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      He Faces Jan. 6 Trespassing Charges. He Might Become Mayor.

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      Gino DiGiovanni Jr., who was charged with trespassing at the U.S. Capitol, is the presumptive Republican nominee for mayor in a small Connecticut city that voted for President Biden.The final votes have not been tallied. The race has not been called.But initial results from the Republican mayoral primary in Derby, Conn., this week indicate that voters have rejected the city’s three-term incumbent in favor of a man who was charged with trespassing during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.Gino DiGiovanni Jr., a member of the local board of aldermen, beat Mayor Richard Dziekan by just 10 votes — 202 to 192 — which triggered an automatic recount, set for noon on Friday.The rise of Mr. DiGiovanni, 42, has astonished leaders in Connecticut, where 59 percent of voters cast their ballots for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020. Only a handful of Connecticut residents have been charged in connection with the riot.His win is also notable for Derby, an old mill city of just over 12,000 people. The presidential race was close: Mr. Biden beat Donald J. Trump in Derby by four points. So was the 2021 race for mayor: Mr. Dziekan beat his Democratic opponent by just 48 votes.“It’s not like Derby is some town in the Deep South where there’s an overwhelming amount of support for Trump,” said Roy Occhiogrosso, a longtime Democratic operative in Connecticut, adding, “It’s not a hotbed of MAGA activity.”If Mr. DiGiovanni’s win in the Republican primary holds, Mayor Dziekan, 57, intends to appear on the November ballot anyway, as a candidate unaffiliated with a political party. He would also face Joe DiMartino, 57, the Democratic nominee; and Sharlene McEvoy, a 73-year-old retired law professor, another nonaffiliated candidate.Mr. DiGiovanni is among just a handful of elected officials across the country to be charged in connection with the Capitol riot. Bob Duff, the State Senate majority leader in Connecticut, said Mr. DiGiovanni’s rise shows the danger of voters not paying close attention to local elections. “Too many people focus entirely on the federal level,” he said.But the local level is where the fight for democracy matters most, he said. “The system of government gets infiltrated, and then people work their way up. That’s where it rots.”Mr. DiGiovanni, who said he recognizes Mr. Biden as president, said he traveled to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, to hear Mr. Trump’s speech. Then, he said, he followed the crowd. He entered the Capitol through a door that a Capitol Police officer was holding open, took a look around, and left, he said. He saw no violence, he said, and engaged in no violence.“I didn’t go down there to overthrow the government,” he said, adding, “I didn’t know there was going to be a quote-unquote insurrection.”He faces federal misdemeanor trespassing charges but has not yet entered a plea.“I’m not an election denier,” he said, adding, “I’m not this crazy tinfoil-hat conspiracy wack job.”Statewide, Mr. DiGiovanni said, he is now known as a “domestic terrorist.” But locally, he is widely liked. He played and later coached football, and he helped build a local Sept. 11 memorial.“There are people who have given Gino a pass for his role in Jan. 6 because he is a nice guy,” said Jim Gildea, the chair of Derby’s board of education and a longtime figure in city politics.Even Mr. DiGiovanni’s political opponents speak mildly of him and his actions on Jan. 6.“Was his judgment a little off?” said Mayor Dziekan. “I think so. But he’s a great guy.”Mr. DiMartino, the Democrat, said, “I don’t think it was a great move on his part,” adding, “I’m not trying to really bash him.”In fact, Derby leaders said, the primary was less a referendum on Mr. DiGiovanni’s participation on Jan. 6 than on Mayor Dziekan’s record.Earlier this month, state officials put Derby’s finances under strict oversight after an audit found a $1.9 million deficit when the city was projected to have a $1 million surplus. The city does not have a finance director, a main criticism of Mr. Dziekan.“I’m a mayor, but my hands are tied,” he said. “I can only do so much, and sometimes, people are going to get mad at you.”Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog, said that voters’ support of Mr. DiGiovanni reveals a worrying trend: Although only a few politicians were charged in connection with Jan. 6, many play down the violence.“The significance in some ways goes beyond both the size of this particular community in Connecticut,” he said, arguing that acceptance makes it harder for the country to learn from the riot.Connecticut lawmakers considered a bill that would have barred people who participated in an insurrection from holding office. But the legislation died, said Mr. Duff, who co-sponsored it.Mr. DiGiovanni, Mr. Duff said, “was Exhibit A as to why we needed this legislation.” He added, “He should not be anywhere near the levers of government.” More

