The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was supposed to settle the debate over race, redistricting and representation. Instead, it started new ones.

Since the act prohibits states from reducing a minority group’s ability to elect its candidate of choice, the creation — and erasure — of majority-minority districts has become a particularly contentious aspect of the decennial redistricting process. Race is hugely important in understanding American politics and is strongly predictive of partisan preferences, so districts’ racial makeup can influence electoral outcomes and affect representation of people of color. Voters of color tend to be more Democratic-leaning and white voters tend to be more Republican-leaning. More broadly, candidates of color are more likely to get elected in districts in which the candidate’s racial or ethnic group constitutes a majority. 

In an increasingly diverse nation, these trends have helped remake the congressional map: Districts in which one or more minority racial or ethnic groups constitute a majority of the population now make up nearly one-third of all House seats. Correspondingly, the number of representatives who identify as Black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian, American Indian and/or Alaska Native has also increased. Around 7 in 10 of these members hail from majority-minority seats, indicative of these seats’ importance in ensuring representation for minority groups. At the same time, people of color are winning more majority-white seats than in the past. Success in those sorts of districts has increased as our politics have grown more partisan, as voters are increasingly likely to back their party regardless of the candidate their party nominates.

We took a look at the racial and ethnic makeup of each congressional district going back to the 1960s and ’70s. Though Congress has long trended toward increased racial and ethnic diversity, the overall trajectory of majority-minority seats and minority representation is neither linear nor consistent across racial and ethnic groups. The number of majority-Black seats has fallen, even as Black representation in Congress has increased. Majority-Latino districts and Latino representatives have climbed, although Latino representation remains complicated by the lower share of Latinos who are in the citizen voting age population. Asian Americans — the fastest-growing racial group in the American electorate — and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) have seen representation in Congress shoot up in the last two decades. However, it’s been completely divorced from the number of majority-Asian congressional districts, which hasn’t increased in 50 years. And the number of representatives who identify as American Indian or Alaska Native has also ticked up, despite this small group constituting neither a majority nor a plurality of any district.

The evolution of majority-minority seats and representation for these four major racial and ethnic groups over the last half century shows both the continued need for majority-minority districts to ensure representation, but also that broader forces — the strength of partisanship and the close ties between voting habits and race — have elevated candidates of color in districts where they weren’t winning a few decades ago. “I think about where we’ve come since 1965,” said Paru Shah, a political scientist who studies race and politics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “And this idea that the majority-minority place is really the driver for representation, to today where it’s much more around partisanship.”

Black districts have dwindled even as representation ticks up

In the wake of the Voting Rights Act, Black voters quickly got easier access to the franchise, but electoral district changes were slower to come by. “After [the VRA] passed in 1965, Southern states immediately moved to another set of strategies to try and minimize the influence of Black voters,” said American University political scientist David Lublin, who studies race and representation. “That was by drawing districts so that there would be very few places where Blacks formed a majority, and African American candidates would find it difficult to win in the face of racially polarized voting.”

But in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 1986 decision in Thornburg v. Gingles, the Justice Department and voting rights advocates forced states to make a more concerted effort to draw majority-minority seats. This most impacted majority-Black districts, which nearly doubled from 17 to 32 during the post-1990 census redistricting. Not coincidentally, that increase coincided with a rise in the number of Black representatives, as candidates of color at that time only rarely won in majority-white seats.

But after the 2020 round of redistricting, majority-Black constituencies were roughly halved while seats that were 40 to 50 percent Black nearly tripled. Slow population growth in Northern states led to lost seats in reapportionment, which notably increased each state’s population per district and complicated drawing seats with Black majorities. For instance, New York’s three majority-Black districts in New York City became plurality-Black seats as the state lost a seat and the average number of people per district grew by about 60,000. Lines drawn by partisan mapmakers or independent redistricting commissions also affected the number of majority-Black seats. Florida, for example, drew two fewer majority-Black seats after the 2020 census (although those seats remained solidly majority-minority overall) and controversially unwound one plurality-Black seat; the latter move faces continued litigation.

Black representation, like that of other groups, also intersects with our sharply polarized politics. Because voters of color tend to lean Democratic — Black voters overwhelmingly so — concentrating voters of color in one district can make surrounding seats more Republican. As a result, recent redistricting conflicts have largely centered on GOP attempts to pack more Black voters in majority-Black districts to make nearby seats redder and Democrats’ efforts to unpack heavily Black districts to add Democratic-leaning voters to surrounding districts. Lublin’s research shows that Black candidates (again usually Democrats) can regularly win seats that are 40 to 50 percent Black, depending in part on the share of white voters in the seat and how Republican-leaning they are. Lublin cited Virginia’s 4th District in south-central Virginia as an example of a seat with a Black population in the low 40s in which a Black member (currently Democratic Rep. Jennifer McClellan) is relatively certain to win because the seat is blue-leaning and Black voters make up a majority of the Democratic primary electorate. By comparison, the ongoing redistricting clash over whether Alabama will draw a second majority-Black seat reminded Lublin of older fights in the South in which mapmakers made bare-minimum changes to seats so that the seat would remain challenging for a Black Democrat to win.

Today, roughly the same number of Black Democrats (28) represent seats that are less than 40 percent Black as represent districts that are 40 percent or more Black (26). Now, 17 of those 28 seats are majority-minority overall, and most of the 28 have a clear Democratic lean. But on average, those districts’ populations are just 22 percent Black, which indicates that Black representatives are winning more on multiracial or majority-white turf. Plus, a modern high of four Black Republicans sit in the House, all of whom represent majority-white districts.

“There’s this interesting interplay of partisanship and race,” said Shah, the political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “Democrats win in Democratic majority places and Republicans win in Republican majority places. And when candidates of color are supported by their party in those places, they tend to do well.” She emphasized that majority-minority districts remain important, but that both parties’ efforts to highlight and recruit candidates of color have created chances to increase diversity in legislatures, whether on Capitol Hill or in state capitals.

There are more majority- and plurality-Latino districts — and representatives

While the original VRA focused mainly on expanding Black political rights, the 1975 extension of the law expanded its rules to include “language minorities,” including Latinos. At that point, only five Latino representatives sat in Congress, all hailing from districts that were at least 40 percent Latino. At that time, however, only about 5 percent of the nation’s population identified as Hispanic or Latino, a figure that had nearly quadrupled by 2020.

The relationship between majority-Latino districts and Latino congresspeople is roughly where it was for Black Americans around 20 years ago. Only in the past few congresses has the number of Latino members clearly risen above the number of majority-Latino districts. As with majority-Black seats, the post-1990 redistricting period following Thornburg v. Gingles also proved critical to Latinos, as states more than doubled the number of majority-Latino seats, increasing the number of Latino representatives. But unlike the pattern for majority-Black seats, the number of majority-Latino seats has steadily increased since then. A large part of this growth came in California and Texas, as their already sizable Latino populations grew by 42 percent and 72 percent, respectively, between the 2000 and 2020 censuses.

However, Latinos tend to make up a notably smaller share of the citizen voting age population than the overall population. A large share of Latinos are immigrants, so some aren’t citizens, and Latinos are also significantly younger on average than the non-Latino population. On top of this, turnout among Latinos has historically been lower than other racial groups. These forces can create large disparities between who lives in a district and who decides its elections. Take California’s 13th District: The overall Latino population share was 65 percent in 2020 but the CVAP Latino share was just 51 percent, per Daily Kos Elections.

