vox--2020-10-16--A definitive case against the Electoral College

One of the biggest problems with American democracy is that it ’ s not democratic .
Two of the last five presidents were elected despite losing the popular vote , more than half the Senate is elected by roughly 18 percent of the population , and voting districts are increasingly gerrymandered in ways that disenfranchise the people who live there .
Our process for choosing the president , the Electoral College , is probably the strangest and most explicitly anti-democratic feature of the American political system .
It was conceived in part as a firewall against majority will in case @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the office .
( It , uh , didn ’ t work . )
But the history is more complicated than that .
Akhil Reed Amar , a constitutional scholar at Yale , has argued that the Electoral College was a concession to the slave states at the time of the founding .
Another popular theory is that the Electoral College was designed to prevent presidential candidates from ignoring the smaller , less populated states .
Whatever the case , there ’ s no denying that the Electoral College is anti-democratic .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ The Electoral College bias is now such that realistically [ Democrats ] have to win by 3.5 to 4 percent in order to win presidential elections.
” So why is it still around ?
What purpose does it serve today ?
And more importantly , can we get rid of it ?
Jesse Wegman , an editorial board member at the New York Times , has made a definitive case against the Electoral College in his book Let the People Pick the President .
Among other things , Wegman argues that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a country reduced to red and blue states when , in fact , the United States is a purple country — and Americans pay a huge price for upholding a system that doesn ’ t represent that diversity .
I spoke to Wegman about the shoddy origins of the Electoral College and why he thinks we have to eliminate it back in July , but the conversation is still relevant .
Joe Biden has opened up a wide lead over Donald Trump in the national polls , but the race is by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Electoral College .
If Trump loses the popular vote by a few million votes and somehow manages to win the election by securing 270 electoral votes , discontent over this antidemocratic relic may well boil over .
A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows .
You explain in the book how slipshod and hurried the process of conceiving the Electoral College was .
No one really believed in it all that much and it was cobbled together at the last minute and only adopted because every other idea failed to win enough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for creating it in the first place ?
You can certainly look at things from the framers ’ perspective and say it ’ s understandable that they were concerned about how to elect the president .
It had never been done before .
They were building this out of whole cloth and the concerns that they had were real .
One of the major concerns was that many of the delegates didn ’ t want Congress involved in electing the president since they had just created a system built on a separation of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would never be able to make an informed decision about national candidates because they just wouldn ’ t have the information they needed , given the nature of communications technology back then .
What would you say was the foremost reason they created the Electoral College ?
I don ’ t think there was a foremost purpose .
As you said , they were scrambling to get this thing done and they debated it endlessly for something like 21 days .
And none of the other proposals , like a national popular vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Constitution .
But I ’ d say the driving force was to get the Constitution finished and sent out for ratification .
Beyond that , the main issues were keeping the election of the president out of Congress ’ s hands and ensuring the electors who made up the Electoral College knew who the candidates were and could make wise decisions .
And then of course you had the immovable obstacle of slavery and ensuring that the slave-holding states didn ’ t unravel the whole process .
James Madison himself said during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the popular vote is the fittest way to elect a president , ” but that the South wouldn ’ t go for it .
And he says this more than once .
So it ’ s clear that the Founders knew the slave states had a ton of leverage .
We know the process of passing it was flawed .
We know it was the product of brutal compromises .
But has the Electoral College ever operated the way it was intended to operate ?
No — with the possible exception of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the ticket .
But after that , we basically had electors who were not operating in what the framers thought of as the best interests of the country .
The electors were just party hacks .
That was clear by 1796 , and it ’ s just as clear today .
The electors have never been these disinterested , neutral , wise men the founders imagined .
Why have all the attempts to reform or abolish the Electoral College failed ?
I think that the most common reason is because one or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ benefiting from it in some way .
So it ’ s almost always a short-term political calculus that keeps the college alive .
It ’ s very rare that it ’ s about anything relating to democratic principles or some notion of what ’ s fair or just .
No one thinks the Electoral College was a brilliant constitutional invention , but it ’ s been preserved over the years for political reasons .
Okay , but the dynamics have changed , right ?
Now the Electoral College benefits the Republican Party almost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the college has typically leaned toward one party or the other — that was true in 2016 and almost certainly true for 2020 .
But I ’ d also say that it ’ s harder than we think to say that definitively in advance of an election .
Republicans won the 2004 election , but the Electoral College actually gave the Democrats a boost .
If 60,000 votes went the other way in Ohio , George W. Bush would have won the national popular vote by 3 million votes , but John Kerry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the advantages aren ’ t so fixed .
But yes , I concede the point you ’ re making : Right now , the Electoral College benefits Republicans pretty clearly , and a split election is much , much more likely to go the Republican candidate .
A lot of people who hear these sorts of objections to the Electoral College think it ’ s just sour grapes from liberals who don ’ t like the current outcome of the system .
How do you respond to that ?
I ’ m as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ candidate winning more votes and not being elected .
I think it violates our basic sense of what majority rule means .
All I would say to those people is , look at Trump ’ s tweet in 2012 arguing that the Electoral College is a disaster for democracy .
The circumstances of that tweet is that on Election Night 2012 , early exit polling was suggesting that Mitt Romney might win the popular vote and lose the Electoral College to Obama .
So the mere possibility that that could happen triggered Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ll say is that I sympathize .
And it ’ s actually happened twice in the last 20 years for Democrats — Right !
And I ’ ll bet any amount of money that the moment it happened in the other direction , you would see exactly the same reaction from the other side , and that ’ s because everybody in their gut feels the unfairness of a system that does not put the person with the most votes in the White House .
What would you say is the biggest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
This idea that somehow small states currently have a voice under the Electoral College system , and that they would lose that voice under a popular vote , is just the exact inverse of reality .
Right now , small states have no voice because they , like big states and medium-size states across the country , are not battleground states .
The only states that matter in a winner-take-all Electoral College scenario are battleground states , and those are the states where the candidates spend virtually 100 percent of their time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are 13 states with three or four electoral votes .
We call those the small states .
One of those states , New Hampshire , is a battleground state .
New Hampshire gets more attention from both campaigns every four years than all the other 12 small states combined .
The small states are a complete nonentity right now .
What about the claim that big cities would dominate a popular election ?
As a factual mathematical matter , that ’ s just untrue .
The biggest cities in the country don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to swing a national election .
They can ’ t even swing elections for governor in their own states .
New York City didn ’ t vote for George Pataki .
Los Angeles didn ’ t vote for Pete Wilson in 1990 .
The 50 biggest cities in the country represent about 15 percent of the population .
Even in fairly big cities with more than 350,000 people or so , roughly 40 percent of the vote goes to Republican candidates — and in any case it ’ s far from zero .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ same electoral math holds .
And then just by comparison , the rural areas of America also represent about 15 percent of the population , and they vote about 60/40 in favor of the Republicans .
So big cities and rural America are essentially a wash in every presidential election .
So the idea that big cities would somehow suddenly decide who the president was for everybody else is just wrong on the math .
A central focus of your book is this idea that ending the Electoral College would change the way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issues they prioritize .
Why is that a big deal ?
It ’ s a great question , and I think it really gets to the heart of what the problem is here .
When candidates only visit a few states and even a few regions in those few states , you really see a warping of policy priorities .
Both Democratic and Republican candidates focus on issues that are important to , say , coal miners in Pennsylvania or auto workers in Michigan , but those aren ’ t the only issues @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have a campaign that is forced to pay attention to everyone in the country and has to treat every vote as equally important , which is what a popular vote election would be , this would solve these problems and it would be more fair to the country as a whole .
Issues like immigration reform , health care reform , background checks on guns — these are things that the vast majority of the country supports , and it ’ s very hard to get presidential candidates to really get behind them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issues for voters in battleground states .
The most common defense of the Electoral College is that it ’ s a kind of last-resort firewall against a manifestly unfit president .
