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      How We Think About Politics Changes What We Think About Politics

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      When so many voters — a majority, in fact — say that they prefer consensus to conflict, why does polarization continue to intensify?In a paper that came out in June, “Explanations for Inequality and Partisan Polarization in the U.S., 1980 — 2020,” Elizabeth Suhay and Mark Tenenbaum, political scientists at American University, and Austin Bartola, of Quadrant Strategies, provide insight into why so much discord permeates American politics:Scholars who research polarization have almost exclusively focused on the relationship between Americans’ policy opinions and their partisanship. In this article, we discuss a different type of partisan polarization underappreciated by scholars: “belief polarization,” or disagreements over what people perceive to be true.The concept of belief polarization has been defined in a number of ways.In their May 2021 paper, “Belief polarization in a complex world,” Alan Jern, Kai-min Kevin Chang and Charles Kemp — of the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Melbourne — write: “Belief polarization occurs when two people with opposing prior beliefs both strengthen their beliefs after observing the same data.”There is, they continue, “ample evidence that people sustain different beliefs even when faced with the same information, and they interpret that information differently.” They also note that “stark differences in beliefs can arise and endure due to human limitations in interpreting complex information.”Kristoffer Nimark, an economist at Cornell, and Savitar Sundaresan, of Imperial College London, describe belief polarization this way: “The beliefs of ex ante identical agents over time can cluster in two distinct groups at opposite ends of the belief space.”Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse, professors of philosophy at Vanderbilt, argue in their 2019 paper, “How Does Belief Polarization Work”:Part of what makes belief polarization so disconcerting is its ubiquity. It has been extensively studied for more than 50 years and found to be operative within groups of all kinds, formal and informal. Furthermore, belief polarization does not discriminate between different kinds of belief. Like-minded groups polarize regardless of whether they are discussing banal matters of fact, matters of personal taste, or questions about value. What’s more, the phenomenon operates regardless of the explicit point of the group’s discussion. Like-minded groups polarize when they are trying to decide an action that the group will take; and they polarize also when there is no specific decision to be reached. Finally, the phenomenon is prevalent regardless of group members’ nationality, race, gender, religion, economic status, and level of education.Talisse, writing separately, observes:The social environment itself can trigger extremity shifts. These prompts need not be verbal, explicit, or literal; they can be merely implicit signals to group members that some belief is prevalent among them — hats, pins, campaign signs, logos, and gestures are all potential initiators of belief polarization. Further, as corroboration is really a matter of numbers, those with the power to present the appearance of widespread acceptance among a particular social group of some idea thereby have the power to induce extremity shifts among those who identify with that group.Perhaps the most salient recent illustration of belief polarization is the diametrically opposed views of Trump loyalists and of their Democratic adversaries over the legitimacy of the 2020 election: Trump supporters are convinced it was stolen; Democrats and independents are certain that Joe Biden is the legitimate president.Similarly, politicians on the right — and Fox News — are treating the F.B.I. raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago on Monday as a corrupt politicization of federal investigative authority, while liberals — and CNN — counter that the raid demonstrates that no one, no matter how powerful, is above the law.Suhay and her colleagues expand the scope of belief polarization to look at the differences between Republicans and Democrats over the causes of inequality:We illustrate large, and increasing, partisan divides in beliefs regarding whether an unequal society, or unequal behavior, is the cause of socioeconomic inequality. Republican politicians and citizens are optimistic about the American dream and pessimistic about poor people’s behavior; Democratic politicians and citizens are pessimistic about the dream and optimistic about poor people’s ability to succeed if given the chance.These patterns, Suhay and her collaborators continue,hold for beliefs about economic inequality along both class and race lines. Variation in societal versus individual blame is consistently associated with views on social welfare, taxation, and affirmative action. We conclude that Americans’ beliefs about the fairness of the economy represent a crucial component of a redistributive versus anti-redistributive ideology that is increasingly associated with the two political parties.Suhay writes:The Democratic Party has long justified its left-leaning economic policies with two central claims: significant economic inequality exists between individuals and social groups, and these great inequalities are unfair because society, not individuals, are to blame for them. The latter proposition is especially important. It is difficult to deny that many harsh inequalities exist in the United States. Exorbitant wealth as well as homelessness are plain to see. However, such inequalities might be tolerated if they are viewed as the outcome of a meritocratic system. Democrats argue instead that “the American dream” — success via hard work — is not a reality for many. Thus, low-income people deserve government assistance.Conversely, Suhay continues, Republicans emphasizeaggregate economic growth and downplay the extent of inequality. Second, Republicans argue that existing inequalities are fair — successful people have achieved success via hard work or ingenuity, and those facing difficult economic circumstances are to blame for them. Third, in response to Democrats’ instinct to use government to combat inequality, Republicans argue government efforts to intervene in business affairs, redistribute wealth, and assist those in need often do more harm than good, depressing the economic output of both firms and individuals. These narratives justify Republicans’ conservative economic agenda by insisting that the status quo is fine: inequality is minimal; inequalities that do exist are “just deserts”; and, even if one wished to help, government intervention in fact undermines individual and aggregate prosperity.Suhay, Tenenbaum and Bartola cite data from American National Election Studies and the Pew Research Center to track the increasing polarization between Republicans and Democrats on various questions, which require respondents to agree or disagree with statements like these: “one of the big problems in this country is that we don’t give everyone an equal chance”; “most people who want to get ahead can make it if they’re willing to work hard”; and “poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return.”In 1997, 68 percent of Republican and 43 