Despite this, 33 of 40 majority-Latino districts are currently represented by Latino members. “Now, part of it may be that even if the non-citizen Latinos can’t vote, it still means there’s one fewer, say, white person who could vote,” said Lublin, referring to the requirement that districts have equal total populations regardless of age or citizenship status. “But be that as it may, what it suggests is that, if citizenship rates were 100 percent, Latinos would find it easier to win.” In fact, only three Latinos represent the 10 seats that are 40-to-50 percent Latino, which may be because the group’s share of the CVAP is roughly 10 points lower than its overall share in those seats.

When it comes to party affiliation, Latino representatives aren’t as uniformly Democratic as Black members, in part because the group is incredibly diverse and more electorally competitive. Latinos are not a monolith (nor are other groups of people of color, to be clear), and sometimes more granular groupings — like national origin — reveal more nuanced political leanings. For instance, Cuban Americans are notably GOP-leaning, while Mexican Americans have a clear Democratic preference. As a result, about 3 in 10 Latino members of Congress are Republican, compared with less than 1 in 10 Black members.

But two-thirds of these members hail from majority-Latino seats, a far greater share than among other minority groups. About one-third of all Latinos live in a majority-Latino district, compared with only 11 percent of African Americans in majority-Black seats, so some of that may be down to Latinos’ more sizable concentration in such districts. The types of candidates who run matter, too. As Shah’s research on state legislative races has found, Latino candidates tend to be less likely to run in districts that aren’t majority Latino, which largely siloes them in majority-Latino seats and limits the possibility of winning elsewhere. Nonetheless, that may be changing as the number of Latinos members elected from congressional seats that are less 50 percent Latino has grown in the past few cycles.

Few majority districts but more representation for AAPI and Indigenous Americans

The last two racial groups available in our data are enormously diverse but also comparatively small. About 6 percent of the nation’s population is AAPI, while American Indians and Alaska Natives make up about 1 percent As a result, there are only two majority AAPI seats in Congress — since the 1970s, there have never been more than that — and no districts where American Indians and/or Alaska Natives even form a plurality. Still, both groups’ representation has grown over time.

With so few majority- and plurality-AAPI districts, the striking increase in this group’s representation has largely come from candidates winning in districts with small shares of AAPI voters. Lublin’s research has found that Asian candidates, specifically, win with a lower share of Asian Americans in their district than Black and Latino candidates win with theirs and that Asian candidates also tend to do better as districts become more diverse overall. On average, the 16 AAPI members represent seats that are 22 percent AAPI (11 of those seats are majority-minority overall). 

Representation among individuals with American Indian or Alaska Native backgrounds shot up with the election of Democratic Reps. Sharice Davids of Kansas and Deb Haaland of New Mexico in 2018 followed by GOP Rep. Yvette Herrell of New Mexico in 2020 and Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska’s special election victory in August 2022. Dating back to the 1970s, no congressional district’s population has had more than a quarter identify as American Indian or Alaska Native. Because of their small population, only a larger House with more representatives and seats with smaller populations could create the conditions where they might form even a plurality of the population in states like Arizona, New Mexico or Oklahoma.

Redistricting fights over majority-minority districts aren’t going away — indeed, two are currently ongoing in Alabama and Louisiana — even if candidates of color are now winning more on turf where their racial or ethnic group isn’t predominant. We’re nowhere near settling the bigger questions surrounding race, racial representation and the electoral power afforded to minority voters, nor can we predict the trajectory of minority representation in Congress. One thing we can be sure of, however, is that the country will become even more diverse, which will influence every aspect of our politics, including redistricting and representation.

Additional contributions from Holly Fuong.

In every election cycle, a new kind of mom voter emerges. Sometimes those mythical mothers — soccer moms, security moms, rage moms — represent an actual voting constituency, but other times, they end up being figments of candidates’ imaginations. And in the 2024 Republican primary, it may end up being more of the latter.

In his campaign, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is focusing on a group that could be called “anti-woke” moms, or perhaps “parents’ rights moms.” (Hit me up if you’ve got a better moniker.) “We are going to launch the largest mobilization of moms and grandmothers across the United States of America to protect the innocence of our children and to protect the rights of parents,” DeSantis’s wife, Casey, said at the July launch of her “Mamas for DeSantis” outreach initiative. As the father of three young children, DeSantis has also been folding stories about his kids into his political messages, clearly hoping to tap into conservative parental worries about school overreach and parental control.

The approach sets him apart from candidates like former President Donald Trump, whose fully grown children have children of their own. What’s not clear is whether it will endear him to Republican voters, who have soured on DeSantis since the beginning of the year, when he was close to matching Trump in our national primary polling average. Now, according to the average, Trump is leading DeSantis — his closest rival in the field — by nearly 40 percentage points. And while some Republican parents are worried about the parents’ rights issues that DeSantis and his wife are highlighting, they don’t seem to care all that much, making it more unlikely that this angle will help DeSantis make up the ground he’s lost since the winter.

Over the past couple years, DeSantis has made the issue of parental rights — in children’s education and in health care — a centerpiece of his appeal to conservative voters. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, he pushed back on policies that required masking for children, including a 2021 executive order designed to “protect parents’ freedom to choose” whether their kids wear masks. Last year, he signed controversial legislation that bars public school teachers of younger children from teaching about gender identity or sexual orientation in the classroom, with an option for parents to sue the school district if teachers don’t comply. That law was broadened to include all grades this year, along with a measure banning puberty blockers and other forms of gender-affirming care for minors. 

At the core of DeSantis’s argument is the idea that parents’ ability to decide what’s best for their own children is being stripped away by the government — whether it’s via a mask mandate or classroom instruction that doesn’t match their values. And on the surface, it’s not a bad approach. According to a poll conducted in September and October 2022 by the Pew Research Center, Republican parents are more likely than Democratic parents to say that various levels of government have too much influence over what public secondary schools are teaching:

Republicans — particularly Republican dads — are especially likely to say that the federal government has too much influence, which is perhaps why Casey DeSantis is continuing to talk about mask mandates, even though it’s not an issue that’s popping up as much in parents’ daily lives. (A 2022 Ipsos/NPR poll found that 44 percent of Republican parents say that students and teachers at their child’s school almost never wear masks, up from 2 percent who said this in 2021.) In the opening minute of the video that launched her “Mamas for DeSantis” initiative, children cry as masks are put on their faces by nearby adults. “It’s such a vivid, visceral reminder of the government telling you what your kids can do,” said Laurel Elder, a political science professor at Hartwick College who has written about political appeals to parents.

The problem for DeSantis is that the other issues he’s focusing on — particularly when it comes to what schools are teaching — are less of a pressing concern, even for Republicans. In its 2022 poll, Pew found that majorities of Republican parents (53 percent of dads and 62 percent of moms) are extremely or very satisfied with the overall quality of education their child is receiving at school. Relatively small shares of all parents, regardless of their party affiliation, say they’re not too satisfied with the amount of input they have in what their child learns at school. And when asked about whether the teachers and administrators at their child’s school share their own values, Republican and Democratic parents are virtually indistinguishable: A slim majority of all parent groups say those values are at least somewhat similar to their own.

When pollsters drill down on specific issues related to education and what should be taught in schools, big ideological differences between Republican and Democratic parents do emerge. Pew found that Republican fathers (72 percent) and mothers (63 percent), for example, are much likelier than Democratic parents (23 percent for mothers and fathers) to say they want their child to learn that slavery is part of American history but does not affect the position of Black people in American society today.