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      Wisconsin Republicans Vote to Oust Top Elections Official

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      Meagan Wolfe, with help from the Democratic governor, is suing to keep her post, after years of criticism propelled by Donald Trump’s 2020 election attacks.Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate voted on Thursday to remove the state’s elections chief, escalating a fight over who can determine the leader of a group that will supervise the elections next year in the battleground state.Meagan Wolfe, who has served as the nonpartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator since she was appointed in 2018 and confirmed unanimously by the State Senate in 2019, is suing to keep her post and plans to continue in the role while the issue plays out in the courts. Democrats in the state have sharply criticized the decision, saying that it is not within the Legislature’s power to remove an elections administrator.“It’s unfortunate that political pressures have forced a group of our lawmakers to embrace unfounded rumors about my leadership, my role in the commission and our system of elections,” Ms. Wolfe said at a news conference on Thursday afternoon. “I’ve said it multiple times, and I’ll say it again: Elections in Wisconsin are run with integrity. They are fair, and they are accurate.”Ms. Wolfe, alongside the Wisconsin Elections Commission, subsequently sued three top Republicans in the State Senate — Devin LeMahieu, Robin Vos and Chris Kapenga. She is being represented by the state’s attorney general, who was directed by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, to “provide immediate representation” for her after the vote.“Wisconsin Republicans’ attempt to illegally fire Wisconsin’s elections administrator without cause today shows they are continuing to escalate efforts to sow distrust and disinformation about our elections,” Mr. Evers wrote in a statement.Chris Kapenga, right, is one of three top Republicans in the State Senate being sued by Ms. Wolfe.Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, via Associated PressMs. Wolfe faced a battle over her reappointment this summer after years of being subjected to right-wing attacks, instigated by former President Donald J. Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election. He lost Wisconsin by nearly 21,000 votes, and there is no evidence that the state experienced widespread election fraud, as Mr. Trump and his allies have suggested despite numerous audits, recounts and lawsuits.She received unanimous support from the state’s six election commissioners, three of whom were Republican appointees, who in June did not issue a nomination that would ordinarily prompt a vote in the Legislature. But Senate Republicans went forward with a vote regardless.“Wisconsinites have expressed concerns with the administration of elections both here in Wisconsin and nationally,” said Mr. LeMahieu, the majority leader, according to The Associated Press. “We need to rebuild faith in Wisconsin’s elections.”In June, Ms. Wolfe sent a letter to legislators, saying that “no election in Wisconsin history has been as scrutinized, reviewed, investigated and reinvestigated” as the 2020 election and that there were “no findings of wrongdoing or significant fraud.” She urged lawmakers to push back against falsehoods that had circulated about the election’s integrity.But Republican senators voted to oust her nonetheless, in a 22-11 party-line vote that took place on the floor of the State Capitol.With Ms. Wolfe choosing to stay in the position, it is anticipated that Republicans will challenge every decision she makes, and her future will most likely be tied up in the courts in coming months. They, however, cannot fully remove her because of a recent state Supreme Court ruling that state officials can maintain their positions until the State Senate votes in a replacement. Mr. Evers has said he will ensure that Ms. Wolfe maintains her salary and access to her office in the meantime.Earlier this week, Wisconsin Republicans suggested they would put forth a bill requiring legislative approval for any new House and Senate maps in the state. The Wisconsin Supreme Court is expected to hear Democratic-led lawsuits that seek to remove the current G.O.P.-drawn lines.Republican lawmakers have also said in recent weeks that they would be open to impeaching the newest addition to the state’s Supreme Court, Justice Janet Protasiewicz, a Democrat, before she has heard a case. In her campaign this year, she was unusually blunt about her positions on issues including abortion rights and the state’s maps, which she called “rigged.” More

