Presidential Election of 2024

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    10 Ways of Making Sense of Zohran Mamdani’s Win

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    Four years ago, when Eric Adams was elected mayor, New Yorkers were told that it marked the end of a progressive wave that had shaped national Democratic politics at least since the shock election of Donald Trump in 2016. Just five months ago, as Democrats reckoned with the meaning of a second loss to Trump, the refrain was similar: The party had been pulled too far left by its activist flank, which it needed to not just discipline but also perhaps disavow. At the time, Zohran Mamdani was registering just 1 percent support.Now he has won a decisive primary victory by bringing a remarkably novel electorate to the polls. And a lesson of his shock victory is one we probably should have learned several times over the past decade: Politics are fluid, even quicksilver, and the just-so stories we tell ourselves about what is possible and what is not are almost always simplistic and in many cases just plain wrong.New York is only one city, exceptional in many ways, and last week’s was just one election — a primary at that, featuring a front-runner burdened by laziness and a toxic past. And there are obvious reasons to think that the Mamdani playbook now being debated so furiously both by its admirers and by its detractors would not work in other parts of the country — at least, not in all of them. But Mamdani’s triumph is nevertheless, as I wrote a few weeks ago in anticipation, an extremely big deal, elevating an avowed leftist closer to a more consequential executive office than any has held in generations. And though Mamdani’s ascension comes with meaningful risks, it also throws open a whole new horizon of political possibility. Mamdani’s supporters are exhilarated by the fresh air. But the oxygen spent on him by his haters over the past week shows that they, too, think Mamdani’s win is a major national event.Last month, I asked what stories we might tell about a Mamdani victory — for the left, for the city and indeed for the whole country. But election night delivered enough of an earthquake that a number of new and important story lines have emerged since — too many, I think, to organize in any way but as a grab bag of observations. Here are 10.1. The American left has a new face, and New York City is now an extremely high-stakes progressive experiment.These days, with American politics more and more nationalized, every candidate everywhere is, to some extent, required to participate in national debates and be subjected to national scrutiny (on cable news and social media as well as offline). Perhaps in another era or another city an election like this could be cauterized from the national landscape, allowing an experiment in one city to play out on its own terms. Not now.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dana Carvey Calls His Biden Impression a ‘Delicate Thing’

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      For his portrayal of the former president on “Saturday Night Live,” Carvey admitted that he had to toe a careful line.Dana Carvey, the comedian and actor, said that impersonating former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. during the just completed 50th season of “Saturday Night Live” was a challenge because he said he believed Biden “was compromised mentally.”Carvey made the comment on a recent episode of his and David Spade’s podcast “Fly on the Wall” while discussing his portrayal of Biden, a Democrat, during his re-election bid in 2024. “It was a delicate thing in the comedy world,” Carvey added. “There were a lot of people that did not want to do anything that would kind of ding him in, like, an awkward way.”Carvey, a former “S.N.L.” cast member known for his many impersonations, including his portrayal of George H.W. Bush in the 1980s and 1990s, said that in order to make his version of Biden funny, it had to be recognizable, which is why Carvey mastered the former president’s squint and chuckle, as well as his lapsing into non sequiturs like insisting on “being serious right now,” even if what he last said was not a joke.In one episode that aired in late September, Carvey as Biden joined Kamala Harris, played by Maya Rudolph, at a rally after she won the Democratic nomination. He slowly walked to the podium and tossed out a number of Biden’s signature phrases (“by the way,” “guess what?”) before being rushed offstage, only to wander back. In another skit from November, after Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee, won the election, Carvey’s Biden advises him to watch how he talks as president but stammers over his own words in doing so.It took two years for Carvey to master his impression of Biden, he said, and that the first six months of Biden’s presidency did not provide much material until he heard the president whisper and yell.“Biden eventually was my favorite because he had like 10 hooks,” Carvey said. “I loved it. It was in entering and exiting, but it was a real challenge to make it acceptable.”Biden’s age and mental state became flash points during the 2024 presidential election cycle. Conversations about it reached a fever pitch shortly after the first presidential debate in June, in which Biden meandered and mumbled through his answers. Weeks later and under intense pressure from members of his party, Biden dropped out of the race.Since then, there has been a litany of discussions and even books that examine the former president’s decline while in the White House. In May, Biden was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. More

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      Taking From the Poor and Giving to the Rich Is Not Populism