percent of Democratic survey respondents chose “have it easy,” a 25-point difference. By 2017, 73 percent of Republicans said the poor “have it easy,” while 19 percent of Democrats shared that view, a 54-point difference.In an email, Suhay noted thatmany social scientists today are focused on misinformed and extreme beliefs in the Republican Party, including Republicans’ greater likelihood of rejecting climate science and Covid-19 vaccination and their embrace of Trump’s “big lie” about the 2020 election.But, Suhay wrote, many of those same scholars “are missing growing extremity on the political left. It may be more benign or even beneficial in some cases, but it is still a phenomenon worth study.” In addition to “a surge of claims on the left that the economy is extremely unequal and that this is because our country does not provide equal opportunity to all of its inhabitants,” there has been a parallel surge among liberals on the issue of “racial justice — in both the economic and criminal justice arena.”A third development on the left, Suhay added, and onewhere we have seen the most rapid change, is around gender identity. Democrats increasingly say society ought to protect the rights of transgender people and the expression of transgender identity because gender fluidity is a natural part of the human condition and trying to curb its expression causes people harm. The popularity of each of these views has surged on the left recently.There is further evidence that even people who are knowledgeable about complex issues are sharply polarized along partisan lines.Nathan Lee at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Brendan Nyhan at Dartmouth, Jason Reifler at the University of Exeter and D.J. Flynn at IE University in Madrid argue in their paper “More Accurate, but No Less Polarized: Comparing the Factual Beliefs of Government Officials and the Public” that while “political elites are consistently more accurately informed than the public,” the “increase in accuracy does not translate into reduced factual belief polarization. These findings demonstrate that a more informed political elite does not necessarily mitigate partisan factual disagreement in policymaking.”Lee, Nyhan, Reifler and Flynn assessed the views of elites through a survey in 2017 of 743 “elected policymakers, legislative staffers, and top administrative positions in local and state government in the United States.” Three-quarters of the sample held elective office. The survey tested belief accuracy by partisanship and elite status on eight issues including health care, the share of taxes paid by the top 1 percent, climate change and voter fraud.Their conclusions run counter to assumptions that elites are less polarized than the general public because “they tend to be more knowledgeable, which is associated with greater belief accuracy” and because they “possess domain expertise in politics and public policy that could reduce the influence of cognitive biases.”In fact, Lee and colleagues counter, “belief polarization can be unchanged or widen when belief accuracy increases.”I asked Nyhan about the consequences of the findings and he wrote back by email:The most important contribution of our study is to challenge the assumption that we will disagree less about the facts if we know more. Elites are better informed than the public on average but Democrats and Republicans still are still deeply divided in their beliefs about those facts. In some ways, the conclusion of our study is optimistic — government officials are better informed than the public. That’s what most of us would hope to be true. But the findings do suggest we should avoid thinking that people becoming more informed will make the factual divides in our society go away. Belief polarization is a reality that is not easily overcome.One theme that emerges repeatedly in looking at belief polarization is the role race plays as a central factor:Peter K. Enns and Ashley Jardina, political scientists at Cornell and Duke, make the case in their October 2021 paper, “Complicating the role of White racial attitudes and anti-immigrant sentiment in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” thatMost of the research on the relationship between white racial attitudes and Trump support is part of a tradition that assumes that racial attitudes are fairly stable predispositions that form early in life and then later become important for political reasoning. Implied in this line of research is that politicians or political campaigns do not change levels of prejudice, but they can prime these attitudes, or make them more or less salient and therefore more or less politically relevant.Enns and Jardina write that in contrast to this view, over the course of the 2016 presidential campaign “many whites shifted their survey responses on questions related to race and immigration to align with their support for Trump or Clinton.”To test their argument, the authors used “a unique panel data set from surveys conducted by YouGov of more than 5,000 respondents interviewed at multiple points during the 2016 presidential election campaign.” From that study, they found:The strong link between white attitudes toward Black Americans and Trump support observed in prior studies is likely due as much to white Trump supporters updating their survey responses to report opinions more consistent with Trump’s as it is to Trump drawing support from more racially antagonistic white voters. Similar results emerge with respect to whites’ immigration opinions.They found, for example, that from January 2016 to August 2016, the percentage of Trump supporters voicing strong opposition to Black Lives Matter grew by roughly 15 percentage points.In an email, Enns contended thatregardless of the precise underlying mechanisms (and multiple mechanisms could be at work), the evidence suggests that Trump’s rhetoric had a meaningful effect on the views his supporters expressed about these issues. We are definitely arguing that the attitudes individuals express can be changed by what candidates they support say and do. Although we cannot observe actual beliefs, to the extent that expressing previously unexpressed beliefs has a reinforcing effect, that would also provide evidence of a deepening or potential changing of racial attitudes.The strong association between Trump support and whites’ views on racial issues, Enns and Jardina argue in their paper,was not merely a result of Trump attracting racist whites by way of his own racist rhetoric or a reflection of partisan racial sorting that had already occurred; it was also a result of white Trump supporters changing their views to be more in line with Trump’s over the course of his presidential campaign. In other words, Trump not only attracted whites with more conservative views on race; he also made his white supporters more likely to espouse increasingly extreme views on issues related to immigration and on issues like the Black Lives Matter movement and police killings of African Americans.Andrew M. Engelhardt, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, developed a similar line of analysis in his January 2020 paper, “Racial Attitudes Through a Partisan Lens.”In an email, Engelhardt wrote:Part of the reason White Democrats and White Republicans hold increasingly different views about Black Americans is due to their partisanship. It’s not just that Democrats with negative