Presidential Election of 2024

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      Split Screen in Iowa: Haley-DeSantis Debate vs. Trump Town Hall

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      The 2024 campaigns took a snow day on Tuesday in Iowa, with time ticking down on the chance to make a final impression with voters before the Republicans’ caucuses on Monday night.With most events called off for snowstorms, attention turned to former President Donald J. Trump, who appeared in court in Washington to argue that he had total immunity from criminal prosecution for actions he took as president. Three judges at a federal appeals court expressed deep skepticism toward that argument.As Iowans dig out from the snow on Wednesday, the campaigns will head back out on the trail.Former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, after appearing at town-hall events on separate days earlier in the week, will face off directly on Wednesday night in a debate to be broadcast by CNN. The front-runner, Mr. Trump, has declined to participate, as he has for debates throughout the nomination contest.But Mr. Trump is hoping to derail his rivals’ appearance — a tactic he has also repeatedly employed. He will appear at a Fox News town-hall event that will play out simultaneously with the CNN debate — seeking to disrupt one of the last opportunities Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley have to win over voters with just five days until Caucus Day.Mr. Trump’s absences from the campaign trail — he is also scheduled to return to court on Thursday, this time for a civil fraud trial in New York — could give his rivals a window to chip away at his huge polling lead in Iowa.Little has worked so far, and he is 30 points ahead of the competition in polls in Iowa, with Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley virtually tied for a distant second place. The entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who did not qualify for the CNN debate, has been campaigning furiously but remains stuck in a distant fourth place. In New Hampshire, where the campaign will move after Monday, new polls show a narrowing race, with Ms. Haley gaining support.In other newsMr. Ramaswamy has recently tried to position himself as more electable than Mr. Trump while still impassionately defending the former president in the face of his criminal prosecutions.Mr. Trump said in an interview on Monday that he believed that the economy would crash soon, adding that he hoped it would happen in the next year so President Biden would be blamed for it.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who is not campaigning in Iowa and instead is staking his candidacy on New Hampshire, said at a town-hall event in the state that he would not endorse Ms. Haley unless she removed herself from potential consideration as Mr. Trump’s running mate. Mr. Christie is facing pressure to drop out of the race to shore up support for Ms. Haley as a stronger anti-Trump candidate.Reporting was contributed by More

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      A Super PAC Forms to Support No Labels

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      A political group intending to support a presidential candidate run by the group No Labels plans to file paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday, with a handful of Republican and Democratic strategists as advisers.The group, New Leaders ’24 political action committee, expects a No Labels ticket to materialize this year. No Labels has said it would mount a campaign if President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump are their parties’ nominees, in a rematch of the 2020 campaign that is increasingly likely.The group will be advised by Rob Stutzman, a Republican and former deputy chief of staff to Arnold Schwarzenegger during his governorship as well as an adviser for Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign. Kathleen Shanahan, a Republican and former chief of staff to Jeb Bush during his governorship, will be the chief executive, and Andrew Fishman, whom the group identified as a Democrat and who has a business background, will serve as treasurer, Mr. Stutzman said.Officials said they had $2 million in initial commitments, but they expect up to $300 million if there’s a “viable” ticket.It remains to be seen whether No Labels, which counts former Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of Maryland, among its leadership, will find what it calls a unity ticket to run in 2024. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who recently said he would not seek re-election, has suggested he is considering a presidential campaign, and he is seen as a top potential candidate by some in the group.A super PAC is necessary, officials say, because No Labels, which doesn’t have to disclose its donors, can’t operate as a campaign committee and is focused only on trying to ensure ballot access in various states.Independent and third-party candidacies, which have been tried repeatedly, have served as spoilers in previous presidential races. And Democrats have been vocal about concern that a ticket like the one No Labels is looking to run could tilt the election in Mr. Trump’s favor.“I think that our democracy is at risk, and I think that No Labels is perilous to our democracy,” Representative Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat and former House speaker, said at a recent event. “I say that without any hesitation.”Asked why Mr. Stutzman, a vocal critic of Mr. Trump, would be involved in the effort, he said he believed that the “right ticket” could peel off center-right Republican voters, as opposed to drawing from Mr. Biden. Polls show that he is facing a tight battle in a head-to-head matchup with Mr. Trump.Ryan Clancy, the chief strategist for No Labels, said, “If we offer our line to a unity presidential ticket, it will need a lot of support to rally voters, and it looks like New Leaders 2024 will be well positioned to provide it.” More

