In a close election, every vote matters. But in the 2020 presidential race, there’s a good argument that young voters mattered a lot — and helped tip the scales for President Biden. This year, though, things seem much less straightforward. Polling data shows that Mr. Biden’s approval rating has tanked among young Americans. Polls also show that he continues to be hounded by the perception that he is too old for the job. And young activists are creating a public-relations nightmare for the...

Right now, President Biden’s clearest path to re-election in November seems to run through the middle of the country. Here’s what that would look like: Biden wins the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan — plus the other states that usually go blue — and it brings him to 269 electoral votes, just one vote shy of securing the presidency. And that’s where Nebraska comes in. Nebraska is one of just two states that distributes electoral college votes proportionally...

Last week President Biden, flanked by former Presidents Obama and Clinton, came to Radio City Music Hall for what Biden’s campaign called “the most successful political fund-raiser in American history.” The former Presidents, alongside celebrities like Stephen Colbert, Mindy Kaling, Lizzo, and Queen Latifah, spoke to an audience of 5,000 donors. And according to the Biden campaign, the event brought in more than $25 million. That fund-raising haul further tips the scales in the money race...

The people who don’t vote are often left out of the political conversation. Campaigns don’t spend much money on them, and the media doesn’t devote much coverage to them. But to understand a presidential contest like the 2024 race — one that threatens to be extremely close — we have to understand not just the people who show up to vote, but also those who sit out elections. This week, we talk to several people who skipped the last Trump-Biden matchup in 2020 and ask how they’re thinking about...

This week, the Democratic National Committee formed a unit to push back against third-party candidates and independents. At the same time, a number of Biden allies have formed a super PAC called Clear Choice, which plans to do the same, signaling the seriousness of the potential impact of an outsider candidate. One such candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is polling above 10 percent in national surveys and is well known for his family lineage. Today, the candidate shares why he decided to...

On Tuesday night, Donald J. Trump won another four nominating contests and officially became the presumptive Republican nominee. That’s despite the criminal charges, the judgments made against him in defamation and sexual abuse cases, the hundreds of millions of dollars in legal penalties and the continued fallout from the events of Jan. 6, 2021. Considering all of that, we want to ask Republicans the same questions we posed to Democrats last week — and to answer them more directly than we...

With Super Tuesday behind us, this week is the end of one chapter of this campaign. On the Republican side, former President Donald Trump’s only remaining challenger, Nikki Haley, is out of the race. And on the Democratic side, President Biden has so far secured more than 70 percent of the delegates he needs to secure the nomination. The general election is here. And so too is the rematch we’ve been expecting, despite the fact that the majority of Americans continue to say they wish they...

It’s Super Tuesday. That means that people in 15 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia) and one territory (American Samoa) are going to the polls. Usually, Super Tuesday is one of the biggest dates on the primary calendar — a day when a lot of people across the country make their voices heard. This year is different. There’s no reason to believe that today’s results...

For a lot of his most loyal supporters, Donald Trump isn’t just the former president or even the potential next president. He is, in their view, the true president — because many of them believe the 2020 election was stolen. So with Mr. Trump marching toward the Republican nomination and a likely rematch with President Biden in November, we went to this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference for a temperature check on election denial. Can the MAGA movement move on? Or is the only...

For the past few months, we’ve been asking our listeners to write in with questions, and we’ve gotten some great ones. Things like: How does polling work? Does Joe Biden’s stance on Gaza present a campaign challenge? And who might Donald Trump select as his running mate? But as we were sorting through them, an underlying theme started to emerge: People can’t seem to fathom that we’re careening toward a Biden-Trump rematch — and they want to know if anything could alter this seemingly...

If you had just a few minutes to win someone’s affection, how political would you get? Would you dive right in, or avoid politics altogether? The Run-Up went speed dating in suburban Philadelphia to find out. Usually when we’re out in the field, we’re at rallies or campaign events – places where people are vocal about their political beliefs. But for many participants at the dating event, talking politics was a complete turn off. This got us thinking: How do political divisions — the...

Our listeners have lots of questions about polling. Questions such as: Is it still relevant? How does it work? How do you get a reliable sample when people don’t answer the phone? At this point in a usual primary season, still weeks away from Super Tuesday, most of the attention of polling would be on who might capture the nomination. But this year, with the race all but set, we’re anticipating nine months of polling on two men we already know very well. Today, to prepare for that future...