views became Republicans, or Republicans with more positive views became Democrats. Rather, people are changing their attitudes, and part of this, I argue, is due to how politicians talk about Black Americans. Republicans, for instance, could have internalized Trump’s negative rhetoric, and increasingly held more negative views. Democrats, similarly, hear Trump say these negative things and they move opposite, holding more positive views.In his paper, Engelhardt wrote that undergirding past studies of the role of race in politics and policymakingis an assumption that racial animus feeds political conflict. I turn this conventional wisdom on its head by arguing that political conflict can shape racial attitudes — people’s views and beliefs about groups understood to be racial. Political scientists have failed to examine this possibility, perhaps because racial attitudes are seen as persistent and influential predispositions that form during childhood, long before most Americans become political animals. According to this line of reasoning, individuals use these early formed attitudes to make sense of politics; racial attitudes lead to partisanship.The ever-growing divide between left and right extends well beyond racial issues and attitudes. In his email, Engelhardt wrote that his results are “suggestive of partisanship motivating changes in other orientations which we might presumably see as more stable and core to individuals.” He cited research showing that “partisanship influences religiosity and religious affiliation” and other studies linking “political concerns to changes in racial self-identification.” Engelhardt added that he has “some unpublished results where I find partisanship leads Democrats to hold more positive views of gay men and lesbians, transgender individuals, and feminists, over time, with Republicans holding more negative views of these groups in the same period (data range 2016-2020).”In their January 2022 paper, “The Origins and Consequences of Racialized Schemas about U.S. Parties,” Kirill Zhirkov and Nicholas Valentino, political scientists at the Universities of Virginia and Michigan, make an interesting argument that, in effect, “Two parallel processes structure American politics in the current moment: partisan polarization and the increasing linkage between racial attitudes and issue preferences of all sorts.”Zhirkov and Valentino continue:Beginning in the 1970s, Democratic candidates in presidential elections started to attract large shares of nonwhite voters whereas Republicans increasingly relied on votes of racially conservative whites. Over the same period, voters’ positions on seemingly nonracial political issues have gradually become more intertwined with racial resentment.Overall, the two scholars write,the growing racial gap between the Democratic and Republican support bases leads to formation of racialized stereotypes about the two parties. Specifically, a non-trivial share of American electorate currently views the Democratic Party as nonwhite and the Republican Party as white, though in reality whites continue to be a majority of both parties.This “imagined racial coalition of each party,” in the view of Zhirkov and Valentino,carries profound implications for the ongoing discussion in the discipline about affective polarization in American politics: whites feel colder toward the Democratic Party when they imagine its coalition to be more heavily made up on nonwhites and feel warmer toward the Republican Party when they perceive it to be dominated by their racial group. As a consequence, rather than a cause, they may then come to accept a more conservative issue package advocated by the modern Republican Party.Racial attitudes, the authors argue persuasively, “are now important predictors of opinions about electoral fairness, gun control, policing, international trade and health care.”There are, Zhirkov and Valentino note, long-range implications for the future of democracy here:As soon as ethnic parties start to compete for political power, winning — rather than implementing a certain policy — becomes the goal in and of itself due to associated boost in group status and self-esteem of its members. Moreover, comparative evidence suggests that U.S. plurality-based electoral system contributes to politicization of ethnic cleavages rather than mitigates them. Therefore, the racialization of American parties is likely to continue, and the intensity of political conflict in the United States is likely to grow.I asked the authors how they would characterize the importance of race in contemporary American politics. In a jointly written email, they replied that in research to be published in the future, “we show that race is at least as strong, and often stronger, than cleavages such as religion, ideology, and class.”The pessimistic outlook for the prospect of a return to less divisive politics revealed in many of the papers cited here, and the key role of racial conflict in driving polarization, suggest that the ability of the United States to come to terms with its increasingly multiracial, multiethnic population remains in question. This country has been a full-fledged democracy for less than 60 years — since passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the changes wrought by three additional revolutions: in civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights. These developments — or upheavals — and especially the reaction to them have tested the viability of our democracy and suggest, at the very least, an uphill climb ahead.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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      Arizonans Trusted Kari Lake to Tell It Straight on TV. Will They Trust Her as Governor?

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      PHOENIX — Kari Lake worked her way through television interviews at her election night party, fielding a barrage of questions about her bid to be Arizona’s next governor. Votes were still being counted, and she’d been up all night. But Ms. Lake, a first-time candidate, didn’t flinch.Instead, she grabbed a reporter’s microphone, locked eyes with the camera and delivered her campaign message as seamlessly and authoritatively as if she were reporting from behind the local anchor desk she left just last year.Ms. Lake is among a crop of hard-right Republican candidates winning primaries this year with a potent mix of election lies and cultural grievances. But her polished delivery and ruthless instincts, both honed through decades in TV news, have landed her in a category all her own.The 52-year-old former journalist has drawn on a reservoir of credibility and familiarity to turn former viewers into voters. Donald J. Trump has praised her camera-ready discipline, privately telling other candidates to be more like Ms. Lake. Her say-anything bravado has won cheers from a base eager to stick it to the state’s old guard. Her lack of experience with policy and her fixation on fictions about the 2020 election have left the establishment white-knuckled, bracing for how she might wield power.Some Republicans have discussed her as a potential vice-presidential contender if Mr. Trump runs again in 2024. National Republican groups are planning to pour millions into her race to help keep the party in control of a key political battleground.