Now , obviously , our current president proves how useless that firewall is , but is there a case , in principle at least , for keeping the Electoral College on these grounds ?
No , it ’ s a terrible reason .
And you just explained why : Donald Trump .
If ever there was a candidate who should have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ College was designed to do , it was Donald Trump in 2016 .
But the reverse happened .
So the reality is that the Electoral College has never really worked as a firewall against unfit candidates because it ’ s a fundamentally partisan institution .
The 2016 election ought to put an end to this argument forever .
There ’ s at least one way to effectively end the Electoral College without technically abolishing it .
Can you explain what that is ?
It ’ s called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ simple way of using the Electoral College that the framers designed as a means to a popular vote .
It ’ s not an end-run around the college , as people like to call it .
It draws on the Constitution , which gives states almost total authority to award their electors however they want .
So the idea is that states who join it agree to award all of their electors to whichever candidate wins the most votes in the nation , not in their state , which is how most states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an elegant and clever solution to this problem .
Do you think we reach a breaking point where the status quo loses its legitimacy and we ’ re confronted with a genuine political crisis ?
People often say to me , “ Well , how is this ever going to happen ?
Republicans have to get on board , and they ’ re never going to do it.
” Everybody always has a reason for explaining why this isn ’ t going to work .
I think that overestimates the American people ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ majority rule is violated repeatedly .
If this happens again in 2020 , I think you ’ ll see a much stronger push to get the compact passed in a few other states that are right now either considering it or may soon .
We ’ re in a moment where people are thinking about constitutional reform in a way that they rarely do , and there ’ s an openness to changing our basic structures and to question our basic assumptions about how government works .
The way we pick our president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those new ways of thinking could really lead to concrete change .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
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One of the biggest problems with American democracy is that it’s not democratic.
Two of the last five presidents were elected despite losing the popular vote, more than half the Senate is elected by roughly 18 percent of the population, and voting districts are increasingly gerrymandered in ways that disenfranchise the people who live there.
Our process for choosing the president, the Electoral College, is probably the strangest and most explicitly anti-democratic feature of the American political system. It was conceived in part as a firewall against majority will in case the mob ever elected someone grotesquely unqualified for the office. (It, uh, didn’t work.)
But the history is more complicated than that. Akhil Reed Amar, a constitutional scholar at Yale, has argued that the Electoral College was a concession to the slave states at the time of the founding. Another popular theory is that the Electoral College was designed to prevent presidential candidates from ignoring the smaller, less populated states.
Whatever the case, there’s no denying that the Electoral College is anti-democratic. According to Democratic data scientist David Shor, “The Electoral College bias is now such that realistically [Democrats] have to win by 3.5 to 4 percent in order to win presidential elections.” So why is it still around? What purpose does it serve today? And more importantly, can we get rid of it?
Jesse Wegman, an editorial board member at the New York Times, has made a definitive case against the Electoral College in his book Let the People Pick the President. Among other things, Wegman argues that the Electoral College creates a false picture of a country reduced to red and blue states when, in fact, the United States is a purple country — and Americans pay a huge price for upholding a system that doesn’t represent that diversity.
I spoke to Wegman about the shoddy origins of the Electoral College and why he thinks we have to eliminate it back in July, but the conversation is still relevant. Joe Biden has opened up a wide lead over Donald Trump in the national polls, but the race is by no means over, thanks to the Electoral College. If Trump loses the popular vote by a few million votes and somehow manages to win the election by securing 270 electoral votes, discontent over this antidemocratic relic may well boil over.
A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
Sean Illing
You explain in the book how slipshod and hurried the process of conceiving the Electoral College was. No one really believed in it all that much and it was cobbled together at the last minute and only adopted because every other idea failed to win enough support. Were there any justifiable reasons for creating it in the first place?
Jesse Wegman
You can certainly look at things from the framers’ perspective and say it’s understandable that they were concerned about how to elect the president. It had never been done before. They were building this out of whole cloth and the concerns that they had were real.
One of the major concerns was that many of the delegates didn’t want Congress involved in electing the president since they had just created a system built on a separation of powers. Another concern was that citizens would never be able to make an informed decision about national candidates because they just wouldn’t have the information they needed, given the nature of communications technology back then.
Sean Illing
What would you say was the foremost reason they created the Electoral College?
Jesse Wegman
I don’t think there was a foremost purpose. As you said, they were scrambling to get this thing done and they debated it endlessly for something like 21 days. And none of the other proposals, like a national popular vote, had enough support to get into the Constitution.
But I’d say the driving force was to get the Constitution finished and sent out for ratification. Beyond that, the main issues were keeping the election of the president out of Congress’s hands and ensuring the electors who made up the Electoral College knew who the candidates were and could make wise decisions.
And then of course you had the immovable obstacle of slavery and ensuring that the slave-holding states didn’t unravel the whole process. James Madison himself said during the middle of the convention that “the popular vote is the fittest way to elect a president,” but that the South wouldn’t go for it. And he says this more than once. So it’s clear that the Founders knew the slave states had a ton of leverage.
Sean Illing
We know the process of passing it was flawed. We know it was the product of brutal compromises. But has the Electoral College ever operated the way it was intended to operate?
Jesse Wegman
No — with the possible exception of the first two elections when George Washington was on the ticket. But after that, we basically had electors who were not operating in what the framers thought of as the best interests of the country. The electors were just party hacks. That was clear by 1796, and it’s just as clear today. The electors have never been these disinterested, neutral, wise men the founders imagined.
Sean Illing
Why have all the attempts to reform or abolish the Electoral College failed?
Jesse Wegman
I think that the most common reason is because one or both political parties have seen themselves as benefiting from it in some way. So it’s almost always a short-term political calculus that keeps the college alive. It’s very rare that it’s about anything relating to democratic principles or some notion of what’s fair or just. No one thinks the Electoral College was a brilliant constitutional invention, but it’s been preserved over the years for political reasons.
Sean Illing
Okay, but the dynamics have changed, right? Now the Electoral College benefits the Republican Party almost exclusively.
Jesse Wegman
You’re right that the college has typically leaned toward one party or the other — that was true in 2016 and almost certainly true for 2020. But I’d also say that it’s harder than we think to say that definitively in advance of an election.
Republicans won the 2004 election, but the Electoral College actually gave the Democrats a boost. If 60,000 votes went the other way in Ohio, George W. Bush would have won the national popular vote by 3 million votes, but John Kerry would’ve been elected. So the advantages aren’t so fixed.
But yes, I concede the point you’re making: Right now, the Electoral College benefits Republicans pretty clearly, and a split election is much, much more likely to go the Republican candidate.
Sean Illing
A lot of people who hear these sorts of objections to the Electoral College think it’s just sour grapes from liberals who don’t like the current outcome of the system. How do you respond to that?
Jesse Wegman
I’m as upset as anybody who experienced their preferred candidate winning more votes and not being elected. I think it violates our basic sense of what majority rule means. All I would say to those people is, look at Trump’s tweet in 2012 arguing that the Electoral College is a disaster for democracy. The circumstances of that tweet is that on Election Night 2012, early exit polling was suggesting that Mitt Romney might win the popular vote and lose the Electoral College to Obama. So the mere possibility that that could happen triggered Trump’s tweet, and all I’ll say is that I sympathize.
Sean Illing
And it’s actually happened twice in the last 20 years for Democrats —
Jesse Wegman
Right! And I’ll bet any amount of money that the moment it happened in the other direction, you would see exactly the same reaction from the other side, and that’s because everybody in their gut feels the unfairness of a system that does not put the person with the most votes in the White House.
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2012
Sean Illing
What would you say is the biggest myth or misconception about the Electoral College?
Jesse Wegman
This idea that somehow small states currently have a voice under the Electoral College system, and that they would lose that voice under a popular vote, is just the exact inverse of reality. Right now, small states have no voice because they, like big states and medium-size states across the country, are not battleground states. The only states that matter in a winner-take-all Electoral College scenario are battleground states, and those are the states where the candidates spend virtually 100 percent of their time and money trying to win.