What’s missing from the data, though, is a sense that parents are really worried about what their children are being taught. Parents do care about some issues related to their kids’ education — they just aren’t aren’t especially divisive. In an Ipsos/NPR poll conducted May 5-11, Republican parents (69 percent) were almost as likely as Democratic parents (76 percent) to say they were familiar with teacher shortages. Meanwhile, majorities of parents of all political stripes said that teacher shortages had happened in their community recently, while non-parents were much less likely to say they’d heard about that issue in their own community.

There also isn’t clear evidence Republican parents are even hearing about what politicians like DeSantis are doing. According to the 2023 Ipsos/NPR poll, 69 percent of Republican parents agree that teachers are professionals who should be trusted to make decisions about classroom curricula. In that poll, Democratic parents were much more likely than Republican parents to say that they were familiar with schools banning books from classrooms or restrictions on discussions of gender, sexuality, race or racism. And Republican parents were much more likely than Republican non-parents to say that book bans or restrictions on discussions in the classroom had not happened in their community.

Meanwhile, Republican parents may not be all that gung-ho about DeSantis’s solutions. In the 2023 Ipsos/NPR poll, almost half (47 percent) of Republican parents oppose state lawmakers passing laws to ban certain books and remove them from classrooms and libraries, while 41 percent are in favor, and they’re evenly divided on whether they support state lawmakers creating policies to restrict what subjects teachers and students can discuss in the classroom. They’re more in favor of putting that power in the hands of individual school boards (53 percent support letting school boards restrict the subjects that are discussed in the classroom), but not overwhelmingly.

And then there’s the fact that when, in the same poll, parents were asked to choose the topics they find most worrying, only 17 percent of Republicans selected education — less than the share who selected inflation or increasing costs (52 percent), crime or gun violence (28 percent), government budget or debt (28 percent), political extremism or polarization (21 percent), immigration (21 percent) and taxes (21 percent).

The takeaway here, according to Elder, isn’t that appeals to parents are useless politically. “Being a parent is a very powerful identity that can be helpful for politicians if they can tap into it, with almost no downside,” she said. DeSantis’s problem is that the culture-war issues surrounding education just don’t seem to be especially galvanizing for parents, even Republican ones. “Clearly there is a passionate minority of people who are disproportionately Republicans who are energized by this issue,” she said. “But on the whole these are not the issues that parents are concerned about.”

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, senior elections analyst): It’s a close call, but perhaps the most ineffectual campaign in the 2024 Republican presidential primary has been Mike Pence’s. Despite all the advantages that come with being a former vice president, his campaign has stagnated (falling from a high of 12 percent in our national polling average to 6 percent today) thanks to the ambivalence many Republicans feel toward him after his break with former President Donald Trump.

But Pence seems to have found new life last week after Trump’s indictment in connection with his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Pence was mentioned in the indictment as standing up to Trump’s efforts, and his campaign has used that to its advantage, selling merchandise referencing a time Trump allegedly said he was “too honest” and receiving more than 7,400 donations. And in response to the indictment, Pence offered arguably his most potent criticism of Trump yet: “Today’s indictment serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.” 

So for this week’s FiveThirtyEight politics chat, let’s debate Pence’s ideal campaign strategy. Should he go full-bore anti-Trump as a way to revitalize his campaign? Or is that foolish given the firm hold that Trumpism still has on the GOP?

gelliottmorris (G. Elliott Morris, editorial director of data analytics): Well, Nathaniel, “revitalize” implies there was ever life in Pence’s campaign, which is … debatable. Given his polling numbers, I think it would take quite the about-face to enliven his bid — and that’s assuming voters would want what he’s selling in an already-crowded field.

nrakich: ????

maryr (Mary Radcliffe, senior research assistant): In polling from Echelon Insights in July, 47 percent of Republican voters said they primarily considered themselves supporters of Trump, and 42 percent said they primarily considered themselves supporters of the Republican Party. So it would take a serious shift to move the primary in an anti-Trump direction.

geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, senior elections analyst): As a strategy to make the first primary debate stage and stay in the spotlight, sure, attacking Trump makes some sense. Pence’s campaign announced Monday that it had hit the 40,000-donor mark necessary to qualify for the debate, but it took a while for that to happen. By comparison, the more vocally anti-Trump former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said in mid-July that he had met that threshold.

As a strategy to win the GOP nomination, though, going whole-hog anti-Trump isn’t the right choice. In fact, there are already a number of anti-Trump candidates like Christie, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former Texas Rep. Will Hurd who are running even though the anti-Trump wing of the party is small. With only a small slice of the electorate available to them, these candidates are essentially fighting to get into a tiny elevator in an old apartment building. Then again, Pence is already between a rock and a hard place because of his association with Trump’s 2020 defeat and the fact that two-thirds of Republicans still don’t think Trump legitimately lost the election.

gelliottmorris: That’s right, Mary and Geoff. At a fundamental level, I just don’t see how moving his campaign even more in the anti-Trump direction buys him much of anything — especially given that his favorability numbers have only continued to tank the more anti-Trump he has gotten. 

maryr: That’s true. A YouGov/The Economist poll conducted entirely after Trump’s third indictment gave Pence his worst favorability rating among Republicans since at least January 2017. So it seems like his anti-Trump comments, while they might win him some resistance bucks for the debate stage, aren’t resonating with Republican voters.

geoffrey.skelley: But hey, maybe after this campaign, he can get a television gig. Although he might face some anti-Trump candidate competition there, too!

nrakich: Let me play devil’s advocate, though. Mary, I would interpret that Echelon Insights poll you mentioned a bit differently. Most metrics suggest that around three-quarters of Republican primary voters support Trump and Trumpism. That’s about the share that say they have a favorable view of Trump, and it’s also the combined support in national polls for Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has embraced culture-war issues in a similar way.

But the Echelon Insights poll suggests that there is actually a larger chunk of Republican voters who aren’t wedded to Trump. Forty-two percent isn’t that much lower than 47 percent!

And as a former vice president, someone with a relationship with Republican elites and donors, someone whose favorable ratings — while not great — are at least not as bad as Christie’s, doesn’t Pence have a better shot at consolidating the anti-Trump vote than any other candidate?

geoffrey.skelley: I think that’s right, Nathaniel. Christie has terrrrrrrible favorable ratings among Republicans, so Pence would almost certainly have a higher, if still low, ceiling for support.

But, to your point about the Echelon Insights poll, I also think identifying with the GOP is still largely about identifying with Trump, given how he’s reshaped the party.

gelliottmorris: I think I disagree, Nathaniel. I think the problem for Pence is the difference between Republican elites and the Republican base — the same divide that helped Trump rise to the top in 2015 and 2016. Yes, the Echelon poll implies that 40-something percent of Republicans put their party over Trump — but that is not the same as putting any other candidate above him. And while Pence may turn some heads at the next #NeverTrump cocktail party in Washington, D.C., Republicans know him as the guy who publicly defied Trump on Jan. 6 and has attacked Trump over his indictments. I reckon that stings a little more for that other 45-to-75 percent of the party that is Trump-first to Trump-only.

maryr: I also think there are other candidates who have the kinds of elite relationships that you mentioned, Nathaniel, who could consolidate the support of the anti-Trump wing of the party — even if they haven’t been as direct in their criticism of Trump as Pence has so far. For example, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley could probably make a credible anti-Trump case, and she’s much better liked by the Republican electorate. In an average of polls conducted since July 1, Pence’s net favorability among Republicans is only +1 point. Haley’s is +26 points. 

geoffrey.skelley: I wasn’t counting someone like Haley as an anti-Trump candidate (yet, anyway), but sure, she’d be a better choice than Pence because she isn’t nearly as disliked as he is. But if Christie is your polling leader among the current field of anti-Trumpers, then Pence is a better bet than him to win, 100 times over. 

