All Eyes on Pennsylvania

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 2024. We also speak to Anthony Williams, who directed a project at the Knight Foundation that surveyed 12,000 nonvoters ahead of the 2020 election. We ask: How do you define this group of people? And what, if anything, will change their minds when it comes to voting?Do you have a question about the 2024 election? We want to hear from you. Fill out this form or email us a voice memo at therunup@nytimes.com Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

28 Mars 202447min

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 jump in, the issues that matter most to him personally and his thoughts on positioning himself as a potential spoiler.Do you have a question about the 2024 election? We want to hear from you. Fill out this form or email us a voice memo at therunup@nytimes.com Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

21 Mars 202442min

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 have before:How exactly did we end up with Donald Trump as the Republican nominee again? And why?To answer these questions, we turn to two different branches of the Republican Party today.First, we speak with Henry Barbour, who has been a member of the Republican National Committee since 2005, a consummate party insider. He supported Nikki Haley in the primary but now supports Mr. Trump. Then we speak with Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran against Mr. Trump for the nomination, but was most similar to the former president among the other candidates in terms of ideology and style. He now fully backs his one-time rival and embraces the MAGA philosophy he represents.Do you have a question about the 2024 election? We want to hear from you. Fill out this form or email us a voice memo at therunup@nytimes.com Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

14 Mars 202443min

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 had other options.So for the next two episodes, we’re going to focus on a question we hear more than anything else: How exactly did we wind up with these two candidates? And why?First up: We map Mr. Biden’s path to the 2024 election through conversations with Elaine Kamarck, a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee and the author of “Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates,” and Ron Klain, the president’s former White House chief of staff.Do you have a question about the 2024 election? We want to hear from you. Fill out this form or email us a voice memo at therunup@nytimes.com Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

7 Mars 202449min

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 will alter the seemingly inevitable rematch between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump. But there are noteworthy primaries in contests that could matter for control of the House and Senate and in important governor races.Today: Amy Walter, the publisher and editor in chief of The Cook Political Report, previews the Super Tuesday races worth watching.Do you have a question about the 2024 election? We want to hear from you. Fill out this form or email us a voice memo at therunup@nytimes.com Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

5 Mars 202429min

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 result they’ll trust a result where Mr. Trump wins?Do you have a question about the 2024 election? We want to hear from you. Fill out this form or email us a voice memo at therunup@nytimes.com Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

29 Feb 202441min

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 inevitable reality.So today, with some of our most trusted colleagues on the Times Politics team, we talk through all of the hypotheticals: What happens in the case of a health emergency? How about a criminal conviction? Could this be the year that a third-party candidate breaks through? Or is it too late?Do you have a question you want us to answer? Nothing is out of bounds. We’re game for everything from the existential (Will democracy survive?) to the more trivial (Do celebrity endorsements make a difference?). Fill out this form or email us a voice memo with your question at therunup@nytimes.com Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

22 Feb 202451min

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 things that seem so present on the campaign trail and in polling — actually play out in people’s personal lives? We turned to two of our colleagues -- Anna Martin, host of the Modern Love Podcast, and Jessica Grose, a writer for the Times Opinion section -- for perspective and additional reporting from the intersection of love and politics. Want more from our guests? You can subscribe to the Modern Love podcast here, and sign up for Jessica’s newsletter here.Do you have a question about the 2024 election? We want to hear from you. Fill out this form or email us a voice memo at therunup@nytimes.com Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

15 Feb 202444min