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      “I love the poorly educated,” President Trump declared during the 2016 campaign. His intense support for the “big, beautiful” $4.5 trillion tax-and-spending bill now before Congress shows that he has a unique way of demonstrating his affection.Republicans are on the verge of enacting Trump’s upwardly distributive fiscal policy measure, which has become an extreme test of the loyalty of his more downscale MAGA supporters, who not only oppose the bill but stand to bear the brunt of its negative consequences.In its current form, which is changing by the hour, the measure, known popularly as B.B.B., would provide the upper classes, including Trump’s allies and donor base — corporations and the rich — with tax cuts worth approximately $4.45 trillion over 10 years. The measure would offset the cost with the largest reductions in safety net programs in recent decades, if not all time, for those on the lower tiers of the income distribution.This pared-back social spending would adversely affect a large bloc of rural and exurban Republicans who played a crucial role in putting their party in control of the House and Senate, and Trump in the White House.“You can very safely say,” Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the liberal Center for American Progress, told The Washington Post, that “this is the biggest cut to programs for low-income Americans ever.”Many of the details of the legislation remain in flux as the Senate continues to vote on amendments. If the Senate approves the legislation, the House and the Senate will still have to come to agreement on a final version for the measure to become law.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New Cost of Trump’s Bill, Canada Backs Down in Trade Dispute, Gen Z’s Retirement Plan

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      Listen to and follow “The Headlines”Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadioOn Today’s Episode:Senate Bill Would Add at Least $3.3 Trillion to Debt, Budget Office Says, by Andrew DuehrenTillis Announces He Won’t Run Again as Trump Threatens Him With a Primary, by Annie KarniA Triumphant Supreme Court Term for Trump, Fueled by Emergency Rulings, by Adam Liptak and Abbie VanSickleCourts Will Have to Grapple With New Limits on Their Power, by Mattathias SchwartzCanada Will Scrap Tax That Prompted Trump to Suspend Trade Talks, by Matina Stevis-GridneffGen Z, It Turns Out, Is Great at Saving for Retirement, by Lisa Rabasca RoepeJell-O With Natural Dyes? It’s Not Easy Becoming Green, by Julie CreswellJohn Thune, the Senate majority leader, with reporters. Republicans delayed a rapid-fire series of votes on President Trump’s signature policy legislation until Monday morning as they grasped for support.Tierney L. Cross/The New York TimesTune in, and tell us what you think at theheadlines@nytimes.com. For corrections, email nytnews@nytimes.com.For more audio journalism and storytelling, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. More

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      If Everyone Had Voted, Kamala Harris Still Would Have Lost

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      New data, based on authoritative voter records, suggests that Donald Trump would have done even better in 2024 with higher turnout.A voting line in Phoenix in November. Jon Cherry for The New York TimesIn the wake of last November’s election, many Democrats blamed low turnout for Kamala Harris’s defeat.It wasn’t entirely without reason, as turnout dropped in Democratic areas, but many months later it is clear the blame was misplaced. Newly available data, based on authoritative voter turnout records, suggests that if anything, President Trump would have done even better if everyone had voted.The new data, including a new study from Pew Research released Thursday, instead offers a more dispiriting explanation for Democrats: Young, nonwhite and irregular voters defected by the millions to Mr. Trump, costing Ms. Harris both the Electoral College and the popular vote.The findings suggest that Mr. Trump’s brand of conservative populism once again turned politics-as-usual upside down, as his gains among disengaged voters deprived Democrats of their traditional advantage with this group, who are disproportionately young and nonwhite.For a generation, the assumption that Democrats benefit from high turnout has underpinned the hopes and machinations of both parties, from Republican support for restrictive voting laws to Democratic hopes of mobilizing a new progressive coalition of young and nonwhite voters. It’s not clear whether Democrats will struggle with irregular voters in the future, but the data nonetheless essentially ends the debate about whether Ms. Harris lost because she alienated swing voters or because she failed to energize her base. In the end, Democrats alienated voters whose longtime support they might have taken for granted.The 2024 election may feel like old news, especially in the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in New York City on Tuesday, but the best data on the outcome has only recently become available. Over the last two months, the last few states updated their official records of who did or did not vote in the election. These records unlock the most authoritative studies of the electorate, which link voter turnout records to high-quality surveys. More

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      Trump Won by Turning Out Voters and Building a Diverse Coalition, Report Finds

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      A new Pew Research Center study found that 85 percent of President Trump’s 2020 supporters came out to vote for him again, a better rate than Democrats pulled off.One of the most robust studies of the 2024 election shows that President Trump’s return to the White House was powered more heavily by his ability to turn out past supporters than by winning over Democratic voters, even as he built one of the most diverse coalitions in Republican Party history.The new report, released on Thursday from Pew Research Center, offers some of the most detailed analysis yet of what actually happened last fall, in particular how infrequent voters broke for Mr. Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris.In the end, the math was simple and significant: A larger share of voters who supported Mr. Trump in the 2020 election — 85 percent — showed up to vote for him again in 2024. Ms. Harris earned the support of just 79 percent of former President Joseph R. Biden’s 2020 voters.The analysis showed that 5 percent of Mr. Biden’s voters flipped to Mr. Trump, while only 3 percent of Mr. Trump’s 2020 voters flipped to Ms. Harris.But the bigger factor was turnout: 15 percent of Mr. Biden’s voters did not vote at all in 2024, Pew found.Tony Fabrizio, who was the lead pollster for the Trump campaign, said the new report validated the campaign’s strategic successes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Evolution of Trump’s Views on Foreign Aid