There are 13 states with three or four electoral votes. We call those the small states. One of those states, New Hampshire, is a battleground state. New Hampshire gets more attention from both campaigns every four years than all the other 12 small states combined. The small states are a complete nonentity right now.
Sean Illing
What about the claim that big cities would dominate a popular election?
Jesse Wegman
As a factual mathematical matter, that’s just untrue. The biggest cities in the country don’t come close to having enough votes to swing a national election. They can’t even swing elections for governor in their own states. New York City didn’t vote for George Pataki. Los Angeles didn’t vote for Pete Wilson in 1990. The 50 biggest cities in the country represent about 15 percent of the population. Even in fairly big cities with more than 350,000 people or so, roughly 40 percent of the vote goes to Republican candidates — and in any case it’s far from zero. And often in rural areas, the same electoral math holds.
And then just by comparison, the rural areas of America also represent about 15 percent of the population, and they vote about 60/40 in favor of the Republicans. So big cities and rural America are essentially a wash in every presidential election. So the idea that big cities would somehow suddenly decide who the president was for everybody else is just wrong on the math.
Sean Illing
A central focus of your book is this idea that ending the Electoral College would change the way candidates campaign and therefore the sorts of issues they prioritize. Why is that a big deal?
Jesse Wegman
It’s a great question, and I think it really gets to the heart of what the problem is here. When candidates only visit a few states and even a few regions in those few states, you really see a warping of policy priorities. Both Democratic and Republican candidates focus on issues that are important to, say, coal miners in Pennsylvania or auto workers in Michigan, but those aren’t the only issues in the country. And if you have a campaign that is forced to pay attention to everyone in the country and has to treat every vote as equally important, which is what a popular vote election would be, this would solve these problems and it would be more fair to the country as a whole.
Issues like immigration reform, health care reform, background checks on guns — these are things that the vast majority of the country supports, and it’s very hard to get presidential candidates to really get behind them if they aren’t the key issues for voters in battleground states.
Sean Illing
The most common defense of the Electoral College is that it’s a kind of last-resort firewall against a manifestly unfit president. Now, obviously, our current president proves how useless that firewall is, but is there a case, in principle at least, for keeping the Electoral College on these grounds?
Jesse Wegman
No, it’s a terrible reason. And you just explained why: Donald Trump. If ever there was a candidate who should have been stopped by what we think the Electoral College was designed to do, it was Donald Trump in 2016. But the reverse happened. So the reality is that the Electoral College has never really worked as a firewall against unfit candidates because it’s a fundamentally partisan institution. The 2016 election ought to put an end to this argument forever.
Sean Illing
There’s at least one way to effectively end the Electoral College without technically abolishing it. Can you explain what that is?
Jesse Wegman
It’s called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and it’s a quite simple way of using the Electoral College that the framers designed as a means to a popular vote. It’s not an end-run around the college, as people like to call it. It draws on the Constitution, which gives states almost total authority to award their electors however they want. So the idea is that states who join it agree to award all of their electors to whichever candidate wins the most votes in the nation, not in their state, which is how most states do it now. It’s an elegant and clever solution to this problem.
Sean Illing
Do you think we reach a breaking point where the status quo loses its legitimacy and we’re confronted with a genuine political crisis?
Jesse Wegman
People often say to me, “Well, how is this ever going to happen? Republicans have to get on board, and they’re never going to do it.” Everybody always has a reason for explaining why this isn’t going to work. I think that overestimates the American people’s tolerance for a system in which majority rule is violated repeatedly. If this happens again in 2020, I think you’ll see a much stronger push to get the compact passed in a few other states that are right now either considering it or may soon.
We’re in a moment where people are thinking about constitutional reform in a way that they rarely do, and there’s an openness to changing our basic structures and to question our basic assumptions about how government works. The way we pick our president is one of the prime places where those new ways of thinking could really lead to concrete change.


vox--2020-10-16--America’s newest wave of Covid-19 cases, explained

Evidence-based explanations of the coronavirus crisis , from how it started to how it might end to how to protect yourself and others .
A new wave of Covid-19 cases is rising across the United States , a harbinger of difficult winter months ahead .
America is now averaging about 54,000 new confirmed cases every day , the highest numbers since early August , according to the New York Times .
More than 37,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with Covid-19 in the US , up from about 30,000 a week ago .
Roughy 700 new deaths are being reported on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while that is down from August , when there were often more than 1,000 deaths a day , deaths are going to start increasing if cases and hospitalizations continue to rise .
It ’ s a pattern we have seen before .
Public health experts have been warning for months that fall and winter could lead to a spike in Covid-19 cases .
Why ?
Because the best way to slow down the coronavirus ’ s spread is to keep your distance from other people and , if you are going to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much as possible — and both become harder when the weather gets cold .
We may now be seeing those predictions start to come true , even as much of the country still has warm weather .
The US already has nearly 8 million confirmed cases and 217,000 confirmed deaths .
Both numbers will continue to climb .
Eight months into the pandemic , America ’ s failures to contain Covid-19 , and states ’ eagerness to reopen even if they haven ’ t gotten their outbreaks under control , is once again @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hospitalizations .
Covid-19 cases are rising everywhere across the country Earlier in the year , there was limited value to discussing “ waves ” because some states would have a decline in cases while other states were experiencing surges .
What distinguishes this autumn wave is that it seems to be happening everywhere .
Case numbers are up across every region : the Northeast , the South , the Midwest , and the West .
What ’ s so worrisome is that no one state or region can be blamed for this new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their number of new Covid-19 cases drop over the last two weeks , as of October 15 , according to Covid Exit Strategy .
Cases are up in all the others .
Raw case numbers can , of course , obscure important differences in population ; 100 new cases means something different for California than it does for Wyoming .
Experts will use another metric — new cases per million people — to gauge how saturated a given state is with Covid-19 .
The goal would be to have fewer than 40 new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two states — Maine and Vermont — meet that threshold .
Meanwhile , North Dakota ( 800 cases per million ) , South Dakota ( 743 ) , Montana ( 569 ) , and Wisconsin ( 531 ) are some of the states seeing very high levels of new infections .
As Vox ’ s German Lopez reported this week , just one state — Maine — meets all of the benchmarks indicated by experts for a state to consider its Covid-19 outbreak contained .
And yet , most states have reopened many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the spring : 40 or so states have reopened restaurants , bars , gyms , movie theaters , and nonessential retail .
“ Part of the problem is America never really suppressed its Covid-19 cases to begin with , ” Lopez wrote , explaining why experts were anticipating a new surge in cases .
“ Think of a disease epidemic like a forest fire : It ’ s going to be really difficult to contain the virus when there are still flames raging in parts of the forest and small embers practically everywhere @ @ @ @ @ @ @ blaze with each step toward reopening and with each failure to take precautions seriously.
” Too many Covid-19 tests are coming back positive right now Another closely watched indicator for renewed Covid-19 spread is the percentage of coronavirus tests that come back positive .
The number of tests being conducted doesn ’ t actually tell you all that much ; if a high percentage of them are positive , that suggests that many others aren ’ t being caught at all and the virus could continue to spread unchecked .
So while the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tests every day , that is not quite the triumph it might sound like ( or that President Donald Trump would like to believe it is ) .
The country ’ s positive test rate is around 5 percent , right at the threshold experts say would reflect adequate testing .
Ideally , it would be even lower , 2 percent or less .
But even with that passable national positivity rate , most states are still not conducting nearly enough testing .
Here are the 10 states with the highest positive test @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( Mississippi ’ s test positivity rate appears to be very high , but large recent swings in reported tests currently make the rate hard to determine . )
It ’ s really only a handful of better-performing states — namely , New York , with more than 115,000 tests conducted per day and a 1.1 percent positivity rate — that ’ s keeping the US ’ s overall positive test rate from looking a lot worse .
America has never had a cohesive Covid-19 testing strategy .
Since February , there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ results .