All of this is academic to some extent, however. A YouGov/CBS News poll in June found that if they couldn’t have Trump, 74 percent of Republican primary voters still wanted someone “similar to Trump” to be the nominee. Only 26 percent said they wanted someone “different from Trump.” In other words, an anti-Trump candidate isn’t winning this nomination.

gelliottmorris: Yeah — and if you look at the latest Morning Consult survey of Republican primary voters (caveat: it’s just one poll), a striking pattern appears: Anti-Trump candidates have high unfavorables, and pro-Trump candidates have high favorables. Are we missing something here? Is it this simple?

geoffrey.skelley: It is probably that simple.

nrakich: “An anti-Trump candidate isn’t winning this nomination.” But, in all likelihood, neither is a pro-Trump candidate who isn’t Trump, right? I feel like that’s the elephant in the room here: Trump is on a glide path to the nomination. Something about the race needs to fundamentally shift in order for that to change.

And as we’ve written, the other candidates might be making a strategic error by not attacking Trump more — say, over his indictments.

geoffrey.skelley: That also sounds like a good way to get more Republicans to dislike you. Which I’m told is a poor way to excel in a GOP primary.

nrakich: Pence has to play the hand he’s dealt. He already has that anti-Trump stink on him, so he might as well embrace it and try to take down Trump. Maybe there’s a small chance that Trump’s legal problems force him to withdraw and Pence is left as the guy who said “I told you so.”

Because, right, otherwise his campaign seems doomed.

geoffrey.skelley: That’s the equivalent of trying to hit a miracle bank shot in billiards, but yes, that’s probably Pence’s best chance.

maryr: If the primary shifted enough that Trump was no longer the odds-on favorite, I agree that that could lead to all kinds of crazy outcomes. That said, I don’t think that anybody in the field right now could appeal to a newly formed anti-Trump GOP electorate — they’re either too Trumpy or too disliked.

geoffrey.skelley: Thing is, Trump isn’t dropping out anytime soon (if he ever does, of course), and Pence isn’t going to have the money to hang around until the spring and hope that all this comes to pass. Candidates like DeSantis, Haley, Sen. Tim Scott and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy — even North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, because he’s so wealthy — have a better shot at doing that.

But the only way Pence survives longer is by making the debate stage and staying relevant. So his shift in rhetoric to a more vocally anti-Trump posture makes sense in that context.

nrakich: Right, I think my argument does primarily boil down to the money. Pence’s fundraising in the second quarter of 2023 was abysmal: only $1.2 million in 26 days, which was the third-worst rate of fundraising among major Republican candidates. And I think there is a consistent supply of money on the anti-Trump side of the party that Pence could really use access to.

maryr: “Staying relevant,” Geoffrey? Is he relevant now?

nrakich: You’re proving my point, Mary! He could become more relevant if he becomes the race’s leading anti-Trump voice.

gelliottmorris: It sounds like we’re saying going full anti-Trump might help Pence’s campaign raise money, and it’s hard to become even more unpopular when you’re at 6 percent. So, maybe the calculation is: potential upside, little downside?

nrakich: Now you’re coming ’round, Elliott! ????

geoffrey.skelley: He’s already on life support, so why not beep a bit longer?

gelliottmorris: I just think this is moot until Trump is gone. Historically, you can count on one hand the number of candidates with high name recognition who have gone from 5 percent in the polls to winning the nomination (I’m thinking here about Hubert Humphrey in 1968, and he likely only got in because of the chaos of that year’s calendar and the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy). Arguably, Trump managed to do that in 2016 by presenting a new and uniquely Trumpy ideological vision for the party. What is Pence’s vision, though, and what sets him apart? 

geoffrey.skelley: And it’s hard to know if Trump will ever be gone. He may already be the presumptive nominee by the time his first criminal trial starts in late March. Around half the delegates in the GOP primary will have been allocated by mid-March, and the candidate leading at that point in the primary usually goes on to win the nomination. 

maryr: There also have been rumors that DeSantis donors have been looking for a new candidate to back since his campaign has been struggling. Do we think there’s a chance that Pence could catch their eye? 

nrakich: Good question, Mary. No, I don’t think Pence would have access to those donors. If you’re supporting DeSantis, you are generally OK with the direction in which Trump has taken the party — you just want to move on from Trump specifically for some reason (e.g., maybe you think Trump can’t beat Biden). And I think Pence has already edged too far into anti-Trump-landia to appeal to those people.

geoffrey.skelley: Lot of heavy drinking these days in anti-Trump-landia.

gelliottmorris: The best thing Pence could do for his campaign is to take the other candidates to dinner, buy them a bottle of Macallan 30 and convince them to drop out. (For legal reasons, this is a joke.)

geoffrey.skelley: Hey, you’re allowed to talk and coordinate, like we saw Democrats do just before Super Tuesday in 2020 by lining up behind Biden. Better that than the lack of coordination among Republicans late in the 2016 primary, when Sen. Ted Cruz thought then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich would stay in against Trump and dropped out, only for Kasich to up and drop out the day after Cruz did.

maryr: Even if Trump were gone, Pence may not be the one to benefit. Likely Republican primary voters who say they plan to vote for Trump have the worst impression of Pence, according to The New York Times/Siena College. In that poll, Pence’s favorability is underwater with Trump primary voters by 18 points, but he’s above water with voters planning to vote for DeSantis or other candidates. So that may mean that he could consolidate some of the voters who right now aren’t in Trump’s camp, but that Trump dropping out doesn’t help him that much. 

gelliottmorris: Great find, Mary. Those not-Trump (as opposed to anti-Trump) Republican voters are also likelier than Trump voters to say they would prefer “a candidate who focuses on restoring law and order in our streets and at the border” to one who “focuses on defeating radical ‘woke’ ideology in our schools, media and culture”; are likelier than Trump supporters to prefer “a candidate who says that the government should stay out of deciding what corporations can support” instead of one who “promises to fight corporations that promote ‘woke’ left ideology”; and likelier to support a candidate who “promises to protect individual freedom” instead of “[protecting] traditional values.”

To me, that sounds a lot like the campaign Pence wants to run — or at least it describes him better than it describes, say, DeSantis. So I think what I take away from the poll is that as long as Trump is the central issue of the campaign, Pence will flounder by virtue of being opposed to him. In that environment, maybe it makes financial or media sense to campaign hard against him, though it won’t win him more votes.

But if, perhaps by act of God, the party and discourse about the primary can move beyond Trump, he could have a real shot by running a more traditional campaign. 

maryr: A big challenge for him, though: 54 percent of voters in that poll say they plan to vote for Trump. So even if the rest of the voters look more Pence-friendly, there may not be enough of them.

Abortion rights in Ohio passed their first test on Tuesday. But the final exam could still be a challenge.

