The Run-Up

It has been less than two weeks since President Biden dropped his re-election bid and threw his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris. Already, Ms. Harris has closed the gap with former President Donald J. Trump in some national polls. The Harris campaign said it had raised more than $200 million in a week. Ms. Harris’s supporters even broke attendance records on Zoom, with one group gatheri...

Warning: this episode contains strong language and mentions of sexual abuse. Since 2019, our host, Astead Herndon, has been reporting on Kamala Harris — from her campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination to her time as vice president. Over the years, the same questions have swirled around her. What does she stand for? How does she make decisions? Was she only selected as President Biden’s runnin...

When it finally happened, it felt both inevitable, and unfathomable. President Biden was out of the 2024 presidential race. Shortly after making that announcement, he threw his support behind his vice president, Kamala Harris, to be the next Democratic nominee. Mr. Biden had finally fulfilled his promise to be a bridge to the next generation — albeit under enormous pressure. Ms. Harris issued a st...

Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” has become former President Donald J. Trump’s unofficial theme music on the campaign trail . Here at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, the song was performed live by none other than Mr. Greenwood himself, as Mr. Trump walked into the arena on Monday. The anthem, released in 1984, is essentially a song about togetherness and the diversity of the...

On the second day of the Republican National Convention, a collection of Donald Trump’s former challengers took the stage. There were people who ran against him in 2016 — like Ted Cruz, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio. And people who just challenged him this year — Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy. No matter how fervently, or recently, they had criticized him, all voiced their support for...

Republicans had a big day on Monday. Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance as his running mate. Two days after surviving an assassination attempt, he officially became his party’s presidential nominee. And the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee got underway, with a festive mood among the delegates. The Run-Up is here in Milwaukee for the occasion. In special episodes this week, we’ll tell you wh...

You’ve seen the image by now: Former President Donald J. Trump has blood running down the side of his face. He’s being escorted off his rally’s stage by the Secret Service, and he pauses to look at the crowd, his fist proudly in the air. It’s too soon to know how the attempt on his life on Saturday in Pennsylvania will affect the outcome of the race. But Trump’s allies have already made the shock...

President Biden is telling people to Google it . Former president Donald J. Trump is distancing himself from it. Even the actress Taraji P. Henson talked about it onstage at the B.E.T. Awards. Project 2025. It’s a blueprint for an incoming conservative president — presumably Donald Trump — spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation , a conservative think tank. And now it is everywhere in this tumultuo...

The latest national poll from The New York Times and Siena College shows former President Donald J. Trump leading President Biden by nine percentage points among registered voters — a pretty big shift in his direction in the week since the presidential debate. It has become clear in the past week that there is no obvious path to replacing Mr. Biden as the Democratic Party’s nominee. But there is a...

As you may have heard, Thursday night was the first debate between President Biden and former president Donald J. Trump. In short, it was not a great night for Mr. Biden. The president’s debate performance triggered significant panic among top Democrats, who for months have been dismissing concerns about Mr. Biden’s age. So, how is this happening? Despite all the concerns polls showed about age, h...

We don’t know exactly what will happen when President Biden and former president Donald J. Trump take the debate stage in Atlanta tonight. We do know, however, that the first debate between the major party candidates is happening earlier in the election season than usual. And we also know that we’ve seen a version of this show before. Their past matchups have featured bitter insults, constant inte...

For decades, the mainstream Republican position on abortion rights was clear: Overturn Roe v. Wade and send the issue back to the states. But since June 2022, when the Supreme Court’s conservative majority did exactly that, Republicans have faced a question that few seemed to consider beforehand: What comes next? In Arizona, that question is especially important. In that battleground state, Democr...

Arizona is a battleground state that both parties are desperate to win in November. And right now, supporters of abortion rights in the state are in the midst of gathering signatures to ensure that, along with the presidential race and a competitive Senate contest, enshrining the right to abortion in the state’s Constitution will be on the ballot this fall. The measure has broad support in the sta...

In the days since a Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty of 34 felony counts, people have mostly been asking one big question. Will this matter in November? Over the past few days, our colleagues at The New York Times and at the Siena College Research Institute have been trying to answer that question. They spoke with 1,900 people they had previously polled to find out how they are currently t...

While the political world waits for a verdict in Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan, we wanted to take a moment to remember how we got here — especially the broader political context of the fall of 2016. Mr. Trump is charged with falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment to the adult film actress Stormy Daniels as part of a scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 pres...

As he runs for re-election, President Biden is talking about one specific issue a lot: the economy. He emphasizes the nation’s low unemployment and slowing inflation, and even rolled out a catchy nickname for the good numbers: Bidenomics. The problem for Biden is that few Americans seem to agree that the economy is strong. They think the opposite. This week, we explore the gap between the good eco...

If the 2024 presidential election were a road trip, we would now be at the part where you start to wonder: Are we there yet? The matchup is set, but there’s still such a long way to go until November. And one of the things we’ve noticed about the questions that you’ve been sending in is that you’re starting to mix it up. You want to know what Donald Trump’s possible vice-presidential picks are, ho...

Here’s what we know when it comes to the antiwar protests on college campuses and electoral politics: President Biden does seem to have a problem with young activists on the left. The disapproval only intensified in the days after the president spoke critically about the protests. But whether or not he has a larger problem with young voters in general remains to be seen. Which is why one statement...

For years, Wisconsin has been one of the most heavily gerrymandered states in the country, with legislative districts that overwhelmingly favored Republicans. In fact, the maps were so one-sided that, even though the state has a roughly equal share of Democrats and Republicans, Republicans were able to lock in large majorities in the State Assembly and Senate. But earlier this year, the state adop...

The stakes of the 2024 presidential election could not be more serious. But in this matchup of two old, largely unpopular candidates, there is no shortage of material for comedians. This may be bad news for voters. However, it’s good news for the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner — essentially the Super Bowl of political comedy — which takes place this Saturday in Washington. The pres...

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...

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...

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 broug...

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 se...

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 surv...