can also roast the broccoli at 450 degrees for 8 to 15 minutes instead of broiling.)Toss cooked farro with 5 to 6 tablespoons tahini dressing to taste, a large pinch of salt and a drizzle of olive oil. Taste, and add salt and olive oil if needed.To serve, divide farro across 4 serving bowls and drizzle with remaining dressing. Top with turnips, and sprinkle them lemon juice and salt. Add broccoli and egg to the bowl and garnish with sliced scallions and more sesame. Serve immediately, with soy sauce, hot sauce, and-or sliced chiles on the side if you like. More