“I am beloved by people, and I’m not saying that to be boastful,” Ms. Lake said in an interview last week at her campaign headquarters.“I was in their homes for the good times and the bad times,” she added. “We’ve been together on the worst of days, and we’ve been together on the best of days.”Polls show Ms. Lake as an underdog in her race, having survived a narrow primary race last week in which Gov. Doug Ducey and most of the Arizona Republican establishment opposed her.But if she can unite her party and expand her appeal to independent voters, Ms. Lake has history on her side: Arizona Republicans have won six of the last eight governor’s races. On Saturday, Mr. Ducey released a statement urging his party “to unite behind our slate of candidates.”Some Republicans have discussed Kari Lake as a potential vice-presidential contender if Donald J. Trump runs again in 2024. Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesRaised in Iowa, Ms. Lake has spent more than two decades on the air at KSAZ-TV, a Phoenix station owned by Fox. From her perch in the nation’s 11th largest TV market, which covers about two-thirds of the state’s households, she delivered straight news. She interviewed Barack Obama and Mr. Trump during their presidencies, a rare feat for even the most ambitious local news figure.But in recent years, she began to hint at her personal political leanings on social media. In 2021, she complained about biased reporting in the media: “I promise you if you hear it from my lips, it will be truthful,” she said, in a statement announcing her departure from the network.Since then, Ms. Lake has embraced Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election, claiming that the contest was “corrupt and stolen.” She supported a partisan review of the results in Maricopa County and claimed that electronic voting machines were not “reliably secure.”More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsClimate, Health and Tax Bill: The Senate’s passage of the legislation has Democrats sprinting to sell the package by November and experiencing a flicker of an unfamiliar feeling: hope.Kansas Abortion Vote: After a decisive victory for abortion rights in deep-red Kansas, Democrats vowed to elevate the issue nationwide, while some Republicans softened their stands against abortion.Senate Races: The key question with less than 100 days until the fall election: Can Democratic candidates in crucial Senate contests continue to outpace President Biden’s unpopularity? Her combative campaign has touched on other trigger points of America First populism.She has rallied against vaccine mandates, and one of her best-selling campaign T-shirts features a graphic of a cloth face mask on fire. She’s opposed to letting transgender people use bathrooms that are consistent with their identity and has assailed drag queens as dangerous to children.She suggested that the Second Amendment protects ownership of rocket launchers, and she told a summit of young conservative women, “God did not create us to be equal to men.”In response to the F.B.I. search of Mr. Trump’s residence this week, Ms. Lake declared, “Our government is rotten to the core.”When one Republican rival, Matt Salmon, offered a counterpoint to Ms. Lake’s proposal to install cameras in classrooms, she smeared him as sympathetic to pedophiles. When he objected, she said that his complaints showed he was too weak to be governor.Mr. Salmon — who has served in Congress, in the state legislature and as state party chairman — dropped out of the governor’s race in June and endorsed Mr. Lake’s main rival, Karrin Taylor Robson.“I’ve never run in a nastier campaign in my life,” Mr. Salmon said in an interview.Ms. Lake defeated Ms. Robson by more than four percentage points despite being outspent five to one. She was part of a slate of victorious Trump-endorsed primary candidates, along with Blake Masters, the party’s U.S. Senate nominee; Mark Finchem, who is running for secretary of state; and Abraham Hamadeh, the party’s pick for attorney general.The group, whose campaigns have all garnered national headlines for embracing election denialism, has occasionally campaigned together. But when they’re all in the same room, Ms. Lake tends to take the spotlight.At an event in Phoenix on the night before the primary election, she was mobbed by supporters seeking selfies, autographs or trying to shake her hand, while other Republican candidates looked on.Supporters of Kari Lake at an event in Phoenix on the eve of the Republican primary.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesOn the campaign stage, Ms. Lake blurs the line between seriousness and showmanship with the ease of someone who has spent three decades as a TV reporter. During her election night speech, she wielded a sledgehammer as she strutted across the stage, vowing to “take this to the electronic vote machines when I’m governor.”“The same God who parted the Red Sea, who moved mountains, is with us now as we save this republic,” Ms. Lake said.Some of Arizona’s political elders are skeptical about how Ms. Lake will go over with independent and moderate voters.Jan Brewer, a former Arizona governor and a Republican who supported Ms. Robson despite a friendship with both candidates, described Ms. Lake’s primary campaign as mean, untruthful and untethered to public policy.“She went so far to the right that I don’t know if she can recover,” Ms. Brewer said in an interview. “And if she can’t, we’ll have a Democratic governor.”Kari Lake at a rally hosted by former President Donald J. Trump in Florence, Ariz., in January.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesMs. Brewer said she’d support Ms. Lake only if she promised to prioritize policy and tell the truth about elections.“I want to hear her tell me she did all this because she wanted to win and that it got a little bit out of control,” Ms. Brewer said.Ms. Lake said she had plans to reach out to Ms. Robson and her supporters with the hope of uniting the party. Her message: “The media wants us warring with one another.”In the general election, both Ms. Lake and the Democratic nominee, Katie Hobbs, the Arizona secretary of state, saw their national profiles rise as Mr. Trump and his allies spread falsehoods about fraud in the 2020 election. Liberal activists hailed Ms. Hobbs for her role in protecting the state’s vote-counting apparatus against a flurry of attacks. At the same time, Ms. Lake became a conservative hero for helping lead the charge to overturn the results.Some Democrats were rooting for Ms. Lake to win her primary, including former Gov. Janet Napolitano, who said Ms. Lake was a “one-trick pony” who would be easier to defeat than Ms. Robson.“If this is an election about Trump and 2020 in Arizona, then Democrats will win,” Ms. Napolitano, a Democrat, said in an interview.But it’s not clear that the November election is about 2020. A favorable national political climate for Republicans has left some Democrats nervous that Ms. Lake is one step away from a four-year job as the state’s chief executive.Roy Herrera, the Arizona state counsel for the Biden 2020 campaign, said that he experienced a strange brew of optimism, anxiousness and fear about Ms. Lake’s win.