By a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent, Ohio voters rejected Issue 1, which would have made it harder to pass future state constitutional amendments by (among other things) requiring them to get 60 percent of the vote. The election was widely regarded as a proxy fight over abortion, since Republican legislators had put Issue 1 on the ballot in an effort to stop the passage of a November amendment that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

These types of maneuvers have proven unpopular in the past, and Issue 1 was no exception. As I wrote on Monday, Republicans have tried to combat liberal ballot measures by raising the threshold to pass some of them in at least 10 states since 2017 — but only one of those efforts has been successful. And the five times they’ve been put before voters in that time, those efforts have received an average of only 43 percent of the vote. In other words, majority rule seems pretty popular with voters.

As a result of Issue 1’s failure, constitutional amendments in Ohio will continue to require just a simple majority in order to pass. That could prove decisive for November’s vote on abortion rights. According to an average of three early polls of that amendment, 57 percent of Ohioans support adding abortion rights to the constitution, 24 percent are opposed and 20 percent are undecided. And a similar amendment passed in next-door Michigan last year by 13 percentage points (56.7 percent to 43.3 percent).

However, abortion-rights supporters can’t just assume that the abortion amendment will coast to victory now that they’ve defeated Issue 1. Early polls of a similar amendment that ultimately passed in Michigan last year also gave it a wide lead the summer before the election, but that advantage narrowed as Election Day approached (although the amendment ended up outperforming its final polls). And, of course, Ohio is a redder state than Michigan is: In 2020, President Biden won Michigan by 3 points but lost Ohio by 8. Elections don’t always work this cleanly, but if you simply subtract 11 points from the margin of Michigan’s abortion amendment, you arrive at a scenario where Ohio’s amendment passes by only 2 points. 

So expect both abortion-rights supporters and opponents to take nothing for granted this fall. That’s especially true considering the election’s high stakes: November’s vote may very well decide whether Ohio’s 2.6 million reproductive-age women have access to abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. While abortion is currently legal in Ohio until 22 weeks of pregnancy, the state has a law on the books banning abortion after cardiac activity can be detected (around six weeks). That law is currently on hold while the Ohio Supreme Court decides whether it is constitutional. If November’s amendment passes, the voters will have made their decision for them, and the law will be unconstitutional. But if it fails, the court’s 4-3 Republican majority could easily uphold the six-week ban, putting a stop to most abortions in the state.

Unsurprisingly, then, interest in November’s election is expected to be through the roof. Just look at how many Ohioans turned out to vote in the summer of an odd year for a ballot measure over the seemingly dry subject of constitutional election law. Over 3 million ballots were cast in Tuesday’s election — either 34 or 35 percent of the state’s 2022 voting-eligible population, depending on the final tally. For comparison, only 18 percent of the VEP voted on a May 2018 ballot measure over redistricting.

That high turnout tells us two things: First, voters saw this as an election that was about much more than constitutional election law. And second, nine months after the 2022 midterm elections and 13 months after the Dobbs decision, abortion remains a highly motivating issue for voters.

It may be the dog days of August, but elections never sleep. Today in Mississippi, voters head to the polls to pick their nominees for state and legislative offices, including governor and lieutenant governor. And Ohioans will vote on a ballot measure that would raise the threshold for passing future constitutional amendments (such as one on abortion rights this November) from a simple majority to 60 percent (my colleague Nathaniel Rakich has more on the Ohio vote).

Mississippi’s contest for governor will offer little primary drama because Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and Democratic Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley are all but guaranteed to face each other in November. But their impending clash will test how Republican-leaning Mississippi is, as Reeves isn’t especially popular and Presley has about as good a résumé as Democrats could hope for in the Magnolia State. However, Republicans do have one high-profile primary to sort out: a race for the state’s powerful lieutenant governor post between an establishment-aligned incumbent and a right-wing populist state senator.

Can Presley end Democrats’ statewide blues?

First elected in 2019, Reeves is seeking a second term as governor, but his tenure hasn’t exactly attracted rave reviews. Morning Consult’s polling in the second quarter of 2023 found that he was tied for the dubious title of least popular governor in the country with a +6-point net job approval rating (48 percent of registered voters approved of him and 42 percent disapproved). Such middling ratings have been a regular thing, as Reeves has never surpassed 52 percent approval in Morning Consult’s surveys. Back in January, 57 percent of voters told Siena College/Mississippi Today that they’d prefer someone else to be the next governor, while just 33 percent backed Reeves.

One vulnerability for Reeves is a far-reaching scandal involving the misuse of federal welfare funds. From 2016 to 2019, the Mississippi Department of Human Services misspent more than $77 million, much of it to help fund pet projects for wealthy individuals. Reeves hasn’t been directly implicated, but figures close to him have come under scrutiny. Last year, Mississippi Today uncovered text messages from 2019 that suggested then-Gov. Phil Bryant, whom Reeves served under as lieutenant governor, had advised former NFL quarterback Brett Favre on getting millions for a volleyball arena at Southern Mississippi University, Favre’s alma mater and where his daughter played volleyball. Additionally, a personal trainer who worked with Reeves and other Mississippi politicians received $1.3 million of those funds through a nonprofit whose operators have since admitted to defrauding the government.

With this hanging over his head, Reeves will face Presley, who may be an unusually strong Democratic candidate. Presley, who I’m mandated by the journalism deities to report is a second cousin of Elvis Presley, is completing his fourth term representing the northern third of Mississippi on the state’s three-member Public Services Commission. This makes him the only remaining Democrat in Mississippi’s executive branch (albeit his is not a statewide office). And Presley has won all four elections for his post by double digits (he was unopposed in 2019) despite his district’s sizable GOP lean: In 2020, then-President Donald Trump carried Presley’s seat by 23 percentage points. Presley’s moderate image — he describes himself as “pro-life” — and focus on less divisive issues like expanding broadband access have undergirded his success. Along those lines, Presley has made tax reductions a central feature of his campaign, including an ad in which he cuts a car in half with a metal saw to talk up his proposal to halve the state’s license plate tax.

Yet despite Reeves’s challenges and Presley’s strengths, the Republican has the upper hand in the little polling we have. Now, some of the polls come from the campaigns themselves, which historically tend to overstate how well their candidate is doing. The only recent survey was an early July poll by OnMessage for Reeves’s campaign that found him well ahead, 49 percent to 32 percent. Conversely, an April survey by Impact Research for Presley’s campaign found Reeves ahead by only 3 points, 47 percent to 44 percent. The last nonpartisan survey, an April poll from Siena College/Mississippi Today, essentially split the difference by finding Reeves up 49 percent to 38 percent.

Beyond the polls, Reeves also has a huge financial edge. As of Aug. 1, Reeves had $9.4 million in the bank to Presley’s $1.5 million. Now, Presley has spent a bit more at this point, including at least $250,000 on a fresh ad campaign seeking to connect Reeves to the state welfare scandal. But Reeves will likely have more money at his disposal to defend his record, and he has already started running ads pushing back on Presley’s new spot. The governor is also playing to the state’s sizable Republican base on social issues with a new ad highlighting his opposition to transgender women playing women’s sports.

More broadly, the state’s fundamental conditions will make it hard for Presley to break through in 2023. Mississippi has arguably the most racially polarized electorate in the country, as white voters overwhelmingly back Republicans and Black voters almost uniformly support Democrats. Tellingly, one estimate of the 2020 presidential vote from a group of academics using the Cooperative Election Study found that Trump won 82 percent of non-Hispanic white voters in Mississippi and just 13 percent of Black voters — the largest gap between white and Black voters of any state. Overall, 58 percent of Mississippi’s voting-age population is non-Hispanic white and 35 percent is Black, so intense electoral polarization by race continues to give Republicans a straightforward path to victory.