States have been fighting each other for precious testing resources .
Contact tracing has not been a priority for the federal government , and most states have still not hired nearly enough people to perform that work .
Wealthy countries like Germany and South Korea have used effective test-trace-isolate programs to keep their Covid-19 outbreaks in check .
The US , meanwhile , is still struggling to perform enough tests or scale up its contact tracing capabilities .
Just a handful of states , plus the District of Columbia , could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , according to Covid Exit Strategy , considering their positivity rate .
Without improvement in both of those areas , it will continue to be difficult for the US to contain the coronavirus before a vaccine becomes available .
More Americans are being hospitalized with Covid-19 , too Both case numbers and the positive test rate can be a little deceptive , depending on how many tests are being performed .
They suggest what ’ s happening on the ground — in this case , Covid-19 is spreading — but they do have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the president ’ s claim that more tests will mean more cases , though that is not a reason to stop testing .
Hospitalizations , on the other hand , are more concrete .
If more people are developing symptoms severe enough to warrant being hospitalized , that is a strong indicator that the real number of people being infected with Covid-19 is growing , regardless of whether they are getting tested .
And after a dip in September , the number of Americans currently in the hospital with Covid-19 is higher @ @ @ @ @ @ @ month .
That trend has been seen across the country .
The worry becomes that if hospitals take in too many patients , they ’ ll have to turn other people away , or that overwhelmed staff and facilities could lead to some patients receiving substandard care .
According to Covid Exit Strategy , about 20 states currently have elevated ICU occupancy that puts them in a risk zone ; and about 20 have an elevated occupancy rate of their regular hospital beds .
Wisconsin , where the number of hospitalized Covid-19 patients @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about 300 to more than 1,000 today , recently established a new field hospital on its state park fairgrounds over fears that the state ’ s hospitals wouldn ’ t have enough beds given the recent surge in cases .
Fortunately , hospitals have gotten much better at treating Covid-19 .
They have proven treatments , like remdesivir and dexamethasone , that reduce the length of hospital stays or reduce mortality in patients with severe symptoms .
They have learned techniques like putting patients on their stomach to improve breathing .
Hospitals that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ patients in the later waves are spending less time in the hospital and dying less frequently .
Nevertheless , more people developing severe symptoms , as we are starting to see , will inevitably lead to more deaths .
Over the summer , people wondered why deaths were falling while cases and hospitalizations rose — until deaths did start to increase .
There is a long lag between cases rising and deaths rising , because it can take a month or more between when a person first contracts Covid-19 and , if they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
That ’ s why these new Covid-19 trends in the US are so worrisome .
Cases are rising , as are hospitalizations .
It could be only a matter of time before deaths start to spike as well .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
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A new wave of Covid-19 cases is rising across the United States, a harbinger of difficult winter months ahead.
America is now averaging about 54,000 new confirmed cases every day, the highest numbers since early August, according to the New York Times. More than 37,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with Covid-19 in the US, up from about 30,000 a week ago. Roughy 700 new deaths are being reported on average every day, too — and while that is down from August, when there were often more than 1,000 deaths a day, deaths are going to start increasing if cases and hospitalizations continue to rise. It’s a pattern we have seen before.
Public health experts have been warning for months that fall and winter could lead to a spike in Covid-19 cases. Why? Because the best way to slow down the coronavirus’s spread is to keep your distance from other people and, if you are going to be around others, to be outside as much as possible — and both become harder when the weather gets cold.
We may now be seeing those predictions start to come true, even as much of the country still has warm weather. The US already has nearly 8 million confirmed cases and 217,000 confirmed deaths. Both numbers will continue to climb.
Eight months into the pandemic, America’s failures to contain Covid-19, and states’ eagerness to reopen even if they haven’t gotten their outbreaks under control, is once again leading to a surge in cases and hospitalizations.
Covid-19 cases are rising everywhere across the country
Earlier in the year, there was limited value to discussing “waves” because some states would have a decline in cases while other states were experiencing surges. What distinguishes this autumn wave is that it seems to be happening everywhere.
Case numbers are up across every region: the Northeast, the South, the Midwest, and the West.
What’s so worrisome is that no one state or region can be blamed for this new wave. Just two states have seen their number of new Covid-19 cases drop over the last two weeks, as of October 15, according to Covid Exit Strategy. Cases are up in all the others.
Raw case numbers can, of course, obscure important differences in population; 100 new cases means something different for California than it does for Wyoming. Experts will use another metric — new cases per million people — to gauge how saturated a given state is with Covid-19.
The goal would be to have fewer than 40 new cases per million people. But just two states — Maine and Vermont — meet that threshold. Meanwhile, North Dakota (800 cases per million), South Dakota (743), Montana (569), and Wisconsin (531) are some of the states seeing very high levels of new infections.
As Vox’s German Lopez reported this week, just one state — Maine — meets all of the benchmarks indicated by experts for a state to consider its Covid-19 outbreak contained. And yet, most states have reopened many of the businesses that were closed in the spring: 40 or so states have reopened restaurants, bars, gyms, movie theaters, and nonessential retail.
“Part of the problem is America never really suppressed its Covid-19 cases to begin with,” Lopez wrote, explaining why experts were anticipating a new surge in cases. “Think of a disease epidemic like a forest fire: It’s going to be really difficult to contain the virus when there are still flames raging in parts of the forest and small embers practically everywhere. The country always risks a full blaze with each step toward reopening and with each failure to take precautions seriously.”
Too many Covid-19 tests are coming back positive right now
Another closely watched indicator for renewed Covid-19 spread is the percentage of coronavirus tests that come back positive. The number of tests being conducted doesn’t actually tell you all that much; if a high percentage of them are positive, that suggests that many others aren’t being caught at all and the virus could continue to spread unchecked.
So while the US is now averaging about 1 million tests every day, that is not quite the triumph it might sound like (or that President Donald Trump would like to believe it is). The country’s positive test rate is around 5 percent, right at the threshold experts say would reflect adequate testing. Ideally, it would be even lower, 2 percent or less.
But even with that passable national positivity rate, most states are still not conducting nearly enough testing. Here are the 10 states with the highest positive test rates, according to Covid Exit Strategy. (Mississippi’s test positivity rate appears to be very high, but large recent swings in reported tests currently make the rate hard to determine.)
South Dakota (35.5 percent) Wisconsin (22.9 percent) Idaho (22.3 percent) Iowa (20.2 percent) Nevada (17.3 percent) Kansas (17.1 percent) Indiana (16.5 percent) Utah (15.2 percent) Nebraska (15.1 percent) Alabama (14.6 percent)
It’s really only a handful of better-performing states — namely, New York, with more than 115,000 tests conducted per day and a 1.1 percent positivity rate — that’s keeping the US’s overall positive test rate from looking a lot worse.
America has never had a cohesive Covid-19 testing strategy. Since February, there have been regular supply shortages delaying test results. States have been fighting each other for precious testing resources. Contact tracing has not been a priority for the federal government, and most states have still not hired nearly enough people to perform that work.
Wealthy countries like Germany and South Korea have used effective test-trace-isolate programs to keep their Covid-19 outbreaks in check. The US, meanwhile, is still struggling to perform enough tests or scale up its contact tracing capabilities. Just a handful of states, plus the District of Columbia, could realistically expect to perform adequate contact tracing, according to Covid Exit Strategy, considering their positivity rate.
Without improvement in both of those areas, it will continue to be difficult for the US to contain the coronavirus before a vaccine becomes available.
More Americans are being hospitalized with Covid-19, too
Both case numbers and the positive test rate can be a little deceptive, depending on how many tests are being performed. They suggest what’s happening on the ground — in this case, Covid-19 is spreading — but they do have their limitations. There is some truth to the president’s claim that more tests will mean more cases, though that is not a reason to stop testing.
Hospitalizations, on the other hand, are more concrete. If more people are developing symptoms severe enough to warrant being hospitalized, that is a strong indicator that the real number of people being infected with Covid-19 is growing, regardless of whether they are getting tested.