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      In New Hampshire, Chris Christie Still Sees a Path to Beat Trump

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      As he stakes his candidacy on the state, Chris Christie is promising to find new ways to confront Donald Trump. “I’m not going to let him get away with being a coward,” he said in an interview.An upset victory over Donald Trump in New Hampshire could be a knockout blow, according to Chris Christie. He is staking his presidential campaign on winning the state.Emily Rhyne/The New York TimesIn his against-all-odds pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has campaigned almost exclusively in New Hampshire: More than 90 percent of his events since February have been in the Granite State, according to a New York Times analysis.To hear Mr. Christie tell it, New Hampshire is his do-or-die state. If he doesn’t perform well here, that will probably be it.“I can’t see myself leaving the race under any circumstances before New Hampshire,” he said in an interview. “If I don’t do well in New Hampshire, then I’ll leave.”Much as he did during his White House bid in 2016, Mr. Christie is betting on the independent streak of New Hampshire voters to validate his candidacy and catapult him into contention. (Mr. Christie ultimately finished sixth in New Hampshire that year and dropped out a day later.)But while he blended into the crowd in the 2016 Republican primary contest, Mr. Christie occupies a nearly solitary position in this race: as the candidate offering the harshest criticisms of the runaway front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Christie’s central pitch to Republicans in New Hampshire is that they must vote with a sense of responsibility and urgency, because defeating Mr. Trump in the first-in-the-nation primary may be the only way to halt his march to the nomination.“The future of this country is going to be determined here,” Mr. Christie told a crowd this week at a local brewery, clutching an I.P.A. “If Donald Trump wins here, he will be our nominee. Everything that happens after that is going to be on our party and on our country. It’s up to you.”Though Mr. Christie has improved in recent polls, he still trails Mr. Trump in New Hampshire by double digits, and by much more in national polls and surveys of Iowa, the first nominating state.Mr. Christie signed autographs for supporters at an event on Monday in Rye, N.H.Sophie Park for The New York TimesYet in the interview, Mr. Christie said he still saw a path in New Hampshire. He pointed to numerous past candidates who “broke late” in the state, including Senator John McCain of Arizona during his 2000 campaign. Mr. Christie noted that Mr. McCain, who ended up winning New Hampshire, had driven around the state “basically riding around in a Suburban with two aides.”Mr. Christie is apparently trying to emulate that style. This week, he cruised around New Hampshire with only a driver and two staff members. His campaign does not have staff members on the ground in New Hampshire, and in all, he has only 11 staff members on the payroll, according to his campaign.In the trip to New Hampshire, his first since the opening Republican primary debate last month, Mr. Christie ratcheted up his criticisms of the former president.He now goes so far as to liken Mr. Trump to an autocratic leader, arguing that his conduct is beneath the office of the presidency. Mr. Christie tiptoes toward predicting how the former president’s criminal indictments will unfold, declaring that the country cannot have a “convicted felon” as its leader. And he needles Mr. Trump with subtle jabs at his idiosyncratic tendencies, taunting the former president for his love of cable television and apparent preference for well-done hamburgers.But despite his willingness to take on Mr. Trump, Mr. Christie has been denied his best shot at confronting the former president directly on the debate stage. Mr. Trump skipped the first debate and seems unlikely to attend the second one, which will be held in California at the end of the month.Mr. Christie, who has qualified for the second debate, said he had been drawing up contingency plans.“I’m not going to let him get away with being a coward and running away,” Mr. Christie said in the interview. “It could be meeting him out in front of his event as he’s making his way in. It could be confronting him on his way out. It could be actually going to the event. It could be a whole bunch of options that we’re going to try. I’m not going to tell them exactly which one I’m going to do, because then he would have his staff prepared for it and try to stop me.”Tell It Like It Is PAC, the super PAC supporting Mr. Christie’s bid, latched onto the New Hampshire-or-bust approach early on. Ninety-six percent of the roughly $1 million the group has spent on radio and television advertising has been in New Hampshire markets, according to data from AdImpact, a media tracking firm.Mr. Christie’s events grew more crowded as his swing through New Hampshire progressed, culminating with more than 150 people packed in a gym without air-conditioning in Bedford. Audiences at his events tended to applaud his anti-Trump broadsides.Mr. Christie was greeted with applause at an event in a crowded gymnasium in Bedford, N.H.Sophie Park for The New York TimesHis voters are holding out hope, but they acknowledge his path is tough.“You have to believe he’s got a chance,” said Irene Bonner, 75, of Meredith, N.H., who said she was normally apolitical but had been inspired to come to an event by Mr. Christie’s tough talk against Mr. Trump.“The party is so completely blinded by Trump, it just boggles my mind,” said John Bonner, her husband. “After everything’s gone down and the things he’s said and done. But at least Christie is speaking up.” He added, “The rest of them really aren’t.”If Mr. Trump does emerge as the nominee, Mr. Christie said, he will not back off in his criticism.“I can’t imagine that I’ll ever keep quiet,” he said in the interview. “I don’t think it’s in my personality, so I’ll continue to say what I believe is the truth.”He added: “But I’ll also be critical of Joe Biden, I’m certain, because I have been since he became president, and I suspect he is not going to do some sort of miraculous turnaround that’s going to win my support. So I think I probably have difficult things to say about both of them if I was not the nominee.”Asked if he would make an endorsement in a Trump-Biden rematch, the rarely pithy Mr. Christie was succinct: “No.” More