If anything, the last gubernatorial election demonstrates that, even when things go Democrats’ way in Mississippi, it’s very hard to win a gubernatorial election. In 2019, former state Attorney General Jim Hood lost to Reeves by 5 points, even though he had won four straight terms as attorney general (he remains the only Democrat to win a statewide election in Mississippi since the mid-2000s). Meanwhile, Reeves had survived a highly contentious and competitive GOP primary runoff against a more moderate Republican who then refused to endorse him. Additionally, the greater electoral environment looked favorable for Democrats too, as then-President Trump had a low approval rating (though not as low in Mississippi as nationally).

But here in 2023, Presley faces more difficult circumstances than Hood did. Reeves is now an incumbent — they tend to be harder to beat — and he also faces little primary opposition that could spark intraparty turmoil. And Presley also has to contend with having an unpopular Democrat in the White House. The election is about three months away and Presley can’t be written off entirely, but Reeves is clearly favored.

A race to the bottom for second-in-command

Mississippi’s lieutenant governor is more powerful than the No. 2 in most states due to the agenda-setting power it has as president of the state Senate, from which it determines committee assignments for senators and assigns bills to committees. A longtime veteran of Mississippi politics, incumbent Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann is seeking his second term. But state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who has lost two prior races for U.S. Senate, is challenging Hosemann in the GOP primary, precipitating a clash between a conservative establishment figure and a controversial insurgent.

McDaniel has been in the spotlight before, most especially when he famously nearly upended Sen. Thad Cochran in the state’s 2014 Republican primary. McDaniel ran to Cochran’s right, attacking the six-term senator as a creature of Washington and a pork-barrel spender. But McDaniel’s campaign was engulfed by scandal when a group of McDaniel supporters organized a caper to sneak into Cochran’s wife’s nursing home and take photos of her as part of a scheme to claim that Cochran was having an affair. McDaniel denied involvement, but the escapade may have cost him: In the primary, he finished ahead of Cochran but a hair short of a majority, forcing a runoff (Mississippi is one of seven states that requires nominees to win a majority to win a primary). In the runoff, turnout surged and Cochran narrowly defeated McDaniel, aided in part by Black voters, support that prompted McDaniel to unsuccessfully challenge the result. In 2018, McDaniel didn’t come nearly as close to victory, finishing third in the all-party primary in a special election for Senate behind appointed GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Mike Espy (Hyde-Smith won the runoff).

Now running for lieutenant governor, McDaniel has tried to get to Hosemann’s right, too, by claiming the incumbent is insufficiently conservative. He has referred to Hosemann as “Delbert the Democrat” and has used criticisms Hosemann made about Trump while serving as secretary of state as evidence that Hosemann can’t be trusted. For his part, Hosemann has argued that he’s been a steady, conservative hand at the tiller for Mississippi’s state government. 

But the race has had its fair share of controversy, too. Perhaps most notably, McDaniel and his allies have argued that Hosemann actually supports abortion rights — a toxic position in a GOP primary — because the lieutenant governor once served as vice president of a women’s health clinic in Jackson. Hosemann has denied the claim, and a former clinic president had previously said Hosemann performed legal services for the clinic before it started providing abortion services, but McDaniel has tried to capitalize on the connection.

Hosemann appears favored to fend off McDaniel on Tuesday, although it’s no certainty. For one thing, Hosemann had spent $3.5 million this year as of Aug. 1 and had $2.1 million left over for the final week of the primary campaign. By comparison, McDaniel had spent only $1.1 million this year and had only about $300,000 in the bank. However, an outside group backing McDaniel had raised almost $900,000 in the month leading up to the primary, and it has run ads claiming Hoseman supports abortion rights. But an early June poll from Siena College/Mississippi Today also found Hosemann leading McDaniel 47 percent to 32 percent, and Hosemann also sported stronger favorability numbers among Republicans than McDaniel. Now, Hosemann was just shy of 50 percent in that poll, which could be important because of the state’s runoff rule. But together, the fundraising and polling suggest McDaniel will really need a surprise to defeat Hosemann.

The campaign over Issue 1 in Ohio has been provocative, to say the least. One ad argues that the ballot measure is necessary to prevent children from getting gender-affirming care without their parents’ consent. Another features a steamy sex scene — interrupted by a Republican congressman who steals a condom out of a couple’s hands. 

Based on this, you might be confused about what Issue 1 is about — but it would seem safe to assume that it must be pretty spicy. Not so: It’s actually a procedural question about whether amendments to the Ohio Constitution should require a 60 percent supermajority of the vote to pass. (It would also require petitioners to get signatures from all 88 Ohio counties in order to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot and eliminate their ability to get new signatures to replace any that are found invalid.) But as you can tell from those ads, Issue 1 has become a proxy fight over a more contentious topic: a different constitutional amendment, to guarantee reproductive rights, that Ohioans will vote on in November. Ohio Republicans have said that the goal of Issue 1, which will go before voters on Tuesday, is to make that amendment harder to pass — and if they’re successful, abortion-rights supporters will be facing a much tougher challenge this fall.

Issue 1 is just the latest in a string of efforts by GOP politicians to change the rules governing ballot measures with the implicit, or sometimes explicit, aim of thwarting citizen-led policy proposals. Since 2017, at least 10 states — Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Maine, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Utah — have considered increasing the threshold for at least some ballot initiatives to pass. All these efforts were led by Republican legislators either in reaction to or in anticipation of liberal ballot questions — like a 2022 effort to expand Medicaid in South Dakota and, more recently, a potential 2024 abortion-rights amendment in Missouri.

The good news for opponents of Issue 1? These types of rule changes aren’t usually successful with voters — and right now, polling suggests that this latest effort may fail too.

Since 2017, the only similar effort to succeed was Proposition 132 in Arizona last year, which raised the threshold to pass certain ballot measures to 60 percent. But unlike Ohio’s Issue 1, that proposition applied only to ballot measures that raised taxes, and it passed very narrowly to boot — just 51 percent to 49 percent.

Of course, Issue 1 wouldn’t just make it harder for citizen-initiated constitutional amendments to pass. It’s also part of a widespread pattern of Republicans making it harder to get initiatives on the ballot in the first place. Since 2017, at least 16 states — Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming — have proposed increasing the number of signatures needed to qualify a ballot initiative or, like Issue 1, adding new requirements that those signatures come from specific jurisdictions, like counties or congressional districts. 

These efforts have been slightly more successful than those attempting to raise the voting threshold. Arkansas, Idaho, Michigan and Utah have all enacted new signature-distribution requirements in recent years, although Idaho’s and Michigan’s were later struck down in court. But it’s worth noting that none of those laws needed to go before voters (and, in fact, when Arkansas tried that in 2020, voters rejected the proposal).

These geographic requirements can be particularly challenging for liberal petitioners. For example, Missouri has for decades required ballot-initiative campaigns to collect a certain number of signatures from six of the state’s eight congressional districts. For conservatives, that’s a piece of cake: Six of the state’s eight districts are solidly Republican, so they can just skip the two Democratic districts. But liberals need to collect signatures from at least four ruby-red seats, including one that voted for former President Donald Trump by 39 percentage points in 2020. By contrast, without a geographic requirement, liberal petitioners could simply collect all their signatures from the fertile blue turf of St. Louis and Kansas City.

