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      Elecciones en EE. UU.: una contienda reñida sin precedentes

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      Es difícil pensar en unas elecciones en las que tantos estados en disputa estuvieran tan igualados en las encuestas a estas alturas.Haiyun Jiang para The New York TimesLa contienda presidencial está cada vez más reñida.A tres semanas, el promedio de encuestas de The New York Times muestra que Kamala Harris y Donald Trump están esencialmente parejos en los siete principales estados disputados, con una diferencia de menos de un punto porcentual en cinco de ellos.Es difícil pensar en unas elecciones en las que tantos estados cruciales estuvieran tan igualados en las encuestas a estas alturas.Según nuestros cálculos, 2004 fue la última elección en la que las encuestas mostraban a un candidato encabezando los estados decisivos por alrededor de un punto: la ventaja de George W. Bush en estados como Ohio y Wisconsin. Pero incluso entonces tenía una ventaja perceptible, aunque estrecha, en el Colegio Electoral: John Kerry necesitaba arrasar en la mayoría de los estados reñidos para imponerse. Las encuestas no podían calificarse de empate, como las de hoy.¿Antes de 2004? Las elecciones de 2000, por supuesto, pero los sondeos no fueron tan parejos como el resultado real. Si buscamos aún más atrás, es difícil encontrar algo. Nunca ha habido unas elecciones con tantas encuestas que indiquen una contienda tan reñida.¿Está la contienda realmente estrechándose?Los promedios de las encuestas están más parejos que nunca, pero eso no significa necesariamente que haya habido un gran cambio —o incluso ningún cambio— en la contienda.Los mayores cambios en el promedio esta semana se han producido en Míchigan y Wisconsin. Y en este caso, “mayores” no significa “grandes”. Trump ganó un solo punto según nuestros promedios, el tipo de movimiento que puede parecer radical en unas elecciones tan divididas y estables, pero que no habría sido digno de mención en ciclos anteriores. También es un cambio lo suficientemente pequeño como para que una o dos encuestas de alta calidad que favorezcan a Harris la próxima semana puedan hacer que sus números vuelvan a subir rápidamente. De hecho, fueron solo una o dos encuestas de alta calidad las que hicieron bajar sus números. More

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      Trump and Harris Both Like a Child Tax Credit but With Different Aims

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      Kamala Harris’s campaign is pushing a version of the credit intended to fight child poverty, while Donald J. Trump sees the program primarily as a tax cut for people higher up the income scale.Vice President Kamala Harris has made an expanded child tax credit central to her campaign, and former President Donald J. Trump boasts, “I doubled the child tax credit.” With a quick look, voters might think the child-rearing subsidy the rare matter on which the rival candidates agree.It is anything but. The common vocabulary masks profound differences over which parents the government should help and what constitutes fairness for children in a country of great wealth and inequality.Mr. Trump sees the $110 billion program mostly as a tax cut, which as president he increased to $2,000 per child and extended to high-income families. But his policy denies the full benefit to the poorest quarter of children because their parents earn too little and owe no income tax.Ms. Harris would expand the tax cuts and add a large anti-poverty plan, sending checks to millions of parents with low pay or no jobs. That would turn a tax cut into an income guarantee, in a landmark expansion of the safety net.Supporters of the Harris plan say the payments would shrink child poverty. Critics see an expensive welfare scheme that could weaken the willingness to work.“They’re both talking about something called the ‘child tax credit,’ but they’re not at all talking about the same policy,” said Scott Winship of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden Visits Florida After Hurricane Milton and Calls for Bipartisan Relief Effort