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      Setting the Stage for Iowa: ‘Trump Will Probably be Over 50 Percent’

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      Patrick Healy and The Republican caucuses in Iowa are just five days away, marking the official start of the 2024 presidential election season. To kick-start Opinion Audio’s coverage, Patrick Healy, the deputy editor of Times Opinion, and the Opinion editor Katherine Miller get together to discuss their expectations for Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, where they think the G.O.P. is headed and Donald Trump’s continued dominance. Stay tuned for more on-the-ground analysis from “The Opinions” in the coming weeks.Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York Times; Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesThe 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, X (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram.This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek and Annie-Rose Strasser. Engineering by Issac Jones with mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. More

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      A Compromise on Immigration Could Help Rebuild Biden’s Democratic Coalition

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      The negotiations on Ukraine funding and stricter border protections have exposed a growing rift between President Biden and his own party. Republican hard-liners have demanded a bill that mirrors policies advanced during the Trump administration, especially ones related to asylum seekers, increased border security and the mandate that companies institute the E-Verify employment eligibility system.Democrats such as Representative Pramila Jayapal called the proposals “cruel, inhumane and unworkable,” but Republicans believe they have found solid ground with voters. Recent polling suggests the Republicans are right. A CBS News/YouGov poll released on Sunday found that 68 percent of Americans disapprove of Mr. Biden’s handling of border security.There are many, both inside and outside his party, who believe that by agreeing to the Republican deal, Mr. Biden would be surrendering too much moral high ground and any future policy leverage. But in fact this is a chance for him to make meaningful border-security policy changes and redefine his party as the home of an aspirational multiethnic, working-class coalition.Securing the borders of a sovereign state isn’t racism — it’s among the first responsibilities of government. And many voters, including Democrats, are demanding that the Biden administration do a better job with that responsibility. A recent Fox News poll showed that fully 22 percent of Democrats favor Republican candidates on border security.More than any other group, Latinos have political views that correlate with — indeed, are racially and ethnically defined by — the immigrant experience. Yet even these voters are conveying growing concerns about border security. According to an April 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center, about 44 percent of Hispanics and 48 percent of respondents overall think illegal immigration is a major problem, an increase of more than 15 percentage points since June 2020.The supposition among much of the Democratic establishment and progressive activists is that Latino voters prioritize more relaxed immigration policies over border security. To win re-election, President Biden must redefine the narrative that has become orthodoxy and lead his party toward supporting significantly enhanced border security measures.While this would be a prudent political move, such a shift would most likely lead to an internal Democratic civil war. While Biden’s election efforts in 2020 hinged on just enough White Republican suburban women leaving the G.O.P., the defection of traditional minority Democrats, notably Latino, Black and Asian voters narrowed his margin of victory. Younger voters and voters of color — a key coalition — has shown the largest drop in support. But brokering a deal with the Republicans could help him shore up the nontraditional alliance that got him elected four years ago.Latinos have flummoxed Democrats in recent elections by shifting right in three of the last four national elections. This shift is about far more than immigration reform, but it is undeniable that it has been pronounced in border communities, especially in Texas and New Mexico, where the crisis is most acute. The failure of Democrats to propose meaningful border security measures has led to them being vulnerable to Republican attacks of supporting “open borders.”Mr. Biden, whose campaign has only recently and reluctantly begun to acknowledge the slide in support by Latino (in fact, all nonwhite) voters for the Democratic Party, is facing growing pressure from advocacy groups to take a more progressive position on immigration than the party in past decades — even though polling and electoral data suggest Latino voters are moving in the opposite direction.The president will have to challenge the Democrats’ established doctrine on the border and party’s view of how Latinos view border policy — a move that will reposition the Democratic coalition to better benefit from the demographic changes among Latino voters in the short, medium and long term. The rightward shift among Latino voters has exposed an uncomfortable cleavage between the Latino immigrant-advocacy groups that rose to prominence in the 1990s and the views of their first- and second-generation children, who dominate the Latino voting population.President Biden’s re-election strategy is clearly not working — but it is fixable. Immigration, the undocumented and related issues have been overemphasized by institutional Democratic Latino voices, including consultants and organizations vested in an outdated narrative. Latino voters, meanwhile, are far more focused on basic economic concerns and public safety, issues where Republicans tend to poll better among working-class voters.The immigration measures that progressive and establishment Latino Democrats favor, while desperately needed and a moral imperative, are a nonstarter for House Republicans and not terribly important to Latino voters. Mr. Biden would be smart to agree to beef up border security, restrict asylum and move on to its economic messaging, precisely the issue Latino voters are telling pollsters they want to hear more of.The president finds himself and his re-election prospects at a crossroads. He can double down on a strategy of outwardly opposing increased border protection, or he can reframe the debate and begin to rebuild the ethnic and racial coalitions that brought him and Barack Obama to power. To do that, he must assert that a Latino agenda, as it exists, has grown far bigger than one predominantly focused on ethnic ties to immigration.Mike Madrid is a Republican political consultant and a co-founder of the Lincoln Project.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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Trump Deploys Familiar Tactic: I’m Rubber. You’re Glue.