So what are Issue 1’s prospects in Ohio on Tuesday? We don’t have a lot of data, but there are signs that it, too, could be headed for defeat. If you average the three polls of the race that have been released, 35 percent of Ohioans support the 60 percent threshold, 45 percent oppose it and 20 percent aren’t sure. That’s a lot of undecideds, but there’s also a well-documented status-quo bias against ballot measures — meaning undecided voters tend to break for “no.” Plus, Issue 1’s opponents are much flusher with cash than its supporters; as of July 19, “no” had outraised “yes” $15 million to $5 million.

If Issue 1 does pass, though, it could prevent many future proposed constitutional amendments from becoming law. Only one other state, Florida, requires exactly 60 percent or more support to pass its constitutional amendments. Since voters passed an Issue 1-esque amendment to that effect in 2006, nine amendments (out of 53 that have appeared on the ballot) have failed with between 50 and 60 percent of the vote, including one to increase school class sizes, one to switch to a top-two primary system and one to legalize medical marijuana. For comparison, 13 failed with less than 50 percent of the vote. In other words, 41 percent of the Florida constitutional amendments that have failed since 2006 would have passed under a simple majority system. And in Ohio, it seems quite possible that November’s abortion-rights amendment will fall in that 50-60 percent zone. According to those same three polls, Ohioans support the abortion amendment by an average of 57 percent to 24 percent (with 20 percent undecided). 

Which is to say: If Issue 1 passes, November’s ballot initiative could become its first casualty. If not, it will probably go into the fall campaign favored to win. It’s no exaggeration to say that, even though it’s not technically on the ballot, the fate of abortion rights in Ohio could effectively be decided on Tuesday.

A certain presidential candidate has been very popular lately. He appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast. House Republicans invited him to testify before Congress on censorship. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, also a Republican, has suggested that if he becomes president, he might nominate him to lead the Food and Drug Administration or Centers for Disease Control. GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said he’d consider him to be his running mate. 

The only problem? This candidate is running in the Democratic primary.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been a contradiction ever since he announced his presidential campaign back in April. Though he’s part of the most famous family in Democratic politics and holds some liberal views — like supporting abortion rights — he is best known for his embrace of conspiracy theories most popular on the right, including the idea that vaccines are unsafe. That has made him a celebrity among conservative thought leaders and persona non grata within the Democratic Party. The head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee even called him “unfit for public office.”

Those topsy-turvy opinions of Kennedy extend to voters — he’s quite popular among Republicans, but Democrats are highly ambivalent about him. Eight polls have asked about Kennedy’s favorable and unfavorable rating since July 1, and Kennedy’s net favorability rating is higher among Republicans than it is among Democrats in seven of them.

Five of the polls found that more Democrats had an unfavorable opinion of Kennedy than had a favorable one — but not every survey saw it that way. For example, The Harris Poll/HarrisX/Harvard Center for American Political Studies gave Kennedy a +25-point net favorability rating among Democrats, while Quinnipiac University put him at -26 points. 

It’s hard to know what’s going on here. One hypothesis might be that those two pollsters surveyed very different types of Democrats: Perhaps Quinnipiac reached a population that was more politically engaged than Harris’s, and more familiar with Kennedy’s controversial views. It’s worth noting that the two phone polls in the table above, Quinnipiac and The New York Times/Siena College, were the two worst for Kennedy among Democrats. And the third-worst was one of the two likely-voter polls in the bunch, from Echelon Insights. (More engaged voters may be likelier to respond to phone surveys and to call themselves likely voters.)

But one thing pollsters have consistently found is that Democratic voters are souring on Kennedy. Morning Consult, Harris, Quinnipiac, Echelon Insights and Marquette all saw Kennedy’s net favorability among Democrats decrease since their previous polls, conducted in either May or June (although in Marquette’s case, the decrease was small enough that it was within the margin of error).

This makes a certain amount of sense. When Kennedy first jumped into the primary, many Democrats who liked the cut of his jib were basing their opinion on his name and his family’s reputation. According to a SSRS/CNN poll from May, a plurality (20 percent) of Democrats who said they would consider supporting Kennedy said it was because of the Kennedy name and his family connections. Many of these voters may not have been familiar with his conspiratorial views. But as Kennedy has gotten more media coverage and voters have learned more about him, they may have developed more unfavorable opinions.

Running against an incumbent president, Kennedy already faced extremely long odds in the Democratic primary. In terms of support, he has actually held steady around 15 percent all year long, according to FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average. But in order to improve upon that, he needs Democratic voters to like him, and that doesn’t seem to be the case — plus, things are moving in the wrong direction for him. Based on these numbers, if Kennedy is serious about wanting to become president, he should consider switching parties.

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, senior elections analyst): Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know by now that federal prosecutors indicted former President Donald Trump on Tuesday in connection with his actions to overturn the 2020 election. He has been charged with four counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights (specifically, people’s right to have their vote counted). 

This is, of course, the third time this year that Trump has been indicted, and I’m curious about how voters will receive this indictment in light of the fact that it’s already happened twice before. Does this indictment compound his problems, or is it old hat at this point? But first, let’s analyze the specific charges in this case. How serious are they?

ameliatd (Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, senior reporter): These are really serious charges that the prosecutor, special counsel Jack Smith, is framing as an attempt to undermine American democracy itself. Smith said Tuesday at a press conference after the charges were made public, “The attack on our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies. Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government, the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.”

gelliottmorris (G. Elliott Morris, editorial director of data analytics): Yeah, Amelia, I think the specific charges are bad — right? I know I wouldn’t want to be indicted for “conspiracy against rights” or “conspiracy to defraud the United States.” But moreover, given the amount of previously reported evidence on Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election both on and before Jan. 6, it sure seems like a relatively strong case. (Obligatory caveat here: I’m no lawyer.) The indictment lists over 100 different pieces of evidence and shares them across the four counts against Trump. Honestly, more than anything, I’m really just shocked at the extent of the efforts by Trump and his co-conspirators to submit those alternative slates of electors to Congress, and reading the evidence in one document hits differently than it did when we were all watching these events play out over two or three months in real time.

nrakich: I agree, Elliott. It felt like we already knew most of the things in the indictment — for example, we knew about Trump’s efforts to pressure state officials to overturn the election (remember his phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger?), and we knew about the fake electors. But the indictment did a persuasive job weaving them together to form a narrative, and arguing that these weren’t just shocking news stories — they were potential crimes.

gelliottmorris: Right. So, given that, I wonder what Trump’s defense is going to be. Perhaps his lawyers will just argue that he was misled by all these co-conspirators and really did believe the charges? That he was totally ignorant of contrary information? (Though, again, full disclosure: I’m a data guy, not a lawyer, so I don’t know if that’s a proper defense. I somewhat doubt it.)

ameliatd: Well, it’s important to remember that an indictment is, by definition, one-sided and not reflective of what will be presented at trial, where Trump’s attorneys will be able to defend him. And I wouldn’t expect this to be a slam-dunk case for prosecutors. They face a couple of significant hurdles, one of which is that, for some of these charges, they need to prove Trump’s intent. And it can be difficult to establish definitively what was happening in another person’s mind.

Another argument that’s also being previewed by Trump’s lawyers is that Trump has a First Amendment right to say he won the election even if that’s not true.

geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, senior elections analyst): They could also attempt to claim that Trump really did think the election was fraudulently determined.