“We wanted these extreme candidates on the Republican side,” Mr. Herrera said. “Now we got them and, you know, are we sure we wanted that?”Ms. Lake has undergone political shifts before. She acknowledges voting for Mr. Obama in 2008, although she described it as a blip in her otherwise steady Republican voting record. There are signs she’s readying to move to the center.A Fox 10 billboard showing Kari Lake as a news anchor in 2018.David Wallace/The RepublicMs. Lake once said she wanted to sign a “carbon copy” of the Texas abortion law that bans the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy with no exceptions for rape or incest. Asked last week about the issue, she called Arizona’s current 15-week ban “a great law.”“At the time, I wasn’t even aware that we have this law on the books,” she said. “So I don’t think that’s ever going to have to come up.”While calling Mr. Trump’s endorsement “the most powerful in all politics,” Ms. Lake downplayed its significance.“I had a really good shot at winning even before that, to be honest,” she said.Ms. Lake rocketed to the top of the Arizona Republican Party with little help from the traditional political infrastructure. She has mostly kept her distance from consultants and doesn’t employ a campaign manager.Her most influential aide is Lisa Dale, a longtime friend who is a former pro golfer with a Scottsdale-based real estate business. On the campaign trail, Ms. Lake is often surrounded by operatives from Arsenal Media Group, a Republican advertising company, and Caroline Wren, a senior adviser who was a Trump campaign fund-raiser.Another constant presence is Ms. Lake’s husband, Jeff Halperin, a videographer who watches his wife’s every move on the campaign trail through the frame of his digital camera, compiling footage for political ads and recording interviews with reporters. Her campaign has occasionally posted such clips to show her battles with the media, which she has increasingly portrayed as hostile to her candidacy.Ms. Lake’s campaign has also paid her daughter, Ruby Halperin, a modest salary, according to campaign finance reports.“I don’t think there’s anybody running a campaign like ours,” Ms. Lake said. “We’ve got these people who are high-priced consultants, who’ve been doing it for decades, and their heads are spinning. They don’t know what to do with us.”There are reinforcements on the way.Campaign materials in March for Kari Lake in her bid to become Arizona governor.Cassidy Araiza for The New York TimesDave Rexrode, the executive director of the Republican Governors Association, met with Ms. Lake’s campaign for more than 90 minutes last week. He told her team that the group, led by Mr. Ducey, had increased its advertising budget for the state to $12 million from $10.5 million.But if establishment Republicans are waiting for Ms. Lake to stop attacking the legitimacy of the 2020 election, they will need to wait a little longer.“Deep down, I think we all know this illegitimate fool in the White House — I feel sorry for him — didn’t win,” she said. “I hope Americans are smart enough to know that.” More

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      Republicans Rally Behind Trump, Who Reprises Favored Role: Victim

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      Arguments used against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 email inquiry are long forgotten as G.O.P. officials rush to condemn the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago.WASHINGTON — Republicans sought Tuesday to turn the F.B.I.’s search of Donald J. Trump’s Florida home into a rallying point, positioning the former president in his political comfort zone as a partisan target and victim, while effectively suspending the party’s efforts to focus on other issues heading into the midterm elections.The immediacy with which Republicans closed ranks and focused on the political ramifications of the search of Mar-a-Lago — without a full understanding of the direction of the F.B.I.’s investigation or the potential criminality that could be uncovered — underscored Mr. Trump’s role as keystone of the party, the single figure upon whom its elected leaders and midterm candidates depend most heavily for support.Some party officials tried to channel conservatives’ rage about the search of the former president’s winter home into productive energy for the coming midterms. Within hours of the news that Mr. Trump’s home had been searched, the Republican National Committee texted an urgent appeal about the search to supporters asking for cash to “take back Congress.”Mr. Trump also sought to capitalize financially. His political committee, Save America, followed Tuesday morning with a fund-raising text message suggesting that the F.B.I. search was proof of a corrupt “radical left.” It added: “Return the power to the people! Will you fight with me?”J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, emailed supporters a fund-raising pitch about the F.B.I. search.Emil Lippe for The New York TimesAnd in Ohio, J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for Senate, who has struggled to match the fund-raising strength of his Democratic opponent, Representative Tim Ryan, emailed supporters an appeal about the F.B.I. search that included two siren emojis and a request to donate and “Join the Trump Strategy Team,” though the money went to the Vance campaign.Republicans largely ignored the possibility of any wrongdoing on the former president’s part, and the fact that law enforcement agents would have had to show probable cause that a crime had been committed in order to obtain a search warrant. The search appeared to be focused on material that the former president had brought with him from the White House, according to multiple people familiar with the investigation.The Republican rush to judgment amounted to a sharp reversal from their quick condemnation of Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s 2016 rival, during an F.B.I. investigation of her personal email system during her time as secretary of state. (Mrs. Clinton, for her part, was selling “But her emails” hats on Tuesday, in reference to that inquiry.)From comparisons to Nazi Germany to warnings that the nation was on the brink of becoming a “banana republic” or “third-world country,” Republicans drew from a short list of dire-sounding metaphors intended to maximize outrage among voters by contending, without knowing what investigators cited as their probable cause, that the pretext for the F.B.I. search was little more than a mere records-retention violation. Their words mostly echoed a statement from Mr. Trump on Monday evening.Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican overseeing his party’s Senate races this year, sounded nearly every one of those themes in an interview Tuesday on Fox News in which he made comparisons to the Nazi secret police, communist Russia and Latin American dictatorships.“This should scare the living daylights out of American citizens,” Mr. Scott said.Senator Rick Scott made comparisons to the Nazi secret police, communist Russia and Latin American dictatorships.