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      Whenever Donald Trump is accused of something, he responds by accusing his opponent of that exact thing. The idea is less to argue that Mr. Trump is clean than to suggest that everyone else is dirty.Days before the Iowa caucuses, former President Donald J. Trump is appearing twice in court this week — on Tuesday in Washington and Thursday in New York.He was not required to attend either hearing. But advisers say he believes the court appearances dramatize what is fast becoming a central theme of his campaign: that President Biden — who is describing the likely Republican nominee as a peril to the country — is the true threat to American democracy.Mr. Trump’s claim is the most outlandish and baseless version of a tactic he has used throughout his life in business and politics. Whenever he is accused of something — no matter what that something is — he responds by accusing his opponent of that exact thing. The idea is less to argue that Mr. Trump is clean than to suggest that everyone else is dirty.It is an impulse more than a strategy. But in Mr. Trump’s campaigns, that impulse has sometimes aligned with his political interests. By this way of thinking, the more cynical voters become, the more likely they are to throw their hands in the air, declare, “They’re all the same” and start comparing the two candidates on issues the campaign sees as favorable to Mr. Trump, like the economy and immigration.His flattening moral relativism has undergirded his approach to nearly every facet of American public life, including democracy.In 2017, when the Fox News host Bill O’Reilly described President Vladimir Putin of Russia as a “killer,” Mr. Trump responded that there were “a lot of killers,” adding, “Well, you think our country is so innocent?”And in the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump applied the “I’m rubber, you’re glue” approach to a wide range of vulnerabilities.When Mr. Trump was described by voters as racist in polls after, among other things, he described undocumented immigrants from Mexico as “rapists,” he claimed that his rival, Hillary Clinton, was the true “bigot.”When Mrs. Clinton suggested he was temperamentally unfit to be entrusted with the nation’s nuclear codes, Mr. Trump declared her “trigger happy” and “very unstable.”When Mrs. Clinton called Mr. Trump a “puppet” of Mr. Putin during one of their general election debates, Mr. Trump interrupted: “No puppet. You’re the puppet.”Mr. Trump during a debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016.Damon Winter/The New York TimesA spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to requests for comment.For years, Mr. Trump championed and breathed life into the previously fringe “birther” movement that falsely claimed Barack Obama had been born in Kenya and was therefore an illegitimate president. When he finally renounced the conspiracy theory out of political expediency shortly before Election Day in 2016, he falsely claimed that it was Mrs. Clinton who had started attacking the first Black president with that assertion.Senator Ted Cruz of Texas — “Lyin’ Ted,” Mr. Trump had dubbed him — was a victim of this Trumpian tactic in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries at a time when Mr. Trump was being called out for almost constant falsehoods. Mr. Cruz once summarized the injustice in a fit of indignation, saying of Mr. Trump: “He lies — practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying.”Now, Mr. Trump is repurposing his favored tool to neutralize what many see as his worst offense in public life and greatest political vulnerability in the 2024 campaign: his efforts, after he lost the 2020 election, to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power and remain in office.And his campaign apparatus has kicked into gear along with him, as he baselessly claims Mr. Biden is stage-managing the investigations and legal action against him. Mr. Trump’s advisers have coined a slogan: “Biden Against Democracy.” The acronym: BAD.Steve Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, said he thought his onetime client was on to something. Mr. Trump is now fighting Mr. Biden over an issue that many Republican consultants and elected officials had hoped he would avoid. They had good reason, given that candidates promoting election denial and conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol cost their party winnable races in the 2022 midterm elections.Mr. Bannon sees it differently.