I’m already seeing conservative media outlets trying to argue that this sort of prosecution against Trump would have gotten former Vice President Al Gore in trouble during the contentious 2000 election that featured legal action that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

gelliottmorris: I guess the difference with Gore is that he did not pursue alternative slates of electors after the vote was certified by the states? Maybe we should have another chat on hanging chads!

geoffrey.skelley: Yeah, among other things. Gore sued for recounts in a handful of Florida counties that could’ve produced gains for him. Then came weeks of wrangling over whether recounts could be conducted and, if recounted, whether those results would count. Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court put a stop to the recounts and any chance that Gore might win Florida. But Gore’s actions didn’t involve attempts to make an end-run around the results in Florida — like allegedly putting together a group of fake electors or calling a secretary of state to change a state’s vote totals. Rather, they dealt with how to properly count disputed ballots there.

nrakich: You mentioned you don’t think this is a slam-dunk case, Amelia. How would you rate it in comparison to, say, the classified-documents case in terms of risk to Trump? That case does seem more open and shut (there are photos of classified documents in the bathroom at Mar-a-Lago!). But it sounds like, if proven, the charges in this case are more serious? Is that fair to say?

ameliatd: Well, do you mean serious legally or serious politically? I think they both carry a lot of risk for Trump. The facts in the classified documents case do seem pretty solid — but again, we don’t know what Trump’s lawyers’ counterarguments will be. A lot is going to happen between now and when the two federal cases go to trial, so it feels premature to say that prosecutors have a winning case. 

nrakich: I was thinking legally, but sure, let’s answer both!

gelliottmorris: I think there are strong dueling theories on the political impacts of this indictment.

On the one hand, Trump’s numbers have not moved much in the aftermath of the previous two indictments. In our (as of now unpublished) average of his favorability rating among Republicans, Trump was viewed favorably by 73 percent and unfavorably by 23 percent on the day of his first indictment in New York in March — a net rating of +50 percentage points. Two weeks after, his net favorability rating among Republicans had risen to +52 points. (That’s within the margin of error of our average.) And though his net favorability did sink after the June indictment in the classified-documents case, the slump was (a) not large and (b) returned him to his starting position in March!

On the other hand, maybe Americans view this indictment as more serious than the previous two. That could be because this case has to do with elections rather than executive power — which his lawyers may argue gives him the right to share classified documents (an untested theory, to be sure). I’ll be tracking the numbers to see.

nrakich: Yeah, Elliott, I wrote an article yesterday finding exactly that: A recent YouGov/Yahoo News poll asked whether each allegation against Trump so far was a serious crime, and the 2020-election-related stuff came out on top:

That said, a different poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research asked whether Americans thought Trump actually did something illegal in each case, and the Jan. 6 case actually fell in between the classified documents and the hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels on that score.

geoffrey.skelley: To add another layer to what Elliott and Nathaniel laid out, there’s clearly a potential difference between how all this affects public opinion within the confines of the GOP presidential primary and how it could matter in a general election if Trump wins the Republican nomination.

I remain skeptical that even more indictments are going to dramatically alter Trump’s standing in the GOP primary. When it comes to this specific case, more than 60 percent of Republicans still don’t think President Biden legitimately won the 2020 election. In other words, Trump’s false claims have a serious hold on his party’s base, which makes it unlikely that Republicans will abandon Trump over this indictment. Now, maybe there’s a snowball effect, where the aggregate charges against Trump cause a significant share of GOP primary voters to say, “We need to go in a different direction.” But Trump gained support in our national primary average after the first indictment and only lost a little ground (if that) after the second. Why would the third be that much different?

nrakich: Yeah, I’m going to be watching closely to see if there is a snowball effect. I think that hypothesis is still very much on the table: Trump’s first indictment helped him. The second didn’t — and in fact may have hurt him a bit. Wouldn’t it be consistent with that pattern if the third one hurts him even more?

Your points about Republicans believing Trump’s lies about the 2020 election are well taken, and a strong counterargument. But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this 2019 article from FiveThirtyEight contributor Lee Drutman: “If Republicans Ever Turn On Trump, It’ll Happen All At Once.” I think if Republicans start to abandon Trump, we won’t have seen it coming.

ameliatd: There’s also the timing of the trials to consider. The first trial — the one in Manhattan, involving hush-money payments to an adult-film actress to cover up an affair during the 2016 election — is slated for late March, when the GOP primary will be in full swing. And the classified-documents trial is scheduled for May. It’s possible that the GOP nomination might not be locked up by then, but there’s a distinct possibility that Trump will be the presumptive GOP nominee by the time that case (and this new one over Jan. 6) goes to trial.

That being said, there’s a reason why Trump wants to push the trials until after the 2024 election. Even if the outcomes are far from a done deal, with each successive indictment, Trump is running a higher and higher risk of being convicted of a felony before November 2024.

nrakich: Amelia raises the general election point, which I think is a totally different ballgame from the primary. I think a conviction would undeniably hurt Trump’s chances in November 2024 (though it would by no means guarantee Biden’s election). According to the aforementioned YouGov/Yahoo News poll, 62 percent of voters believe Trump should not be allowed to serve as president again if he’s convicted of a serious crime, and there is lots of other evidence demonstrating that scandals hurt candidates.

geoffrey.skelley: Polls suggest Republicans are least concerned about the New York case, and that’s the one most likely to be wrapped up first, right? So I’m not sure any convictions in the more serious cases would happen in time to affect the primary.

Of course, it’s also on the other Republican candidates to make the case to primary voters for why this matters and why they should be voters’ preferred alternative to a scandal-ridden Trump. Former Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley has, for instance, said it is all a distraction and bad for the GOP. But then again, few of the Republican candidates are holding the substance of Trump’s alleged crimes against him in their critiques, probably because they worry about alienating Republican voters who aren’t necessarily that critical of Trump’s actions. Instead, they’re more likely to claim it’s a “distraction” or an example of weaponizing the Justice Department against political opponents. 

ameliatd: What about the argument that wall-to-wall media coverage of his trials actually helps Trump? The man does love free publicity.

nrakich: In the primary or general?

ameliatd: Either one!

nrakich: I think there’s virtually no chance it helps him in the general. Historically, Trump has fared better in the polls when he’s out of the news.

geoffrey.skelley: Ha, yes, in 2016 there was a bit of a pattern whereby the presidential candidate in the news more (former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Trump) tended to see a decline in their poll numbers. 

nrakich: I could see it in the primary, though. But Trump will also have to contend with the logistical problems that a trial poses: More time in the courtroom means less time for campaign rallies. If the GOP primary is still competitive by mid-March or whenever his first trial starts, he won’t be able to campaign very hard in key states. 

But also, let’s be real: I would be surprised if Trump doesn’t wrap up the primary by Super Tuesday (which is March 5 this cycle).

geoffrey.skelley: In light of these indictments, I do think there’s maybe a chance that some candidates try to hang around longer than they might have otherwise. Granted, they’ll need money to do that. But that could push things beyond Super Tuesday, at least technically.

gelliottmorris: For the general election, I think there’s reason to suspect that this “bad news is bad news” pattern may hold going forward. Repeating the poll average exercise from earlier, I looked at Trump’s favorability numbers among all Americans and noticed his average unfavorable rating is currently at one of its highest points (56.3 percent) since he left the White House in 2021. 

And there appears to have been a real, if modest, inflection point in his net unfavorable rating when he was indicted in the federal classified-documents case. What’s good for Trump in the primary may be bad for him in the general — and whether he ultimately becomes president may matter for his ability to stay out of jail.