And after a dip in September, the number of Americans currently in the hospital with Covid-19 is higher than it’s been in a month. That trend has been seen across the country.
The worry becomes that if hospitals take in too many patients, they’ll have to turn other people away, or that overwhelmed staff and facilities could lead to some patients receiving substandard care. According to Covid Exit Strategy, about 20 states currently have elevated ICU occupancy that puts them in a risk zone; and about 20 have an elevated occupancy rate of their regular hospital beds.
Wisconsin, where the number of hospitalized Covid-19 patients has risen over the last month from about 300 to more than 1,000 today, recently established a new field hospital on its state park fairgrounds over fears that the state’s hospitals wouldn’t have enough beds given the recent surge in cases.
Fortunately, hospitals have gotten much better at treating Covid-19. They have treatments with some supporting evidence, like remdesivir and dexamethasone, of reducing the length of hospital stays or mortality in patients with severe symptoms. They have learned techniques like putting patients on their stomach to improve breathing. Hospitals that have endured spikes of Covid-19 cases report patients in the later waves are spending less time in the hospital and dying less frequently.
Nevertheless, more people developing severe symptoms, as we are starting to see, will inevitably lead to more deaths. Over the summer, people wondered why deaths were falling while cases and hospitalizations rose — until deaths did start to increase. There is a long lag between cases rising and deaths rising, because it can take a month or more between when a person first contracts Covid-19 and, if they die, when their death is reported.
That’s why these new Covid-19 trends in the US are so worrisome. Cases are rising, as are hospitalizations. It could be only a matter of time before deaths start to spike as well.


vox--2020-10-16--America is damaged but hopeful in 4 excellent new movies

Look , I think a lot of us can agree that America isn ’ t looking great these days .
The land of the free and the home of the brave is exhausted , sick , anxious , distracted , and at war with itself .
As we ’ re just a few weeks out from a momentous election , it ’ s not controversial to say that this is not the country ’ s shining-est moment .
So while I don ’ t know whether it ’ s by design or by accident , it ’ s serendipitous that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weekend try to thread a tricky needle : seeing America for what it is , and finding hope in it anyhow .
Two are film versions of acclaimed Broadway plays ; another is from one of the country ’ s most acclaimed screenwriters ; and one is one of the best documentaries of the year .
The pictures these movies paint are by no means rosy .
They don ’ t traffic in myths about restoring former greatness or being our best selves .
But the people who made them are looking for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of injustice , and in their own ways , each of them find it .
Put all four together , and you start to see a portrait of America that is thoughtful , layered , and hopeful , drawing on the past to understand the present and finding something in the present to point us toward the future .
I can ’ t think of a better theme to seek out in these trying , challenging days .
Watch Time for a heartbreaking story of real courage and hope Heartbreaking and passionate , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deferred and the life that hope can provide .
Garrett Bradley ’ s documentary follows Fox Rich ( a.k.a .
Sibil Richardson ) , who has spent 21 years doggedly petitioning for her husband , Rob , to be released from prison .
Rob is serving a 60-year sentence for a youthful crime in which they were both involved ; meanwhile , Fox has been raising their six children and becoming a powerful advocate for change in her community .
Time details her struggle , demonstrating how mass incarceration persistently separates Black families @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bureaucracy and centuries of narratives conceal the truth and pain of those separations .
And all along , Fox has been making videos at home , which feel like a diary of her pain , endurance , and commitment to hope .
How to watch it : Time is streaming on Amazon Prime Video .
Watch What the Constitution Means to Me for an angry and hopeful perspective on law , debate , and rights When Heidi Schreck was 15 , she ’ d travel around the Pacific Northwest for speech competitions hosted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ addresses on the meaning and importance of various constitutional amendments .
Years later she recreated that experience with What the Constitution Means to Me , which garnered Tony and Pulitzer nominations during its 2019 Broadway run .
Schreck wrote and starred in the play , in which she pretends to be her 15-year-old self , talking about the Constitution — at least until her youthful optimism is challenged by both her adult realism and the stories of her family ’ s past .
The filmed version of What the Constitution Means to Me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ You Be My Neighbor ’ s Marielle Heller ) captures that moving , angry , heartbreaking , and strangely inspiring Broadway show .
Schreck deftly shifts between her own personal history , stories from the lives of her women ancestors , and deeply researched knowledge about Supreme Court decisions and arguments , weaving together policy , rights discourse , and lived experience .
And she finishes by sparring with a teenaged debate partner about the future of the Constitution — a moment that shows the power and true purpose of real , thoughtful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ What the Constitution Means to Me is streaming on Amazon Prime Video .
Watch The Trial of the Chicago 7 for a stirring call to dissent and placing honor where it ’ s due The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a signature Aaron Sorkin humdinger , a courtroom drama about the past with the present on its mind .
Its subject is the six-month trial of a group of men who were charged with conspiracy and crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Chicago to protest the Vietnam War .
Rioting did happen .
But the men didn ’ t conspire — and what ’ s more , they ’ ve insisted that the Chicago Police Department started the violence .
Sorkin wrote and directed The Trial of the Chicago 7 , which fiddles a bit with actual historical events in service of the story .
But the movie draws parallels between issues that mattered back then — racism , militarized police , unevenly meted justice , challenges to the right to protest — and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a brilliant cast that includes , among others , Mark Rylance , Eddie Redmayne , Sacha Baron Cohen , Jeremy Strong , John Carroll Lynch , Yahya Abdul-Mateen II , Frank Langella , and Joseph Gordon-Levitt , The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a film aimed at connecting the dots of the past to those of the present , and suggesting that sometimes the long arm of justice runs through rocky territory .
How to watch it : The Trial of the Chicago 7 is streaming on Netflix .
Watch David Byrne @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , beautiful musical celebration of our differences In 2019 , former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne mounted a Broadway show that wasn ’ t a concert or a play or a musical or anything , really , other than a recognizably Byrne-ian production .
On a gray-hued stage full of lights and texture , accompanied by a group of brilliant barefoot musicians and singers clad in matching gray suits , Byrne wove a story of America .
Songs from his catalog were reimagined for a joyous ride through his mind — and through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American utopia .
Spike Lee captured the whole thing on film , and the result is David Byrne ’ s American Utopia , a simultaneously realistic and surrealistic journey through what makes a nation a nation : We share the same home .
Byrne ’ s songs query the notions of house and home and what they mean in an American context .
His answer is that we are all different ; we look different , we talk different , we believe different things , and yet there ’ s still the hope @ @ @ @ @ @ @ house together .
I dare you not to dance while watching it .
How to watch it : David Byrne ’ s American Utopia airs at 8 pm Eastern on October 17 and begins streaming on HBO Max at the same time .
If you ’ re looking for something else ... • Kajillionaire , Miranda July ’ s latest comedy , comes to digital on-demand services this week ( find the full list of services here ) .
Starring Evan Rachel Wood , Gina Rodriguez , Debra Winger , and Richard Jenkins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ affectionate tale of growing up and learning to love .
( I loved the movie and wrote about how it showcases July ’ s enduring affection for the weirdo in all of us . )
• Coming to select virtual cinemas : Martin Eden , which feels like a tribute to Italian cinema as much as an adaptation of a Jack London novel .
It ’ s the story of a young man named Martin ( Luca Marinelli , who you may have seen in Netflix ’ s The Old Guard ) who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elite through self-education .
It ’ s a critically acclaimed , lushly shot tragedy .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

Look, I think a lot of us can agree that America isn’t looking great these days. The land of the free and the home of the brave is exhausted, sick, anxious, distracted, and at war with itself. As we’re just a few weeks out from a momentous election, it’s not controversial to say that this is not the country’s shining-est moment.
So while I don’t know whether it’s by design or by accident, it’s serendipitous that four movies premiering on digital services this weekend try to thread a tricky needle: seeing America for what it is, and finding hope in it anyhow. Two are film versions of acclaimed Broadway plays; another is from one of the country’s most acclaimed screenwriters; and one is one of the best documentaries of the year.