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      The president surveyed damage in Florida and announced $612 million for projects to help the electric grid in areas affected by Hurricanes Helene and Milton.During his visit to Florida, President Biden announced $612 million for six Energy Department projects in areas hit by Hurricanes Milton and Helene to improve the region’s electric grid.Eric Lee/The New York TimesStanding in front of one of the many houses wrecked by Hurricane Milton in Florida, President Biden said on Sunday that the storm was devastating for those who lost homes, businesses or relatives, even as he expressed relief that the storm was not as destructive as anticipated.“Thankfully, the storm’s impact was not as cataclysmic as they predicted,” Mr. Biden said in St. Pete Beach. “For some individuals it was cataclysmic. Not only for those individuals who lost their homes, but more importantly those folks who lost their lives, lost family members, lost all their personal belongings. Entire neighborhoods were flooded and millions, millions without power.”Earlier he surveyed the damage from the air: the shredded roof of the Tropicana Field baseball stadium, mounds of debris lining roads and messages spray-painted on furniture piled outside of homes. One message read “Mayor, Gov, Mr Pres, Small Businesses Need Help Too.” Another simply said, “Help us.”“Homeowners have taken a real beating in these back-to back storms,” Mr. Biden said, referring to Milton and Hurricane Helene. “And they’re heartbroken and exhausted, and their expenses are piling up.”Mr. Biden’s visit to the hurricane-ravaged communities in Florida — his second such trip in two weeks — came as he has been managing various crises, including multiple natural disasters, in the final stretch of his presidency. He used the visit to announce $612 million for six Energy Department projects in areas hit by Milton and Helene to improve the region’s electric grid, including nearly $100 million for Florida. On Friday, he declared a major disaster for Florida communities affected by Milton.Mr. Biden also used the moment to call for bipartisan collaboration to help the areas affected pick up the pieces. In a sign of such unity, Mr. Biden was greeted by Representative Anna Paulina Luna and Senator Rick Scott, Florida Republicans who are frequent critics of the Biden administration, after the president finished his helicopter tour.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Harris Suggests Trump Is ‘Weak and Unstable’ in Pointed Challenge

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      Vice President Kamala Harris challenged former President Donald J. Trump on Sunday for refusing to do what she has done in recent days: release a report on his health, sit for a “60 Minutes” interview and commit to another presidential debate.“It makes you wonder: Why does his staff want him to hide away?” Ms. Harris asked the crowd at a rally in a packed college basketball arena in Greenville, N.C. “One must question: Are they afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable to lead America?”Her line of attack marked an attempt to turn the tables on Mr. Trump, who for months had suggested that President Biden was too old to be president and accused him of hiding from the American people. And it underscored her efforts to present herself as the candidate of change and Mr. Trump as a relic of the past, as she forms a closing message in the final weeks of her campaign.“From him, we are just hearing from that same, old tired playbook,” she said. “He has no plan for how he would address the needs of the American people. He is only focused on himself.”Vice President Kamala Harris supporters at today’s rally in Greenville, N.C.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMs. Harris’s rally, which attracted about 7,000 people, was aimed especially at urging supporters in a presidential battleground state to cast their ballots before Election Day. Early voting begins on Thursday in North Carolina. “The election is here,” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Man Is Arrested on Weapons Charges Heading to Trump Rally in Coachella, Officials Say

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      A man was arrested and accused of illegal weapons possession as he was trying to enter former President Donald J. Trump’s rally in Coachella, Calif., on Saturday evening, the Riverside County sheriff’s office said on Sunday.The man, whom they identified as Vem Miller, 49, of Las Vegas, was found to be illegally in possession of a shotgun, a loaded handgun and a high-capacity magazine, the sheriff’s office said. Mr. Miller was later released on bail, according to the county’s inmate information system.Mr. Miller had been allowed through an outer ring of security as he drove toward the rally but was stopped by law enforcement officers at a second level of security, before Mr. Trump had arrived at the rally, Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff, said in a news conference on Sunday.In a joint statement, the U.S. attorney’s office, the Secret Service and the F.B.I. said that the Secret Service had determined “the incident did not impact protective operations and former President Trump was not in any danger.”The statement said that “while no federal arrest has been made at this time, the investigation is ongoing.”It was not clear what Mr. Miller’s motives were. Mr. Bianco said at a news conference that he believed the arrest could have thwarted a third assassination attempt on Mr. Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      I Write My Obituary, So I Can Live a Better Life

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      More from our inbox:Trump and BaseballThe G.O.P. Mirage MachineGerald Ford Wasn’t a KlutzUnforeseen Crises Tomi UmTo the Editor:Re “Why I Write My Obituary Every Year,” by Kelly McMasters (Opinion guest essay, Sept. 29):I felt so connected to Ms. McMasters’s essay. Like her, I started this ritual when I was a child. Back then, my obituary was full of playful dreams, but as I grew older, it became a way to set goals that felt within reach.Writing my own obituary has helped me stay true to myself. When life gets overwhelming, I sometimes forget what’s truly important to me.Recently, while unpacking old boxes before a move, I stumbled upon a journal from my childhood. In it, I’d written about a small dream to start a charity once I got older and had my own money.I’d forgotten about it and focused only on fulfilling my own desires. But seeing it again reminded me of the pure dreams I once had and how much I’d lost sight of that part of myself.Inspired by my little note, I now try my best to be more mindful in my life. While Ms. McMasters’s mom used this as a reflection to face death, for me, it’s about staying true to the person I want to be.This essay reminds me that this practice celebrates life.Gracia ManuellaQueensTo the Editor:For my entire professional life, I both wrote and edited others’ obituaries. For that reason and more, I’ve also been the go-to for family and friends who have drafted me to write obituaries and eulogies for their loved ones … and even their own ahead of time!We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ignore the Polls