Nevada is doing things differently this year. Or at least, it tried to. The first presidential nominating contest in the west takes place on Tuesday — and on Thursday. But that’s not what state officials were hoping would happen when they decided to move from a caucus to a primary in 2021. Democrats got on board — and President Biden is expected to win that contest handily on Tuesday. On the Republican side, however, things did not go according to plan. A caucus was seen as being...

President Biden has started to switch gears into campaign mode. On the trail, he’s particularly focused on South Carolina, which holds the first official Democratic primary contest on Saturday. And one of his first campaign events of the year took him to Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, for a speech that addressed the dangers of white supremacy. But a few minutes into the speech, he was interrupted by protesters calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. Since that day in early January, it...

Donald Trump’s victory over Nikki Haley in the New Hampshire primary made two things clear: The MAGA wing of the G.O.P. is ready for his coronation, while anti-Trump Republicans believe the race is far from over. From inside Trump’s victory party on Tuesday night, we hear from supporters of the former president and from the stars of his orbit, who see themselves as being on the verge of “obliterating the establishment.” And from Tim Draper, a billionaire venture capitalist who is backing...

Warning: this episode contains strong language. On Sunday, after a disappointing finish in the Iowa caucuses and with just two days to go before the New Hampshire primary, Ron DeSantis ended his campaign for president. His decision made it official: The race for the Republican nomination is now a head-to-head contest between two wildly different candidates, Nikki Haley and Donald Trump. And now, the famously independent New Hampshire voters are going to determine how serious a contest it...

Going into the Iowa caucuses, there were a handful of key things we were watching for: Would the frigid weather hamper turnout? Would his overwhelming dominance in the polls translate to a decisive victory for Donald Trump? And finally, could the other candidates muster enough of a showing to keep the race alive? Today: Through conversations with Iowa caucus goers — especially those who preferred another candidate to Trump — we get answers to our questions. And we check in with our colleague...

Finally. More than a year after Donald Trump first announced his 2024 presidential run, six months after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida refocused his campaign strategy to be all-in on Iowa, and right in the midst of debilitating winter weather, the Iowa caucuses are upon us. And “The Run-Up” has everything you need to know to understand what might happen today — and what it will mean for the race going forward. What’s at stake is clear: Anyone who is going to slow Mr. Trump on his path to...

At the start of the 2024 Republican primary campaign, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was considered by many in his party to be the biggest threat to Donald Trump. He was seen as someone who could win over the voters who were tired of Trump’s antics, and also bring along the MAGA movement. But it didn’t work out that way. And as Mr. DeSantis has struggled, one main opponent, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, has seen her star — and her standing in the polls — rise. Still, as the Trump...

It’s the start of the actual election year — and a new chapter in the campaign. Voting in early states is less than two weeks away. But, amid the crunchtime campaigning, another story line is unfolding. Two states are saying that Donald Trump can’t be on the ballot … at all. Officials in Colorado and Maine are basing this on a clause of the 14th Amendment, which bars candidates from holding office if they have engaged in insurrection. The Trump campaign is appealing. And other states,...

Last summer, politics, country music and cultural grievance collided with the growing popularity of a new song from recording artist Jason Aldean. In the lyrics, Aldean lists behaviors he associates with cities, like lawlessness and disrespect for the flag or the police. And then he warns listeners of the consequences if they “try that in a small town.” The song quickly hit the country music charts. Then, the music video was released. In it, images of Aldean singing alternate with newsreel...

Iowa was supposed to be fertile ground for Donald Trump’s primary challengers. Its population is disproportionately evangelical, and voters were expected to coalesce around a more faith-driven alternative. But that’s not what’s happened. This past summer, Trump was polling at around 42 percent in the state, a lead that has only continued to grow. Increasingly, it looks like Iowa is on track to coronate the former president. So when we visited the state fair in August, it was less to follow...

Watching the Republican primary debates can feel like a study in self sabotage. In the latest one, which Donald Trump skipped, the candidates spent most of their time attacking one another — not the guy who is 50 points ahead in the polls. But there is a logic to it. Candidates are trying to position themselves as the party’s alternative to the former president. And to do that, they have to push one another aside and unite the roughly 40 percent of Republicans who are still up for...

There was a moment in early 2023 when Donald Trump seemed like a politician in decline. And it wasn’t just his political opponents who thought so. National Republicans, who blamed Mr. Trump for the party’s run of bad results in the midterms, largely agreed. But now it’s starting to set in: It appears the former president’s staying power was underestimated … again. Mr. Trump is the overwhelming favorite to be the Republican presidential nominee — and his supporters remain the most...