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      Biden Plans Democracy-Focused Speech After Next Republican Primary Debate

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      One location under consideration for the remarks is the democracy-focused McCain Institute in Arizona.President Biden is planning to deliver a major speech on the ongoing threats to democracy in Arizona later this month, with the address scheduled the day after the next Republican presidential primary debate. One location for the speech that has been under discussion is the McCain Institute, according to a person familiar with the planning. The institute, which is devoted to “fighting for democracy,” is named for Senator John McCain, a Republican who served for more than 20 years in the Senate with Mr. Biden and who sparred repeatedly with former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican Party’s front-runner in 2024.Mr. Biden has made the perils facing American democracy a central theme of his 2020 campaign and also his 2024 re-election bid. He also made the case ahead of the 2022 midterms that Mr. Trump and his allies posed a threat to the “soul of the nation.”Anita Dunn, a top White House adviser, told Democratic donors about the upcoming speech on Wednesday in Chicago, the site of the party’s 2024 convention, according to people familiar with her remarks.The White House and Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee invited major contributors to a preview of the party’s convention this week in Chicago. The Biden Victory Fund, which includes the Biden campaign, the national party and all state parties, can collect contributions as large as $929,600 from big donors.Mr. Biden was close to Mr. McCain, who died in 2018, and during his recent trip to Hanoi in Vietnam he visited a memorial there for the late senator, who was held captive as a prisoner of war. “I miss him, I miss him,” Mr. Biden said.The speech would underscore previous efforts by Mr. Biden to focus attention on the cause of democracy. He delivered speech in Philadelphia last September that attempted to frame the midterm elections as a “battle for the soul of this nation,” an echo of his 2020 campaign slogan and another speech in Washington days before the midterm elections.Mr. Biden also briefly pushed for a package of federal voting rights laws last January before dropping the issue after it became clear there was not support among Senate Democrats to change the chamber’s rules to advance the legislation. More

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      Ramaswamy Says He Would Fire 75 Percent of the Federal Work Force if Elected