The pictures these movies paint are by no means rosy. They don’t traffic in myths about restoring former greatness or being our best selves. But the people who made them are looking for the kernel of humanity in the midst of injustice, and in their own ways, each of them find it.
Put all four together, and you start to see a portrait of America that is thoughtful, layered, and hopeful, drawing on the past to understand the present and finding something in the present to point us toward the future. I can’t think of a better theme to seek out in these trying, challenging days.
Watch Time for a heartbreaking story of real courage and hope
Heartbreaking and passionate, Time is the chronicle of a love deferred and the life that hope can provide. Garrett Bradley’s documentary follows Fox Rich (a.k.a. Sibil Richardson), who has spent 21 years doggedly petitioning for her husband, Rob, to be released from prison. Rob is serving a 60-year sentence for a youthful crime in which they were both involved; meanwhile, Fox has been raising their six children and becoming a powerful advocate for change in her community.
Time details her struggle, demonstrating how mass incarceration persistently separates Black families in America, as well as how bureaucracy and centuries of narratives conceal the truth and pain of those separations. And all along, Fox has been making videos at home, which feel like a diary of her pain, endurance, and commitment to hope.
How to watch it: Time is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Watch What the Constitution Means to Me for an angry and hopeful perspective on law, debate, and rights
When Heidi Schreck was 15, she’d travel around the Pacific Northwest for speech competitions hosted by American Legion chapters, giving extemporaneous addresses on the meaning and importance of various constitutional amendments. Years later she recreated that experience with What the Constitution Means to Me, which garnered Tony and Pulitzer nominations during its 2019 Broadway run. Schreck wrote and starred in the play, in which she pretends to be her 15-year-old self, talking about the Constitution — at least until her youthful optimism is challenged by both her adult realism and the stories of her family’s past.
The filmed version of What the Constitution Means to Me (with direction from Won’t You Be My Neighbor’s Marielle Heller) captures that moving, angry, heartbreaking, and strangely inspiring Broadway show. Schreck deftly shifts between her own personal history, stories from the lives of her women ancestors, and deeply researched knowledge about Supreme Court decisions and arguments, weaving together policy, rights discourse, and lived experience. And she finishes by sparring with a teenaged debate partner about the future of the Constitution — a moment that shows the power and true purpose of real, thoughtful debate.
How to watch it: What the Constitution Means to Me is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Watch The Trial of the Chicago 7 for a stirring call to dissent and placing honor where it’s due
The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a signature Aaron Sorkin humdinger, a courtroom drama about the past with the present on its mind. Its subject is the six-month trial of a group of men who were charged with conspiracy and crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The men did travel to Chicago to protest the Vietnam War. Rioting did happen. But the men didn’t conspire — and what’s more, they’ve insisted that the Chicago Police Department started the violence.
Sorkin wrote and directed The Trial of the Chicago 7, which fiddles a bit with actual historical events in service of the story. But the movie draws parallels between issues that mattered back then — racism, militarized police, unevenly meted justice, challenges to the right to protest — and those that still resonate today. With a brilliant cast that includes, among others, Mark Rylance, Eddie Redmayne, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jeremy Strong, John Carroll Lynch, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Frank Langella, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a film aimed at connecting the dots of the past to those of the present, and suggesting that sometimes the long arm of justice runs through rocky territory.
How to watch it: The Trial of the Chicago 7 is streaming on Netflix.
Watch David Byrne’s American Utopia for a buoyant, beautiful musical celebration of our differences
In 2019, former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne mounted a Broadway show that wasn’t a concert or a play or a musical or anything, really, other than a recognizably Byrne-ian production. On a gray-hued stage full of lights and texture, accompanied by a group of brilliant barefoot musicians and singers clad in matching gray suits, Byrne wove a story of America. Songs from his catalog were reimagined for a joyous ride through his mind — and through how he imagines the possibility of an American utopia.
Spike Lee captured the whole thing on film, and the result is David Byrne’s American Utopia, a simultaneously realistic and surrealistic journey through what makes a nation a nation: We share the same home. Byrne’s songs query the notions of house and home and what they mean in an American context. His answer is that we are all different; we look different, we talk different, we believe different things, and yet there’s still the hope that we can decide to rebuild our house together. I dare you not to dance while watching it.
How to watch it: David Byrne’s American Utopia airs at 8 pm Eastern on October 17 and begins streaming on HBO Max at the same time.
If you’re looking for something else ...
Kajillionaire , Miranda July’s latest comedy, comes to digital on-demand services this week (find the full list of services here). Starring Evan Rachel Wood, Gina Rodriguez, Debra Winger, and Richard Jenkins, it’s an eccentric, affectionate tale of growing up and learning to love. (I loved the movie and wrote about how it showcases July’s enduring affection for the weirdo in all of us.)
, Miranda July’s latest comedy, comes to digital on-demand services this week (find the full list of services here). Starring Evan Rachel Wood, Gina Rodriguez, Debra Winger, and Richard Jenkins, it’s an eccentric, affectionate tale of growing up and learning to love. (I loved the movie and wrote about how it showcases July’s enduring affection for the weirdo in all of us.) Coming to select virtual cinemas: Martin Eden, which feels like a tribute to Italian cinema as much as an adaptation of a Jack London novel. It’s the story of a young man named Martin (Luca Marinelli, who you may have seen in Netflix’s The Old Guard) who aspires to join the ranks of the elite through self-education. It’s a critically acclaimed, lushly shot tragedy.
ntribute today from as little as $3.


vox--2020-10-16--Why Trump could bring down Joni Ernst in the Iowa Senate race

How Joni Ernst went from future Republican star to an incumbent on the ropes in 2020 Share All sharing options for : How Joni Ernst went from future Republican star to an incumbent on the ropes in 2020 When Joni Ernst was first elected to the US Senate in 2014 , it seemed like she had come to Capitol Hill to stay .
She earned a spot in Senate Republican leadership in her first term and even landed on the vice presidential shortlist in 2016 .
Many thought she ’ d be the latest in a long tradition of Sens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ powerful senators who outstripped the size of their state .
Ernst , a military veteran , had won her race by 9 percentage points , powered by a Republican wave election year and an unforgettable ad in which she promised to castrate the corrupt “ pigs ” in Washington .
Two years later , Donald Trump won the state by the same margin .
Iowa seemed to be getting more solidly Republican .
But now , less than a month from Election Day 2020 , something has clearly shifted .
Ernst has trailed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ points in recent polls .
And Trump is running behind his 2016 numbers , with former Vice President Joe Biden holding a slim advantage in the polls .
“ She ’ s had six years , and she ’ s forgotten Iowans , ” Greenfield , a business leader who has never held elected office , told Vox of Ernst in a phone interview .
“ She has sold out Iowans for her big corporate donors.
” It ’ s an argument that has some resonance ; polls show most Iowa voters say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to help the state in her first term .
Ernst has a few problems ; the state ’ s suburbs are growing , and like suburbs everywhere , those voters don ’ t like Trump .
She also voted to repeal Obamacare in 2017 ( Iowa is a Medicaid expansion state ) and has been saddled with the effects of Trump ’ s ethanol policies on the state ’ s farmers .
And in the past few months , Covid-19 cases have been rising in the state .
Ernst has been emphasizing her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sexual assault in the military , while leaning on support from Iowa ’ s senior senator , Chuck Grassley , and her Iowa bona fides .
Fundamentally , Ernst needs to pull ahead of Trump , rather than run behind him , and she is running out of time to do it .
Both the presidential and Senate races should be close in Iowa this year .
But it is still a stark reversal from 2014 and 2016 , a sign of Republicans ’ struggles in the Midwest that could doom their Senate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s sizable 2014 win seemed to portend a more permanent rightward shift in Iowa , and Trump ’ s convincing 2016 victory appeared to confirm it .