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      Foreign aid, a pillar of American foreign policy for generations, has been gutted since President Trump began his second term in office. The United States Agency for International Development and other government agencies that provide food, medical care and economic development assistance to the world’s poorest nations, have been largely defunded or eliminated in recent months.In justifying the administration’s destruction of the agency, Mr. Trump said U.S.A.I.D. had been run by “radical lunatics,” and he has made numerous false claims about the agency’s work in the developing world. It included preventing and treating H.I.V. and malaria; providing emergency food assistance; and advancing the country’s national security interests by establishing new markets for American goods.Mr. Trump has never been a big fan of foreign aid. But in his first term, he often reveled in the role of dispenser-in-chief of American largess.Not so anymore.To understand Mr. Trump’s evolution from foreign aid skeptic to enthusiastic supporter to, lately, its most determined and powerful foe, The New York Times reviewed nearly 1,000 speeches and interviews he has given over the past 15 years.2011As a presidential candidate in his first bid for office, Mr. Trump often described foreign assistance as wasteful and said the money would be better spent at home. “Foreign affairs is we take care of ourselves,” he said during an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show.

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      Democratic Leaders Tried to Crush Zohran Mamdani. They Should Have Been Taking Notes.

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      On Tuesday night, Zohran Mamdani shocked the political establishment. There are lessons that national Democrats should take from his strong showing in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. But I worry they won’t. Democrats have a curiosity problem, and it’s losing us elections.After Bernie Sanders mounted a formidable challenge to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential primary, precious few Democratic leaders asked what they could learn from it. Two years later, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came out of nowhere to defeat the No. 4-ranking Democrat in the House. They again dismissed it as a fluke.The party establishment’s impulse to stifle and ignore some of its most exciting emerging voices isn’t limited to progressives. Take Chris Deluzio in Pennsylvania or Pat Ryan in New York. While decidedly more moderate than Mr. Mamdani, both congressmen campaigned last fall on bringing down costs for people in their swing districts and taking on huge corporations and billionaires, a strategy Mr. Ryan described as “patriotic populism.” Even though it won them both races, Washington Democrats have been hesitant to embrace that strategy.I saw similar complacency last year while advising Ruben Gallego’s successful Senate campaign in Arizona. Although Mr. Gallego was the only Democratic candidate in the race, we struggled to get buy-in early on from the Washington Democratic establishment. It saw his blunt-spoken style as too risky for Arizona. He went on to outperform Kamala Harris by eight points.If Democratic leaders don’t start asking themselves how these candidates won, and what they can learn from their success, we’ll be doomed to fail in the future.Since their losses last fall, Democrats have obsessed over how to reverse their declining fortunes. By and large, the consensus has been that we need candidates with a sharp economic argument that can connect with young people, men, voters of color and the working class.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Democrats Are Getting Richer. It’s Not Helping.

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      There have been endless laments for the white working-class voters the Democratic Party lost over the past few decades, particularly during the 10 years of the Trump era. But detailed 2024 election analyses also make it clear that upper-income white voters have become a much more powerful force in the party than they ever were before. These upscale white voters are driving the transformation of the Democratic Party away from its role as the representative of working-class America and closer to its nascent incarnation as the party of the well-to-do.A detailed analysis of data compiled by the Cooperative Election Study shows that in 2024, 46.8 percent of white Kamala Harris voters had annual household incomes over $80,000, while 53.2 percent earned less than that. In fact, according to data analysis by Caroline Soler, a research analyst for the Cooperative Election Study, the single largest bloc of white Democratic voters in 2024 — 27.5 percent — had incomes of $120,000 or more.Along similar lines, Tom Wood, a political scientist at Ohio State University, provided The Times with figures from the American National Election Studies for 2020, the most recent year for which data is available. The numbers show that white voters in the 68th to 100th income percentiles — the top third — cast 49.05 percent of their ballots for Joe Biden and 50.95 for Donald Trump. White voters in the top 5 percent of the income distribution voted 52.9 percent for Biden and 47.1 percent for Trump.These figures stand in sharp contrast to election results as recent as those of 2008. Among white voters in the top third of the income distribution that year, John McCain, the Republican nominee, beat Barack Obama 67.1 percent to 32.9 percent.Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, responded by email to my inquiries about this phenomenon: “An objective look at both party’s coalitions in the mass electorate would have to acknowledge that neither Republicans nor Democrats are the ‘party of the working class.’”Instead, Lee argued:Both parties are vulnerable to charges of elitism. Republicans really do push for tax cuts that benefit the wealthy. Democrats, meanwhile, take stances on social issues that appeal to socioeconomic elites.The underlying truth, Lee continued, “is that the major parties in the U.S. today are not primarily organized around a social-class cleavage.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More