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      Vivek Ramaswamy, whose campaign for the Republican nomination has gained attention in recent months, has vowed to dismantle much of the federal government and shutter key agencies.Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican presidential candidate whose strident and sometimes unrealistic proposals have helped him stand out in the crowded primary field, said in a policy speech on Wednesday that he would fire more than 75 percent of the federal work force and shutter several major agencies.Among the government organizations that Mr. Ramaswamy vowed to disband are the Department of Education, the F.B.I., the Food and Nutrition Service, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He said he would move some of their functions to other agencies and departments.Mr. Ramaswamy, 38, also claimed he could make the changes unilaterally if he were to be elected president, putting forward a sweeping theory that the executive wields the power to restructure the federal government on his own and does not need to submit such proposals to Congress for approval.His pitch was another echo of former President Donald J. Trump, whom he has modeled himself after and who sought to expand political control over the federal work force near the end of his term. Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Ramaswamy has also attacked parts of the federal government as a “deep state.” “We will use executive authority to shut down the deep state,” Mr. Ramaswamy said on Wednesday at the America First Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. He flipped through posters displaying government organizational charts as well as what he claimed were common “myths” about the limitations of presidential authority.But legal experts on the separation of powers and administrative law said the legal theories behind his proposal — detailed in an accompanying campaign white paper — were wrong and would not stand up to a court challenge.Peter M. Shane, a scholar in residence at New York University and a specialist in separation-of-powers law, said the paper was “fantastical.” Peter L. Strauss, professor emeritus of law at Columbia University, said it took bits of statutory law “out of context” while “totally ignoring the Constitution,” which mandates that the U.S. Congress create the government departments and agencies that the president then supervises.Mr. Ramaswamy’s vow to shutter large parts of the government and fire most of its workers would also unravel significant parts of the civil service and disrupt government services that are central to the operation of modern American society, including law enforcement, background checks for firearm purchases, student financial aid and special education programs.About 2.25 million people work for the federal government in civilian roles. Cutting more than 75 percent of that work force would result in more than 1.6 million people being fired, saving billions of dollars in the federal budget but also shutting down critical functions of the government.Mr. Ramaswamy did not make clear where all those eliminated jobs could come from.The Congressional Budget Office has said that nearly 60 percent of federal civilian workers are in the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security — but Mr. Ramaswamy did not mention cuts for any of them in his remarks on Wednesday or in additional materials from his campaign discussing the proposals.And while Mr. Ramaswamy named several agencies he said he would abolish, he added that he would move many of their functions to other organizations — suggesting that many of the same jobs would still exist elsewhere.Mr. Ramaswamy also said he would abolish the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which became a frequent target of Trump-style Republicans after it investigated ties between Russia and Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.Mr. Ramaswamy, who has less than 10 percent support in primary polls, has pitched himself as the future of the Republican Party — a radical conservative in the image of Mr. Trump.His proposals on Wednesday reinforced the similarities between the former president and the political newcomer. They have both previously attacked specific agencies like the F.B.I. and large swaths of the civil service. Mr. Trump had also planned in a hypothetical second term to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, bring independent agencies under direct presidential control and purge officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”But Mr. Ramaswamy’s proposals went even further, envisioning a wholesale dismantling. He took a moment during his speech to revel in the incendiary nature of his proposals.“We’re going to get a lot of pushback to this speech,” he said. “I have no doubt about it.” More

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      Biden, Trump and the 2024 Field of Nightmares