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesOther top Republicans demanded answers from the F.B.I. and threatened investigations of the Justice Department should the party capture control of the House. And a group of House Republicans headed to Bedminster, N.J., for a previously scheduled dinner with Mr. Trump on Tuesday that abruptly turned into an opportunity for a symbolic show of solidarity.The search also prompted Mr. Trump’s potential rivals in 2024, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, to fall in line and question the F.B.I.’s action. But even Mr. Trump’s critics in the party, such as Representative Peter Meijer, Republican of Michigan, said the unprecedented search of a former president’s home required a public justification from the Biden administration.The speed with which Republicans have rallied around Mr. Trump threatened to drive the former president directly into the spotlight of the 2022 elections, something many party leaders had hoped to avoid.Republicans have sought to focus on rising inflation and President Biden’s poor approval ratings as key midterm issues, and have been divided over whether a presidential campaign from Mr. Trump would present an unhelpful distraction. In Kentucky on Tuesday, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, sidestepped a question about the search, before issuing a statement Tuesday evening echoing other Republicans’ calls for “a thorough and immediate explanation.”But the F.B.I.’s decision to execute such a fraught and politically high-stakes search warrant further dimmed the hope of some Republican strategists working on key House and Senate races that the 2022 midterms could stay focused on the Democrats.Yet again, it was Mr. Trump dominating the news.Fox News aggressively reported the search, featuring overhead camera shots from above Mar-a-Lago and multiple interviews with Trump family members, including his son Eric and daughter-in-law, Lara, and former administration officials, such as Stephen Miller, his chief policy adviser, and Stephen K. Bannon, the chief strategist. More

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      Which Primary Election Candidates Trump Endorsed So Far

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      As the midterm primary season enters the homestretch, the candidates endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump continue to rack up primary wins.That is partly by design: Of the more than 200 Republicans Mr. Trump has endorsed this year, many ran unopposed or faced little-known, poorly funded opponents. He has also waited to make some endorsements until a clear front-runner has emerged, strategically picking the candidates most likely to win — take, for instance, his last-minute endorsement of Tudor Dixon in Michigan’s Republican primary for governor.But several of his endorsed candidates were defeated in early primaries, including notable losses in Georgia and North Carolina. For candidates like J.D. Vance in Ohio and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, however, Mr. Trump’s support was crucial to securing victory — and his preferred candidates have won in large numbers in the most recent races, including in two important swing states, Arizona and Michigan.Here is a look at Mr. Trump’s endorsement record.A sweep in ArizonaThe former local television news host Kari Lake won the Republican primary for governor with Mr. Trump’s endorsement, narrowly defeating Karrin Taylor Robson, who was the choice of establishment Republicans. Ms. Lake has forcefully promoted Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.Blake Masters, a venture capitalist who has pushed a version of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, won his Senate primary and will challenge Senator Mark Kelly, a vulnerable Democrat, in November.State Representative Mark Finchem, who is affiliated with the far-right Oath Keepers militia group and said before the primary that he would not concede if he lost, won the Republican nomination for secretary of state, a position in which he would be responsible for overseeing Arizona elections.And David Farnsworth, another Trump endorsee, won a State Senate primary against Rusty Bowers, the Arizona House speaker who drew Trump supporters’ fury for resisting efforts to overturn the 2020 election and for testifying before the Jan. 6 congressional committee.A pro-impeachment Republican lost in MichiganRepresentative Peter Meijer, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, John Gibbs, in Michigan’s Third Congressional District.In Georgia, several losses and one victoryGov. Brian Kemp easily defeated former Senator David Perdue, Mr. Trump’s handpicked candidate, in the Republican primary for governor. Mr. Kemp became a Trump target after he refused to overturn the president’s loss in the state in 2020. He will face the Democratic nominee, Stacey Abrams, whom he narrowly defeated four years ago.Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who refused Mr. Trump’s demand to “find” additional votes after his 2020 loss, also defeated a Trump-endorsed challenger, Representative Jody Hice.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsClimate, Health and Tax Bill: The Senate’s passage of the legislation has Democrats sprinting to sell the package by November and experiencing a flicker of an unfamiliar feeling: hope.Kansas Abortion Vote: After a decisive victory for abortion rights in deep-red Kansas, Democrats vowed to elevate the issue nationwide, while some Republicans softened their stands against abortion.Wisconsin Primary: Former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters have turned the false notion that his 2020 defeat can still be reversed into a central issue ahead of the state’s G.O.P. primary for governor.Senate Races: The key question with less than 100 days until the fall election: Can Democratic candidates in crucial Senate contests continue to outpace President Biden’s unpopularity? Attorney General Chris Carr defeated John Gordon, a Trump-supported opponent, with more than 73 percent of the vote.In a primary runoff for an open seat in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District, Rich McCormick, a physician and retired Marine, defeated the Trump-backed candidate Jake Evans, the former chairman of the state’s ethics commission and the son of a Trump administration ambassador.The former professional football star Herschel Walker, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, dominated a Senate primary and will face Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat and prolific fund-raiser, in the general election.Victories in PennsylvaniaAfter a close race that prompted a recount, Mehmet Oz, Mr. Trump’s choice, won the state’s Senate primary, narrowly defeating David McCormick.Doug Mastriano, a state senator and retired Army colonel who has promoted false claims about the 2020 election and attended the protest leading up to the Capitol riot, won the Republican nomination for governor. Mr. Trump had endorsed him just a few days before the primary.Two wins and a loss in North CarolinaRepresentative Ted Budd won the Republican nomination for Senate, and Bo Hines, a 26-year-old political novice who enthralled Mr. Trump, was catapulted to victory in his primary for a House seat outside Raleigh.But Representative Madison Cawthorn crumbled under the weight of repeated scandals and blunders. He was ousted in his primary, a stinging rejection of a Trump-endorsed candidate. Voters chose Chuck Edwards, a state senator.A split in South Carolina House racesRepresentative Tom Rice, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, was ousted by his Trump-backed challenger, State Representative Russell Fry, in the Seventh Congressional District.But Representative Nancy Mace defeated her Trump-endorsed opponent, the former state lawmaker Katie Arrington, in the First Congressional District. Ms. Mace