This is a state that ’ s 91 percent white .
The percentage of people with a bachelor ’ s degree is below the national average , while the share of Iowans who identify as evangelical Christians is higher than it is in the US as a whole .
Those are demographics most favorable to Republicans in the Trump era .
The problem for Ernst @ @ @ @ @ @ @ parts of the state that are more urban and suburban are where the population is growing — and where voters are defecting from the Republicans .
The easiest way to understand Iowa politics is to look at each of its four congressional districts .
Because the state has a nonpartisan redistricting commission , the four districts form a pretty neat squared grid .
The First District covers the northeastern part of the state , including the cities of Cedar Rapids , Dubuque , and Waterloo .
About two-thirds of the population lives in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ third lives in rural communities .
The Second District covers the southeastern part of the state , including Iowa ’ s third-largest city , Davenport .
Like the First District , it ’ s about two-thirds urban and one-third rural .
These are the battlegrounds .
Barack Obama won the First District by 13 points over Mitt Romney , but Ernst eked out a victory in 2014 , and Trump won it by 3 points against Hillary Clinton .
Then in 2018 , the district swung back toward Democrats .
Abby Finkenauer was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the seat for her party after two terms in Republican hands , and the Democratic candidate for governor , Fred Hubbell , also won the First District by a single point , a 4-point swing from the Trump-Clinton race .
The Second District has mirrored the movement in the First , going from a big Obama win in 2012 to small Ernst and Trump triumphs in 2014 and 2016 , respectively , and then a rebound for Democrats in 2018 .
One Democratic strategist told me that a mixture of Obama-Trump working-class voters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voters ( especially women ) who have abandoned Republicans has boosted the Democrats in these areas .
That likely explains Ernst ’ s struggle to rebuild her 2014 coalition .
She won her first race with 52 percent of the vote , but she ’ s pulling less than 43 percent on average in the 2020 polls .
“ Suburban women have said , ‘ To hell with this ’ and voted up and down the ticket for us , ” the strategist , who spoke on condition of anonymity , said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ some men outside of suburbia who wanted to see a federal check on Trump .
I think that ’ s part of the trend we ’ re seeing in the Senate race.
” A Republican operative told me that Ernst has to stanch the bleeding and stay competitive in the First and Second districts in order to have a shot at reelection .
If the race is within a few points , as it has been the past few cycles , she will have a chance .
But if the Democratic margin grows @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The Third District , home to Des Moines and the southwestern corner of the state , has flipped toward Democrats under Trump .
Obama barely won the Third in 2012 , and Ernst saw a commanding 8-point margin in 2014 .
But then Republican support started to erode : Trump won the district by just 3 points in 2016 , and Hubbell beat Kim Reynolds by 3 points in 2018 , an 11-point swing toward Democrats since Ernst ’ s 2014 victory .
Or , to look at it through the lens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rep. David Young won reelection by 13 points in 2016 , before losing to Democrat Cindy Axne by 2 points in 2018 .
This is a serious trouble spot for Ernst and Trump in 2020 , according to the GOP strategist , given those recent electoral trends .
“ You ’ ve got ta narrow the window .
You ’ re going to lose , but you want to lose less , ” the strategist said .
“ Joni and the president are down or tied [ in the polls ] because they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the Third.
” The Fourth District , covering the more rural northwestern region of Iowa , is the friendliest territory for Republicans .
But the margins still matter : Obama lost the Fourth by “ just ” 8 points on his way to a win in 2012 .
But Trump blew Clinton out , with a 27-point victory , and won the state easily .
If Biden and Greenfield can narrow that gap in the Fourth , it would bode well for their chances of flipping the state back to Democrats .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a generic Democrat beating a generic Republican by comfortable margins in the First , Second , and Third districts , while the Republican was running just 5 points ahead in the Fourth .
That translated to a 48-44 lead for Democrats statewide , a good indicator of how a relatively weak performance in the Fourth would be doom for Republicans if they struggle in other parts of the state .
“ Got ta run up the margins , ” the Republican operative said of the Fourth .
Ernst is trying to recapture her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that hard Trump dominates the political climate in Iowa , and that ’ s where Ernst ’ s struggles begin .
Trump won Iowa with 51 percent of the vote , but he ’ s lost some support during his first term .
A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed the president has a 46 percent approval and 52 percent disapproval rating .
Trump ’ s average support against Biden in the polls is also 46 percent , according to RealClearPolitics .
Timothy Hagle , a political scientist at the University of Iowa , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ engaged , less partisan voters .
They may not have liked Trump ’ s style , but they voted for him in 2016 anyway as a political outsider running against Hillary Clinton .
But between Trump ’ s record of trying to roll back the Affordable Care Act and the economy ’ s downturn during the Covid-19 pandemic , those voters , who are most preoccupied with “ pocketbook ” issues , may be looking for a change from Trump .
“ If the pandemic hadn ’ t hit , the economy would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Hagle told me .
“ Then , boom , the economy tanked .
Not everybody has been helped .
A lot of businesses are hurting.
” And because Ernst had only two years in the Senate before Trump took over Washington , her record is largely his .
She voted to repeal Obamacare and in favor of the Republican tax bill .
She ’ s been a reliable vote for Trump ’ s agenda , and that will be a problem for her if Iowa voters don ’ t like the president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Register poll found that most Iowans , 56 percent , thought Ernst had not done enough for the state in her first term ; 33 percent said she had .
Voters were evenly divided on whether she was too close to Trump ( 37 percent ) , or whether she gets it about right ( 43 percent ) .
Her overall job approval rating has been middling .
“ You ’ re a young new US senator .
You have a majority in the Senate , you have the House .
Then the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to stand out and be unique is pretty hard , ” the GOP operative told me .
“ It ’ s difficult to find your voice.
” The incumbent senator might have also been undermined by Trump ’ s and Reynolds ’ s handling of Covid-19 .
Iowa voters say they disapprove of the job both the president and their governor are doing , recent polls found .
Additionally , coronavirus cases are nearing their previous peak from August , and more Iowans are hospitalized with the virus than at any point in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to issue a mask mandate and pushed ahead with reopening schools and businesses .
Iowa ’ s college towns have been the site of notable outbreaks among students .
Ernst may not have helped either when she appeared to entertain conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 death count , comments that she tried to walk back at a debate with Greenfield .
“ Between President Trump ’ s unpopularity and the criticisms of Governor Reynolds , that has all led to a pox on all their houses and dragged down Ernst , ” Karen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iowa State University , told me .
“ Ernst has been a good soldier on the Republican side , and Greenfield has used that against her.
” The Ernst campaign points to the huge spending by outside Democratic groups — the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Senate Majority PAC have already spent more than $ 45 million combined — to explain the senator ’ s apparent weakness in the polls .
They believe a focus on her Iowa bona fides and the issues where she ’ s distinguished herself from her party ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more bipartisan senators of the last 25 years in a Lugar Center analysis ) can carry her to a victory .
“ As I learned from my time in the Iowa Legislature , not much gets done unless you work with both Democrats and Republicans , ” Ernst wrote in a recent Des Moines Register op-ed , which highlighted her opposition to some of the Trump EPA ’ s policies that she said would hurt Iowa farmers .
“ From fighting for relief for our farmers to helping our working families , more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bipartisan support.
” In the final weeks of the campaign , she ’ s running on her record on domestic violence ( seeking more government assistance for victims during the pandemic ) and on sexual assault in the military ( she has authored bipartisan bills to reform how such crimes are investigated and prosecuted ) .
Ernst is recently divorced from her husband , who she said had been abusive ; she has also said she was raped in college .
She ’ s been appearing at events with Grassley , who has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the most popular politician in the state .
The strategy is one reason some experts in Iowa believe Ernst could run ahead of Trump on Election Day , even though she is polling behind the president right now .
Either way , Ernst ’ s fate will be tied closely to Trump ’ s — and that could be an advantage for Democrats .