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      In the bottom of the 10th inning of the sixth game of the 1986 World Series, with the Boston Red Sox leading the New York Mets 5-3, Red Sox manager John McNamara sent Bill Buckner — a great hitter dealing with terrible leg problems that made him gimp his way around first base — back out to play the infield instead of putting in Dave Stapleton, Buckner’s defensive replacement. A half-dozen at-bats later, a Mookie Wilson ground ball went through Buckner’s wobbly legs, sending the World Series to Game 7 and a certain 6-year-old Red Sox fan to bed in desperate tears.Those tears were my first acquaintance with the harsh truth of a baseball aphorism: The ball will always find you. Meaning that if you place a player where he shouldn’t be, or try to disguise a player’s incapacity by shifting him away from the likely action, or give a player you love a chance to stay on the field too long for sentimental reasons, the risk you take will eventually catch up to you, probably at the worst possible moment.Obviously, this is a column about President Biden’s age. But not only about Biden, because America has been running a lot of Buckner experiments of late. Consider the dreadful-for-liberals denouement of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s career, where nobody could tell a lifetime-tenured Supreme Court justice who had survived cancer that it was time to step aside and Democrats were left to talk hopefully about her workout regimen as she tried to outlast Donald Trump. And she almost did — but in the end, her legacy was reshaped and even unmade by a decision to stay too long on the political field.Or consider the Trump presidency itself, in which voters handed a manifestly unfit leader the powers of the presidency and for his entire term, various Republicans tried to manage him and position him and keep him out of trouble, while Dave Stapleton — I mean, Mike Pence — warmed the bench.This managerial effort met with enough success that by the start of 2020, Trump seemed potentially headed for re-election. But like a series of line drives at an amateur third baseman, the final year of his presidency left him ruthlessly exposed — by the pandemic (whether you think he was too libertarian or too Faucian, he was obviously overmastered), by a progressive cultural revolution (which he opposed but was helpless to impede), by Biden’s presidential campaign and finally by his own vices, which yielded Jan. 6.Naturally, Republicans are ready to put him on the field again.These experiences set my expectations for what’s happening with Democrats and Biden now. The increasing anxiety over Biden’s lousy poll numbers, which I discussed in last weekend’s column, has yielded a defensive response from Biden partisans. Their argument is that the president’s decline is overstated, that his administration is going well and he deserves more credit than he’s getting and that, as Vox’s Ian Millhiser suggests, the press is repeating its mistake with Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and making the age issue seem awful when it’s merely, well, “suboptimal.”I do not think Biden’s decline is overstated by the media; by some Republicans, maybe, but the mainstream press is, if anything, treading gingerly around the evident reality. But I do think Biden’s defenders are correct that the effect of his age on his presidency has been, at most, only mildly negative. It’s limited his use of the bully pulpit and hurt his poll numbers, but his administration has passed major legislation, managed a foreign policy crisis and run a tighter ship than Trump.Where I have criticisms of Bidenism, they’re mostly the normal ones a conservative would have of any liberal president, not special ones associated with chaos or incompetence created by cognitive decline.But in running Biden for re-election, Democrats are making a fateful bet that this successful management can simply continue through two sets of risks: the high stakes of the next election, in which a health crisis or just more slippage might be the thing that puts Trump back in the White House, and the different but also substantial stakes of another four-year term.“The ball will always find you” is not, of course, an invariable truth. It’s entirely possible that Biden can limp to another victory, that his second term will yield no worse consequences than, say, Ronald Reagan’s did, that having managed things thus far, his aides, spouse and cabinet can see the next five years through.But the Trump era has been one of those periods when providence or fate revenges itself more swiftly than usual on hubris — when the longstanding freedom that American parties and leaders have enjoyed, by virtue of our power and pre-eminence, to skate around our weak spots and mistakes has been substantially curtailed.Even Millhiser’s proposed analogy for the fixation on Biden’s age, the Clinton email scandal, fits this pattern. “Her emails” hurt Clinton at the last because they became briefly entangled with the Anthony Weiner sex scandal. This was substantively unfair, since nothing came of the Clinton emails found on Weiner’s laptop. But it was dramatically fitting, a near-Shakespearean twist, that after surviving all of Bill Clinton’s sex scandals the Clinton dynasty would be unmade at its hour of near triumph by a different, more pathetic predator.So whether it’s certain or not, I can’t help expecting a similarly dramatic punishment for trying to keep Biden in the White House notwithstanding his decline.That I also expect some kind of punishment from the Republicans renominating Trump notwithstanding his unfitness doesn’t make me inconsistent, because presidential politics isn’t quite the same as baseball. Unlike in a World Series, there need not be a simple victor: All can be punished; all of us can lose.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      Is the Electoral College Becoming Fairer?

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      The Republican Party’s advantage is shrinking in the Electoral College. The Electoral College has been very kind to Republicans in the 21st century. George W. Bush won the presidency in 2000 despite losing the popular vote, and Donald Trump did the same in 2016.But over the past few years the Republican advantage in the Electoral College seems to have shrunk, as Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, points out in his newsletter. Republicans are no longer faring significantly better in the states likely to decide the presidential election — like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — than they are nationwide. Instead, a 2024 race between Biden and Trump looks extremely close, with a tiny lead for Biden both nationally and in the swing states.A Shrinking Electoral Advance More