had said that Mr. Trump bore responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack, but did not vote to impeach him. She had support from Nikki Haley and Mick Mulvaney, who both held office in the state before working in the Trump administration.Election deniers win in NevadaAdam Laxalt won a Senate primary and will face the incumbent, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, who is seen as one of the most vulnerable Democrats this fall. Mr. Laxalt, a former attorney general, was endorsed by Mr. Trump and had helped lead his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Nevada.Joseph Lombardo, the Las Vegas sheriff, won the Republican nomination for governor and will face the incumbent, Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat.Victories in Illinois, with outside helpState Senator Darren Bailey, who got a last-minute endorsement from Mr. Trump, won the Republican primary for governor. Democratic spending, including by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, may have helped Mr. Bailey, whom Democrats saw as easier to beat in the general election.Representative Mary Miller, endorsed by Mr. Trump months ago, won her House primary against fellow Representative Rodney Davis after redistricting put them in the same district.Victories in OhioThe Senate candidate J.D. Vance defeated a field of well-funded rivals, nearly all of whom pitched themselves as Trump-like Republicans. Mr. Vance, an author and venture capitalist, had transformed himself from a self-described “never Trump guy” in 2016 to a Trump-supported “America First” candidate in 2022.Max Miller, a former Trump aide who denied assault allegations from an ex-girlfriend and was later endorsed by Mr. Trump, won his House primary.Mr. Trump also endorsed Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, a lawyer who had been a surrogate for his presidential campaign. She won a seven-way primary for a congressional seat.In Maryland, a win aided by DemocratsDan Cox, a first-term state legislator who embraced Mr. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, handily defeated Kelly Schulz in the Republican primary for governor. Ms. Schulz was seen as a protégé of Gov. Larry Hogan, a leader of the party’s anti-Trump wing.Mr. Cox raised little money. But he benefited from more than $1.16 million in television advertising from the Democratic Governors Association, which helped his primary campaign in hopes that he would be easier to defeat in the general election.A loss in NebraskaCharles W. Herbster, a wealthy agribusiness executive, lost his three-way primary for governor to Jim Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent supported by Gov. Pete Ricketts, who has long clashed with Mr. Trump. Late in the campaign, Mr. Herbster was accused of groping several women. He denied the accusations.And another loss in IdahoGov. Brad Little overcame Mr. Trump’s endorsement of the state’s lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, who was challenging him in the Republican primary.A victory in West VirginiaRepresentative Alex Mooney prevailed over Representative David McKinley in a newly drawn congressional district. Mr. Trump’s backing was seen as the decisive factor.Alyce McFadden More

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      What’s On the Ballot and How to Vote in Connecticut’s Primary

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      Connecticut might be known as a campaign fund-raising powerhouse that rarely deviates from electing Democrats statewide, but even its primary on Tuesday is drawing the attention of former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Trump made a late endorsement in the Republican Senate primary race. Its winner will challenge Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat on whom the former president has aimed his attention.The three-way Republican contest is not the only competitive race on the ballot.Here is a refresher on the rules for voting and what’s at stake.How to voteThe registration deadlines for voting in person and requesting an absentee ballot have passed. Connecticut does not have same-day registration for the primary, though it does for the general election.You have to be registered with a political party to vote in the primary. The cutoff for switching parties is three months before a primary.No-excuse absentee voting is no longer available in Connecticut, which mailed ballots to all voters at the onset of the pandemic. A referendum would be required for it to be reinstated.Where to voteClick here to look up your assigned place to vote. Absentee ballots must be returned — by mail or by hand to drop boxes or local clerks — by Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern time, which is also when the polls close for in-person voting.What is on the ballotRepublicans will winnow the field of candidates for the Senate, the House in southwestern Connecticut and secretary of the state, an open-seat race to decide who will oversee elections.Democrats have competitive primaries for state treasurer and secretary of the state.Voters will also decide various intraparty races for the Connecticut Legislature. Click here for your sample ballot. More

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      What to Watch for in Tuesday’s Primary Elections

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      Voters in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont and Connecticut head to the polls on Tuesday for primaries and for a special election in Minnesota that could further narrow the already tight Democratic majority in the House.Here is what to watch as the returns roll in:Another Trump-tinged brawl in Wisconsin.The expected Democratic primary fight for the right to challenge Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican, fizzled when one contender after another dropped out and endorsed the state’s lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes, setting up a highly anticipated race for the fall.But Republicans are in fighting form over who will try to stop the re-election of Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers. Of four remaining candidates, Tim Michel, who has the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump, and Rebecca Kleefisch, the choice of former Vice President Mike Pence, have the best shot.If you’re looking for ideological differences, it will be a strain. Ms. Kleefisch, who was lieutenant governor under Gov. Scott Walker, has said President Biden’s victory over Mr. Trump in Wisconsin was “rigged,” though repeated examinations of the nearly 21,000-vote margin have turned up nothing of the kind.Mr. Michels, an insurance executive for whom Mr. Trump held a rally on Friday, hasn’t ruled out supporting an effort in the Republican-dominated Legislature to overturn the 2020 election results altogether, though such a move would be symbolic at best. He has also promised to abolish the state’s elections commission, a bipartisan regulatory agency that administers elections — a move that Mr. Evers says is meant to give the gerrymandered Legislature the final say in election results.Both candidates have also taken a hard line against abortion, which, after the repeal of Roe v. Wade, became illegal in the state under a law enacted in 1849. State law now allows abortions only to save the life of the mother, and, during a televised town hall-style debate last week, each of the candidates said they would oppose any additional exceptions.Given the centrality of Wisconsin in recent presidential elections, and how Mr. Evers has portrayed himself as a Democratic bulwark against Republican efforts to alter the electoral system, much may rest on the outcome of the governor’s race.A Democratic fight for an open House seat.In Wisconsin’s only competitive House race, four Democrats are vying to take on Derrick Van Orden, a Republican, in the G.O.P.