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      Here’s a bit of advice to help maintain your sanity over the next few weeks until Election Day: Just ignore the polls. Unless you’re a campaign professional or a gambler, you’re probably looking at them for the same reason the rest of us are: to know who’ll win. Or at least to feel like you know who’ll win. But they just can’t tell you that.Back in 2016, Harry Enten, then at FiveThirtyEight, calculated the final polling error in every presidential election between 1968 and 2012. On average, the polls missed by two percentage points. In 2016, an American Association for Public Opinion Research postmortem found that the average error of the national polls was 2.2 points, but the polls of individual states were off by 5.1 points. In 2020, the national polls were off by 4.5 points and the state-level polls missed, again, by 5.1 points.You could imagine a world in which these errors are random and cancel one another out. Perhaps Donald Trump’s support is undercounted by three points in Michigan but overcounted by three points in Wisconsin. But errors often systematically favor one candidate or the other. In both 2016 and 2020, for instance, state-level polls tended to undercount Trump supporters. The polls overestimated Hillary Clinton’s margin by three points in 2016 and Joe Biden’s margin by 4.3 points in 2020.In a blowout election, an error of a few points in one direction or another is meaningless. In the California Senate race, for example, Adam Schiff, a Democrat, is leading Steve Garvey, a Republican, by between 17 and 33 points, depending on the poll. Even a polling error of 10 points wouldn’t matter to the outcome of the race.But that’s not where the presidential election sits. As of Oct. 10, The New York Times’s polling average had Kamala Harris leading Trump by three points nationally. That’s tight, but the seven swing states are tighter: Neither candidate is leading by more than two points in any of them.Imagine the polls perform better in 2024 than they did in either 2016 or 2020: They’re off, remarkably, by merely two points in the swing states. Huzzah! That would be consistent with Harris winning every swing state. It would also be consistent with Trump winning every swing state. This is not some outlandish scenario. According to Nate Silver’s election model, the most likely electoral outcome “is Harris sweeping all seven swing states. And the next most likely is Trump sweeping all seven.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      November’s Second-Most-Important Election Is in Florida

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      I’ll never forget the first time I heard my oldest daughter’s heartbeat. My wife was experiencing trouble in the first three months of pregnancy, and we were worried she was miscarrying. We rode together to her doctor’s office, full of anxiety. And then, we heard the magical sound — the pulsing of our little girl’s tiny heart. We didn’t know if she would ultimately be OK, but there was one thing we knew: Our daughter was alive.I’ve long supported so-called heartbeat laws. A well-drafted heartbeat law bans abortion after a heartbeat is detected, which typically occurs roughly six weeks into pregnancy. Whether you refer to that sound we heard all the way back in 1998 as a heartbeat or simply as a form of early cardiac activity, it sends the same message, that a separate human life is growing and developing in the mother’s womb.The significance of that heartbeat is the reason I believe that the second-most-important election of 2024 is the Florida contest over Amendment 4, a ballot measure that would enshrine a right to abortion in the Florida Constitution.The text of the amendment is broad: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s health care provider.” And it is aimed straight at what I believe to be one of the most reasonable pro-life laws in the nation.Florida’s Heartbeat Protection Act bans abortions if the gestational age of the fetus is over six weeks, but it also contains exceptions for pregnancies that are a result of rape, incest or human trafficking; for fatal fetal abnormality; and to preserve the life of the mother or “avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.”Properly interpreted (problems interpreting pro-life laws have tragically led to too many terrible incidents), this is not a law that leaves women vulnerable to dangerous pregnancy complications. It has elements that are necessary to assure doctors that they won’t be prosecuted if they provide life or health-saving care. In short, it represents a statutory effort to respect the lives and health of both mother and child.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More