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    In South Carolina, Biden Tries to Persuade Black Voters to Reject Trump

    President Biden sought to energize his base in the state that propelled him to the White House, but some local leaders said he needed to do more to highlight his achievements.Hoping to revitalize the momentum that propelled him to the White House, President Biden told a largely Black audience on Saturday night that “you’re the reason Donald Trump is a defeated former president,” in what was effectively his first appearance related to the Democratic primaries.Mr. Biden made clear in his remarks at a South Carolina Democratic Party dinner in Columbia, S.C., that he viewed the forthcoming week as not just a contest but a pivotal moment to energize a frustrated base of Black voters across the nation. And in the run-up to the state’s Feb. 3 Democratic presidential primary, which the party’s national committee selected last year to be the first in the nation, Democrats believe they have entered an opportune time.With former President Donald J. Trump having won both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary for the Republican nomination, Mr. Biden’s allies plan to emphasize not just the president’s record but also the urgency of the moment: The general election effectively starts now, they say.“He has made it known what he’s going to do if he gets back into office,” Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, said of Mr. Trump in an interview. “And to see that blooming as a possibility and see him running as well as he is in the polls, I’m concerned about it.”“Do what you did before,” Mr. Clyburn said in an appeal to the Black electorate. “Turn that election around and save this democracy.”The sense of urgency is rooted in rising concerns over polls showing Mr. Biden underperforming among Black voters in battleground states, particularly among men. Some Democrats are also concerned that the high death toll in Gaza resulting from Israel’s offensive against Hamas will fuel frustration among younger voters. Twice during Saturday’s event, protesters shouting the number of civilian casualties in Gaza were removed, as attendees chanted over them, “Four more years!”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Primarias en Nuevo Hampshire: lo que hay que saber

    Este martes se celebran las primeras elecciones primarias del país. Están en juego 11 delegados republicanos. Los demócratas no concederán delegados.Los votantes de Nuevo Hampshire acudirán a las urnas el martes para participar en las primeras elecciones primarias del país, en las que Nikki Haley espera hacer mella en la ventaja de delegados del expresidente Donald Trump tras su gran victoria en el caucus de Iowa. La votación en el estado comienza técnicamente a medianoche, pero la gran mayoría de centros electorales abrirán a las 7:00 a. m., hora del Este.Esto es lo que hay que saber:¿Cuándo son las primarias de Nuevo Hampshire?Las primarias de este año están previstas para el martes 23 de enero.¿Por qué Nuevo Hampshire va de primero?La respuesta simple es porque así lo dicta la ley: una ley estatal aprobada en 1975 establece que las elecciones deben celebrarse allí al menos una semana antes de las primarias de cualquier otro estado.La tradición electoral del llamado “estado de granito” existía mucho antes de que se aprobara la ley. La primera vez que una votación del país se realizó primero en ese estado tuvo lugar en 1920, cuando 16.195 republicanos y 7103 demócratas acudieron a las urnas el 9 de marzo.Desde entonces, el estado se ha aferrado a esta tradición. Ser el primero tiene sus ventajas: cada cuatro años, el foco político trae consigo una afluencia de dinero, medios de comunicación y atención de otros lugares a este pequeño estado con baja densidad de población.¿Cómo funcionan las primarias de Nuevo Hampshire?El martes, los votantes de Nuevo Hampshire se dirigirán a los centros electorales de su pueblo o ciudad para votar por quien quieren que sea el candidato presidencial demócrata o republicano.Las papeletas se tabularán mediante máquinas de recuento de votos. Los trabajadores electorales leerán y contarán a mano los votos por escrito, como los del presidente Biden, quien no aparecerá en las papeletas demócratas. El Partido Demócrata cambió su calendario de primarias, desplazando a Nuevo Hampshire del primer puesto en favor de Carolina del Sur, pero Nuevo Hampshire se negó a cambiar su fecha y de todos modos celebrará primarias demócratas. Biden se negó a participar, por lo que sus partidarios han montado una campaña por escrito en su nombre, pero no se concederán delegados.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    New Hampshire Primary: How It Works

    It’s the nation’s first primary contest, following the caucuses in Iowa. Here’s what to know.New Hampshire voters will head to the polls Tuesday for the nation’s first primary election, where Nikki Haley is hoping to make a dent in former President Donald J. Trump’s delegate lead after his big win in the Iowa caucuses. Voting in the state technically starts at midnight, but the vast majority of polling places will open at 7 a.m. Eastern time.Here’s what else to know:When is the New Hampshire primary?This year’s primary is set for Tuesday, Jan. 23.Why is New Hampshire first?The simple answer is because it’s the law: A state law passed in 1975 mandates that the election must take place at least a week before any other state’s primary.The Granite State’s tradition of voting first existed long before the law was passed. Its original first-in-the-nation contest took place in 1920, when 16,195 Republicans and 7,103 Democrats turned out on March 9.The state has clung to the tradition ever since. Going first has its benefits: Every four years, the political spotlight brings with it an influx of out-of-state cash, media and attention to the small and sparsely populated state.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Election Fraud Is Rare. Except, Maybe, in Bridgeport, Conn.