“If you can fight Biden almost to a draw on this, which I think you can, it’s over,” Mr. Bannon said in an interview, referring to the imperiling of American democracy. “He’s got nothing else he can pitch. This is his main thing.”Mr. Bannon added, “If Biden wants to fight there, about democracy and all this kind of ephemeral stuff, Trump will go there in a second.”It was Mr. Bannon who pushed for Mr. Trump to “go on offense” after a tape leaked of him boasting to the TV host Billy Bush about grabbing women’s genitals. Mr. Bannon helped arrange for three women who had accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual harassment or assault to join Mr. Trump at a news conference shortly before a debate with Mrs. Clinton. It created a disorienting effect at a moment of acute vulnerability for Mr. Trump.“You’ve got to remember something,” Mr. Bannon said of the Trump campaign’s “Biden Against Democracy” gambit. “This is the whole reason he’s actually running: to say he believes that, burned into his soul, is the 2020 election was stolen, and that Jan. 6 was a setup by the F.B.I.”It’s unclear whether Mr. Trump actually believes that Jan. 6 was orchestrated by the “deep state.” His explanations of that day have shifted opportunistically, and he was a relative latecomer to the baseless far-right conspiracy theory that the Capitol riot was an inside job by the F.B.I.Mr. Trump has also sought to muddy the waters on voter concerns about corruption, by trying, along with his allies, to neutralize his liabilities on that front by attacking Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, for foreign moneymaking while his father was vice president.But some of Mr. Trump’s advisers think there is less to gain from the Hunter Biden angle than from the “Biden Against Democracy” theme. They recognize that Hunter Biden is not the president and doubt the issue will move voters significantly without the emergence of a connection to the president strong enough to convince Senate Republicans who remain skeptical that there is a basis for impeachment.Mr. Trump has also privately expressed concern about overplaying personal attacks on the president’s son to such an extent that they backfire and make Mr. Biden look like a caring father, according to a person who has heard Mr. Trump make these remarks.In a 2020 general election debate, Mr. Trump made such an error, when he mocked Hunter Biden’s past drug use, prompting a humanizing response from Mr. Biden: “My son, like a lot of people, like a lot of people you know at home, had a drug problem. He’s overtaken it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it. And I’m proud of him.”President Biden has repeatedly said Mr. Trump is a threat to American democracy. Mr. Trump has been lately saying the same of Mr. Biden. Pete Marovich for The New York TimesMr. Trump and his advisers are hoping to do more than paper over his liabilities related to his election lies and the violent attack on the Capitol, which Democrats are confident remain deeply troubling to a majority of voters. They hope they can persuade voters that Mr. Biden is actually the problem.Voter attitudes related to Mr. Biden have shifted as Mr. Trump has tried to suggest that efforts to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his actions are a threat to democracy. In an October 2022 New York Times/Siena College poll, among voters who said democracy was under threat, 45 percent saw Mr. Trump as a major threat to democracy, compared with 38 percent who said the same about Mr. Biden. The gap was even wider among independent voters, who were 14 percentage points more likely to see Mr. Trump as such a threat.But Mr. Trump’s rhetoric seems to have already altered public opinion, even before the campaign deployed his new slogan. In another more recent survey, 57 percent of Americans said Mr. Trump’s re-election would pose a threat to democracy, and 53 percent said the same of Mr. Biden, according to an August 2023 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute. Among independent voters, nearly identical shares thought either candidate would be a threat to democracy.The repetition that Mr. Trump has used consistently in his public speeches is a core part of his approach.“If people think he’s inconsistent on message, he ain’t inconsistent on this message,” Mr. Bannon said of Mr. Trump’s effort to brand Mr. Biden as the real threat to democracy. “Go back and just look at how he pounds it. Wash, rinse, repeat. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s very powerful.”David Axelrod, a former top adviser to Mr. Obama, said polling indicated Mr. Trump had “made headway with his base in this project.” But a general election, he said, is a “harder” race to convince people that his lies about Jan. 6, 2021, are true.It is “one of the reasons he’s so desperate to push the Jan. 6 trial past the election,” Mr. Axelrod said of the federal indictment charging Mr. Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States.“A parade of witnesses, including his own top aides, White House lawyers and advisers, testifying, followed by a guilty verdict, would damage him outside the base,” Mr. Axelrod said.Ruth Igielnik More