-leaning seat of Representative Ron Kind, a Democrat who is retiring. Mr. Kind has been a Republican target for years, and Mr. Van Orden came close to beating him in 2020.Then came Jan. 6, 2021, when Mr. Van Orden, an actor and retired member of the Navy SEALs, was in Washington to protest Mr. Biden’s victory. What exactly he was doing there is in dispute. Democrats say a Facebook photo proved he crossed into a restricted area as Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. Mr. Van Orden denied that and said he was merely in the nation’s capital “to stand for the integrity of our electoral system as a citizen.”State Senator Brad Pfaff faces three other Democrats vying to take on Derrick Van Orden, who has cleared the G.O.P. primary field in the race to succeed Representative Ron Kind, a Democrat.Lauren Justice for The New York TimesAll of his would-be Democratic opponents say Mr. Van Orden is singularly dangerous, but they are taking different tacks. Brad Pfaff, a Wisconsin state senator, is emphasizing his accumulated experience in politics and claiming the mantle of Mr. Kind’s style of centrism. His main rival, Deb McGrath, a former C.I.A. officer and Army captain, is taking a more liberal line and a more confrontational stance against Mr. Van Orden, a fellow veteran who she said “took the same oath that I did to protect and defend the Constitution,” but then went to Washington on Jan. 6.Whoever wins the primary can expect an uphill climb to keep the seat in Democratic hands.In Minnesota, a special election could narrow the Democratic edge in the House.The death from cancer of Representative Jim Hagedorn, a Republican, in February has given voters in his southern Minnesota district the chance to fill his seat just in time for the final big votes in an already narrowly divided House. In another year, the seat might have been more competitive. After all, it was represented by Tim Walz, now Minnesota’s Democratic governor, before Mr. Hagedorn was elected in 2018.But the district leans Republican, and Brad Finstad, a farmer who held an Agriculture Department post in the Trump administration, has the edge over his Democratic opponent, Jeff Ettinger. Mr. Ettinger, the former chief executive of Hormel Foods, is not making it easy on the Republicans: He has poured $900,000 of his own money into the race. Mr. Finstad, who won his May primary by just 427 votes, must unite the G.O.P. and turn out the vote in a state where the big-ticket race for governor does not have a competitive primary. More

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      Democrats and Republicans Struggle to Forecast 2022 Midterms

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      Doug Sosnik is the kind of political analyst who likes to figure out the results of the next election well in advance — it’s just how he’s wired.But even Sosnik, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton who now tries to forecast elections as a hobby, is stumped about the 2022 midterms.“I can’t figure this one out,” Sosnik said on Monday, a day after Democrats passed Build Back Better — whoops, pardon me, the Inflation Reduction Act, a woolly mammoth-size package that aims to shrink both the deficit and the risk of catastrophic climate change.The bill’s passage is one of a string of recent victories for beleaguered Democrats, who have spent the past 18 months squabbling among themselves and fretting about the coming elections. Gas prices are ticking down. Jobs are plentiful, with the unemployment rate at a 50-year low.Congress also passed the bipartisan CHIPS Act, a bill that would provide $52 billion in subsidies and tax credits to companies that manufacture chips in the United States and would add more than $200 billion for applied scientific research.Even President Biden, whose age and concern about the virus forced him to spend much of the 2020 presidential election campaigning from his home in Wilmington, Del., managed to shrug off 18 days of coronavirus-induced quarantine.As Ethel Merman might say, everything seems to be coming up roses for Joe and the gang in recent weeks, despite widespread predictions that Democrats are likely to lose the House and possibly the Senate.A ‘blood bath’ that might never arriveAccording to the usual logic Sosnik uses to make predictions, Democrats should expect a “blood bath” in the fall. But he’s not so sure anymore and is questioning everything he knows about the deeper patterns of U.S. elections.He is puzzled by one thing in particular: Which past elections offer a guide to 2022?The question doesn’t have an easy answer, in part because times have changed — there was no recent assault on the Capitol with the partial backing of one particular party in the 1982 midterms, for instance — and in part because the nature of political partisanship has changed.That latter point makes it really hard to compare today’s approval ratings to the past; back in, say, the 1960s, voters were much more inclined to give the president the benefit of the doubt. Today, far fewer partisans are willing to give the other side an ounce of credit or respect.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsKansas Abortion Vote: After a decisive victory for abortion rights in deep-red Kansas, Democrats vowed to elevate the issue nationwide, while some Republicans softened their stands against abortion.Wisconsin Primary: Former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters have turned the false notion that his 2020 defeat can still be reversed into a central issue ahead of the state’s G.O.P. primary for governor.Election Deniers: In Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, Republicans who dispute the legitimacy of the 2020 election are on a path toward winning decisive control over how elections are run.Senate Races: The key question with less than 100 days until the fall election: Can Democratic candidates in crucial Senate contests continue to outpace President Biden’s unpopularity? Midterms are completely different animals than presidential election cycles, too: Fewer voters turn out, and the electorate tends to be older and more Republican.Historically, or at least since World War II, the party in power has lost seats in every midterm election but two: 1998 and 2002.The first came as Clinton skillfully exploited the unpopularity of congressional Republicans, whose impeachment drive backfired. The second came after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when patriotic sentiments were still running high.But these midterms are structurally different from many others. For one thing, many of the Democratic House members in battleground districts — the Cindy Axnes and Elissa Slotkins of the world — were elected in the anti-Trump wave of 2018. Those who held onto their seats in 2020, a good year for Republicans in Congress despite Trump’s loss, may know a thing or two about staying in office. More