    Voters say that campaigns in Connecticut’s largest city routinely rely on absentee ballots — collected illegally — to win elections. Now, the city faces a mayoral primary redo.Two months ago, Joe Ganim received the most votes in the race for mayor of Bridgeport, Conn. This week, the city will vote again — to decide if he should even be the Democratic candidate.The unlikely and confusing situation arose after a judge ruled that there was enough evidence of misconduct in the Democratic primary in September to throw its result — a victory by Mayor Ganim — into doubt. The judge pointed to videos showing “partisans” repeatedly stuffing absentee ballots into drop boxes.The footage provided a particularly lurid illustration of ballot tampering, though experts say election fraud is rare in the United States and often accidental when it occurs.But in Bridgeport, Connecticut’s largest city, ballot manipulation has undermined elections for years.In interviews and in court testimony, residents of the city’s low-income housing complexes described people sweeping through their apartment buildings, often pressuring them to apply for absentee ballots they were not legally entitled to.Sometimes, residents say, campaigners fill out the applications or return the ballots for them — all of which is illegal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Nikki Haley Ramps Up Her Case Against Trump in New Hampshire

    The former South Carolina governor has been careful about how and when she criticizes the former president. New Hampshire will test her approach.Nikki Haley might have come in third in the Iowa caucuses, but as she campaigns in New Hampshire for its first-in-the-nation primary next week, her attention is squarely focused on only one rival: Donald J. Trump.Ms. Haley, a former South Carolina governor who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, has begun fine-tuning her argument against her former boss, trying out new jabs and unleashing a new attack ad right out of the gate. She has also stepped up her efforts to frame herself as Mr. Trump’s top rival, announcing that she would no longer participate in primary debates that don’t include him.In recent remarks and in a new television ad, Ms. Haley paints Mr. Trump and President Biden as two sides of the same coin: politicians past their prime who are unable to put forth a vision for the country’s future because they are “consumed by the past, by investigations, by grievances.”At a campaign rally on Wednesday in Rochester, N.H., she fended off Mr. Trump’s attacks on her immigration record, warned voters not to believe his ads against her and reminded them that it was Mr. Trump who had wanted to raise the age for Social Security eligibility and had once proposed increasing the gas tax.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Trump Won 98 of Iowa’s 99 Counties, as Haley Prevented a Shutout

    Former President Donald J. Trump won 98 of 99 counties in the Iowa caucuses on Monday, according to preliminary results published by the state Republican Party, demonstrating just how broadly he swept the first-in-the-nation contest.In counties large and small, Mr. Trump racked up commanding leads across the state. In the only county he lost, it was by a single vote: Johnson County, the state’s bluest county and the home of Iowa City and the University of Iowa, went for former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina.Shut out from a single victory was Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who had banked his candidacy on Iowa and put enormous effort into campaigning in rural, sparsely populated areas. He visited every one of Iowa’s 99 counties in the months before the caucuses, a tour known as the “Full Grassley,” and was rewarded on Monday with second- and third-place finishes from Sioux City to Davenport.Vivek Ramaswamy, the pro-Trump entrepreneur who dropped out on Monday after receiving just 7 percent of the vote in Iowa, had visited all 99 counties at least twice, a strategy that did not deliver the surprise performance he had been brashly predicting for months.Mr. Trump in contrast had put far less effort into circuiting the state and indulging in the kind of retail politics that Iowa campaigning is known for. He also had surrogates do much of the campaigning for him until the final week before the caucuses.After battling fiercely for second place in the race’s final weeks, Ms. Haley finished third overall in Iowa on Monday night. Her lone bright spot, albeit narrowly, was Johnson County. In his 2020 re-election campaign, Mr. Trump lost the county with just 27 percent of the vote, to over 70 percent for Joseph R. Biden Jr.Ms. Haley had been expected to do better in more populous urban and suburban areas — much like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who eight years ago won significant margins in the counties of Des Moines, its suburbs and Iowa City, as he, too, came in third place.But turnout fell sharply across the state this year, the lowest since the Republican caucuses in 2000, and urban counties lost thousands of votes. In the end, Ms. Haley fell far short in Iowa’s largest cities, losing by wide margins to Mr. Trump — and sometimes behind Mr. DeSantis — in the counties that include Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport and Sioux City. More

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    Trump’s Landslide Victory in Iowa

    More from our inbox:Young Voters: Vote!U.S. Strikes in YemenThe Genocide Charges Against IsraelDonald J. Trump at a caucus site in Clive, Iowa, on Monday evening. His victory was called by The Associated Press only 31 minutes after the caucuses had begun.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Wins Iowa in Key First Step Toward Rematch” (front page, Jan. 16):If you weren’t scared before Monday night’s Iowa caucuses, you should be terrified now. The disgraced, twice-impeached, quadruple-indicted former president came within one vote of winning all 99 of Iowa’s counties, and received 51 percent of the vote.Ron DeSantis came in a distant second with 21 percent of the vote, and Nikki Haley was a distant third with just 19 percent of the vote.The bid for the Republican nomination for president is all but over, leaving America with a terrible choice between the autocratic and awful former president, and the obviously too old and frail current president.Unless Ms. Haley can win convincingly in New Hampshire, and match Donald Trump in South Carolina, the former president will be the nominee.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    How College-Educated Republicans Learned to Love Trump Again

    Blue-collar white voters make up Donald Trump’s base. But his political resurgence has been fueled largely by Republicans from the other end of the socioeconomic scale.Working-class voters delivered the Republican Party to Donald J. Trump. College-educated conservatives may ensure that he keeps it.Often overlooked in an increasingly blue-collar party, voters with a college degree remain at the heart of the lingering Republican cold war over abortion, foreign policy and cultural issues.These voters, who have long been more skeptical of Mr. Trump, have quietly powered his remarkable political recovery inside the party — a turnaround over the past year that has notably coincided with a cascade of 91 felony charges in four criminal cases.Even as Mr. Trump dominates Republican primary polls ahead of the Iowa caucuses on Monday, it was only a year ago that he trailed Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in some surveys — a deficit due largely to the former president’s weakness among college-educated voters. Mr. DeSantis’s advisers viewed the party’s educational divide as a potential launching point to overtake Mr. Trump for the nomination.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More