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      As Political Theater, Trump’s Court Appearance Wasn’t a Showstopper

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      The former president plans to continue showing up at various legal proceedings against him, but in this case the spotlight stayed largely on the judges and their skepticism about his immunity claims.If Donald J. Trump’s goal on Tuesday was to turn a weighty legal proceeding in Washington into a de facto campaign appearance that galvanized media attention, he fell short.Six days before the Iowa caucuses, the former president used the arguments before a federal appeals court over whether he is immune from prosecution to hone a strategy he has deployed repeatedly over the past year and intends to use more as the political season heats up and his legal problems come to a head: standing in or near a courthouse, portraying himself as a victim.But in this case, the federal courthouse was a relatively inhospitable setting. The security protocols and the ban on cameras in federal courthouses did not lend themselves easily to the kind of displays Mr. Trump has made at the four arraignments for the indictments he is facing, where he has commanded intensive coverage and the chance to cast the prosecutions as political persecution.The headlines went instead to the sharp questioning by the three judges. They did not overtly acknowledge Mr. Trump’s presence in the courtroom but expressed great skepticism about his legal team’s argument that even a president who ordered the killing of a political rival could not be prosecuted unless he or she was first convicted in an impeachment proceeding.Instead, Mr. Trump was left to hold a short appearance at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue — what had been the Trump International Hotel before he sold it after leaving office.“I feel that as president you have to have immunity, very simple,” said Mr. Trump, standing with a handful of lawyers who had gone with him to the hearing. Saying he had done nothing wrong, Mr. Trump said there would be “bedlam” in the country if the courts did not uphold the concept of presidential immunity.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?  More

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      What Will Happen at the Iowa Caucuses? Here’s What to Expect

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      A win isn’t always win in the Iowa caucuses. In the final days, the candidates are scrambling to beat each other — and expectations.It may feel as if there is little suspense over who is likely to win the Republican presidential caucuses in Iowa on Monday.But in Iowa, the unexpected can be the expected and a win is not always a win. The result could shape the future of the Republican Party at a time of transition, and the future of the Iowa caucuses after a difficult decade. It could help determine whether Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador, presents a serious obstacle to Donald J. Trump’s return to power — or whether Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, will be forced out of the race.Here’s a guide to some possible outcomes and what they mean for the contenders:A Trump victoryAll the assumptions about a big Trump night mean that the former president’s biggest opponent may turn out to be expectations — and not his two main rivals on the ballot, Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis. Mr. Trump and his campaign have set the bar high. Mr. Trump has run as an incumbent, not even debating his opponents. His aides say they think he can set a record for an open race by finishing at least 12 points ahead of his nearest rival.And for Mr. Trump, that could be a problem.“Trump has been polling around 50 percent plus or minus,” said Dennis J. Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University in Des Moines. “If he were to come in at 40, that’s a flashing yellow light. That suggests weaknesses and uncertainty.”Two forces could complicate Mr. Trump’s hopes for the night. Those same polls that show him heading for victory, the polls he boasts about at almost every rally he does in Iowa, could feed complacency among his supporters. Why come out and caucus — Caucus Day temperatures are projected to reach a high of zero degrees in places — if Mr. Trump is going to win anyway?And unlike Democrats’ caucuses, this is a secret ballot; Republicans do not have to stand and divulge their vote to their neighbors. That could matter if there really is a hidden anti-Trump sentiment out there that Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley have been banking on.Of course, these are just what-ifs. Mr. Trump has appeared to take a lesson from 2016, when, after leading in the polls, he lost the caucus to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. This time, he has deployed an immense field organization and traveled across Iowa, urging his supporters to vote. “He’s coming back to the state again and again,” said Jeff Angelo, a former Republican state senator who now hosts a conservative talk show on WHO-AM. “They are not going to take it for granted this time.”A weak showing by Mr. DeSantisGov. Ron DeSantis is hoping for a strong second-place finish in Iowa, though he trails the field in most public and private polls in New Hampshire.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesThe governor of Florida was once seen as Mr. Trump’s biggest threat and Iowa was the state where he could seize the mantle of being the Trump alternative. But Mr. DeSantis has not lived up to his billing, and the rise of Ms. Haley has forced him to the edge of the stage.The test for Mr. DeSantis, earlier this campaign season, was whether he could use Iowa to create a two-way race with Mr. Trump. Now, he is struggling to make certain that he at least scores what he was always expected to score: a strong second-place finish.Mr. DeSantis’s supporters say they remain confident he will come in second — and perhaps even upset Mr. Trump. “If you believe in polls, hopefully he comes in a solid second,” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical leader in Iowa who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis. “If you believe the ground game, there’s a potential he could upend the former president in Iowa. He has by far the best on-the-ground operation I’ve seen.”“A lot of people are waiting to write DeSantis’s obituary,” he said. “I just see DeSantis having a good night on caucus night.”Coming in second place could propel the DeSantis campaign on to New Hampshire. But a weak second-place showing — if he just barely edges out Ms. Haley, or the results are still in dispute as he leaves Iowa — could confirm Republican concerns about his political appeal, and force him to drop out. And coming in third?“Look, he told all of us that he’s all in for Iowa,” said Mr. Angelo. “You finish third in Iowa, I don’t see how you continue.”But even with a second-place showing — which his campaign would call a win — it’s hard to see how Mr. DeSantis builds on that. He trails the field in most public and private polls in New Hampshire. In fact, Mr. DeSantis is not competitive in any of the upcoming states. In a recent interview on NBC News, he declined to list any other states where he could win. He is not putting much effort, in terms of spending or ground game, in any other state. His best hope, it would seem, is that Mr. Vander Plaats is correct and he somehow pulls off an upset victory over Mr. Trump.A strong showing by Ms. HaleyNikki Haley could present herself as a real alternative for Republicans looking for another candidate besides Mr. Trump to lead the party this November if she comes in a solid second in Iowa.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesIf Ms. Haley does come in a solid second, this becomes a different race. She would head into New Hampshire, a state where she has strong institutional support, with the wind at her back, even after a few weeks that have been marked by stumbles on the campaign trail. She could present herself as a real alternative for Republicans looking for another candidate besides Mr. Trump to lead the party this November.And her supporters would almost certainly turn up the pressure on Mr. DeSantis to step aside to allow the party to unify around her. “That becomes the story of the caucus,” said Jimmy Centers, a longtime Iowa Republican consultant. “She becomes the alternative to former President Trump. And then I think the chorus is going to say, it’s time for the field to winnow so they can go head-to-head.”If Ms. Haley finishes in third place, Mr. DeSantis will presumably try to push her out of the race. But why should she leave? She will only be moving on to politically friendlier territory, as the campaign moves first to New Hampshire then to her home state, South Carolina.If Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley continue their brawling into New Hampshire, Mr. Trump will be the beneficiary. “If you don’t have a clear second-place person who can claim the mantle of where the ‘not-Trump’ vote goes in subsequent states, I don’t see where Trump is facing any challenges going forward,” said Gentry Collins, a longtime Iowa Republican leader.Another rough night for Iowa?This has been a tough decade for the Iowa caucuses. In 2012, Mitt Romney, the governor of Massachusetts, was declared the winner of the Republican caucus, but 16 days later, the state Republican Party, struggling to count missing votes, said that Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania, had actually finished first.The 2020 Democratic caucus turned into a debacle, riddled with miscounts and glitches, and the brigade of reporters who had descended on Iowa left before the final results were known. (Quick quiz: Who won the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucus?)When there is already so much distrust of the voting system, fanned by Mr. Trump, the last thing Iowa needs is another messy caucus count. That would arguably be bad for Iowa, but also for the nation.“What I’m concerned about is that you could have a repeat of 2012,” said David Yepsen, the former chief political correspondent for The Des Moines Register who in 2020 predicted that the meltdown — which robbed Pete Buttigieg of momentum from his narrow victory — would spell the end for Iowa’s Democratic caucus.“You have 180,000 people voting in a couple of thousand precincts on little slips of paper that are hand-tabulated,” he said. “The doomsday scenario is that they have problems with their tabulations. With all this talk about voting being rigged, I just think the country is going to feel jerked around if Iowa Republicans don’t get this right.” More

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      In South Carolina, Biden and Harris Test Policy-Heavy Pitch to Black Voters

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      The president’s re-election campaign is looking to rekindle support among a group that was pivotal to his 2020 victory, in a state that revived his candidacy.As Democrats amplify their concerns about President Biden’s status with Black voters, South Carolina has emerged as a proving ground for his campaign: one where he can test his message to a predominantly Black electorate and use it as a largely ceremonial launchpad for his re-election.At events over the last few days, both Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris offered reverential, policy-heavy re-election pitches to largely Black audiences and celebrated the Black organizers and community leaders who helped deliver the White House to Democrats, starting with those in the Palmetto State.They also drew a contrast with former President Donald J. Trump and other Republican leaders, whose election denialism and efforts to “whitewash” history, they said, threaten the progress that Black Americans have spent generations fighting for.Black voters have expressed frustration with the Biden administration for falling short on key campaign promises, and have shown less enthusiasm for Mr. Biden’s re-election in polls and interviews. But in South Carolina, both Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris aimed to highlight the lesser-known victories their administration has notched over the last three years, and they argued that a second term would allow them to achieve even more. Black voters’ disaffection with Democrats, campaign aides and allies argue, is rooted in their lack of awareness of the White House’s accomplishments rather than in fundamental flaws with the Biden-Harris ticket.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?  More