Greenfield is challenging Ernst ’ s record on health care and agriculture Reciprocally , Greenfield ’ s prospects are likely dependent , in large part , on how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a political novice , she is still establishing herself with voters .
She has sought to weave her personal story — about growing up on a farm , losing her first husband in her 20s , and later going into business to become a real estate developer— into a message aimed squarely at the voters with whom Republicans are already struggling .
She ’ s turned that personal story partly into a policy critique of Ernst , by associating the senator with Republican plans to privatize Social Security .
The program provided @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a work-related accident when she was 24 .
“ I saw what a difference it made , ” Greenfield said .
“ I will carry that with me all my life.
” She ’ s also focused on some Iowa-centric issues , like biofuel waivers , and tried to undercut Ernst ’ s image as a born-and-bred Iowan .
Her campaign seized on a moment in the candidates ’ most recent debate when the senator was asked about the price of soybeans and flubbed the answer .
The Greenfield campaign has accused @ @ @ @ @ @ @ oil industry to be a good ally for the ethanol industry , part of her message about the dangers of political corruption .
The candidate told me her first priority as senator would be reversing Citizens United .
Like many Democrats in competitive states , Greenfield doesn ’ t spend as much time talking about Trump .
In one recent tweet , she conspicuously named the renewable fuel standards waiver that she said is harmful for ethanol interests , mentioning Ernst and acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler — but not the president .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ do , Greenfield is striking a more moderate message .
She supports a public option , like Joe Biden , but not Medicare-for-all .
It appears to be having the desired effect : The Des Moines Register poll found that 42 percent of Iowa voters thought Greenfield ’ s political views were “ about right ” for the state ; 34 percent said she was too liberal .
Ernst has attacked Greenfield ’ s record as a developer , pointing ( with questionable legitimacy ) to layoffs and evictions at her company .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ tar Greenfield with progressive policies like the Green New Deal .
So far , with big spending on both sides , Greenfield is holding on to a lead in the polling averages .
The Senate election is probably going to be close , no matter what , because this is Iowa .
But something about the Democrat ’ s message seems to be working .
“ The thing people like about Joni Ernst , she was real and relatable , ” the Democratic strategist said .
“ Greenfield has that in spades .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ they think understands the life they ’ re leading.
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How Joni Ernst went from future Republican star to an incumbent on the ropes in 2020
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When Joni Ernst was first elected to the US Senate in 2014, it seemed like she had come to Capitol Hill to stay.
She earned a spot in Senate Republican leadership in her first term and even landed on the vice presidential shortlist in 2016. Many thought she’d be the latest in a long tradition of Iowa Sens. Chuck Grassley and Tom Harkin, powerful senators who outstripped the size of their state.
Ernst, a military veteran, had won her race by 9 percentage points, powered by a Republican wave election year and an unforgettable ad in which she promised to castrate the corrupt “pigs” in Washington. Two years later, Donald Trump won the state by the same margin. Iowa seemed to be getting more solidly Republican.
But now, less than a month from Election Day 2020, something has clearly shifted. Ernst has trailed Democratic candidate Theresa Greenfield by roughly 5 points in recent polls. And Trump is running behind his 2016 numbers in Iowa, with former Vice President Joe Biden holding a slim advantage in the polls.
“She’s had six years, and she’s forgotten Iowans,” Greenfield, a business leader who has never held elected office, told Vox of Ernst in a phone interview. “She has sold out Iowans for her big corporate donors.” It’s an argument that has some resonance; polls show most Iowa voters say that Ernst hasn’t done enough to help the state in her first term.
Ernst has a few problems; the state’s suburbs are growing, and like suburbs everywhere, those voters don’t like Trump. She also voted to repeal Obamacare in 2017 (Iowa is a Medicaid expansion state) and has been saddled with the effects of Trump’s ethanol policies on the state’s farmers. And in the past few months, Covid-19 cases have been rising in the state.
Ernst has been emphasizing her work on issues like domestic violence and sexual assault in the military, while leaning on support from Iowa’s senior senator, Chuck Grassley, and her Iowa bona fides. Fundamentally, Ernst needs to pull ahead of Trump, rather than run behind him, and she is running out of time to do it.
Both the presidential and Senate races should be close in Iowa this year. But it is still a stark reversal from 2014 and 2016, a sign of Republicans’ struggles in the Midwest that could doom their Senate majority and Trump in 2020.
Iowa is stubbornly competitive despite recent Republican success
Ernst’s sizable 2014 win seemed to portend a more permanent rightward shift in Iowa, and Trump’s convincing 2016 victory appeared to confirm it. This is a state that’s 91 percent white. The percentage of people with a bachelor’s degree is below the national average, while the share of Iowans who identify as evangelical Christians is higher than it is in the US as a whole. Those are demographics most favorable to Republicans in the Trump era.
The problem for Ernst, and Trump, is that the parts of the state that are more urban and suburban are where the population is growing — and where voters are defecting from the Republicans.
The easiest way to understand Iowa politics is to look at each of its four congressional districts. Because the state has a nonpartisan redistricting commission, the four districts form a pretty neat squared grid.
The First District covers the northeastern part of the state, including the cities of Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, and Waterloo. About two-thirds of the population lives in or near the cities; the other third lives in rural communities. The Second District covers the southeastern part of the state, including Iowa’s third-largest city, Davenport. Like the First District, it’s about two-thirds urban and one-third rural.
These are the battlegrounds. Barack Obama won the First District by 13 points over Mitt Romney, but Ernst eked out a victory in 2014, and Trump won it by 3 points against Hillary Clinton. Then in 2018, the district swung back toward Democrats. Abby Finkenauer was elected to the US House, reclaiming the seat for her party after two terms in Republican hands, and the Democratic candidate for governor, Fred Hubbell, also won the First District by a single point, a 4-point swing from the Trump-Clinton race.
The Second District has mirrored the movement in the First, going from a big Obama win in 2012 to small Ernst and Trump triumphs in 2014 and 2016, respectively, and then a rebound for Democrats in 2018.
One Democratic strategist told me that a mixture of Obama-Trump working-class voters who have soured on Trump and suburban voters (especially women) who have abandoned Republicans has boosted the Democrats in these areas. That likely explains Ernst’s struggle to rebuild her 2014 coalition. She won her first race with 52 percent of the vote, but she’s pulling less than 43 percent on average in the 2020 polls.
“Suburban women have said, ‘To hell with this’ and voted up and down the ticket for us,” the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. “We’ve also picked up some men outside of suburbia who wanted to see a federal check on Trump. I think that’s part of the trend we’re seeing in the Senate race.”
A Republican operative told me that Ernst has to stanch the bleeding and stay competitive in the First and Second districts in order to have a shot at reelection. If the race is within a few points, as it has been the past few cycles, she will have a chance. But if the Democratic margin grows, it’ll be a struggle.
The Third District, home to Des Moines and the southwestern corner of the state, has flipped toward Democrats under Trump. Obama barely won the Third in 2012, and Ernst saw a commanding 8-point margin in 2014. But then Republican support started to erode: Trump won the district by just 3 points in 2016, and Hubbell beat Kim Reynolds by 3 points in 2018, an 11-point swing toward Democrats since Ernst’s 2014 victory.
Or, to look at it through the lens of its US House races: Republican Rep. David Young won reelection by 13 points in 2016, before losing to Democrat Cindy Axne by 2 points in 2018. This is a serious trouble spot for Ernst and Trump in 2020, according to the GOP strategist, given those recent electoral trends.
“You’ve gotta narrow the window. You’re going to lose, but you want to lose less,” the strategist said. “Joni and the president are down or tied [in the polls] because they haven’t closed the gap enough in the Third.”
The Fourth District, covering the more rural northwestern region of Iowa, is the friendliest territory for Republicans. But the margins still matter: Obama lost the Fourth by “just” 8 points on his way to a win in 2012. But Trump blew Clinton out, with a 27-point victory, and won the state easily.
If Biden and Greenfield can narrow that gap in the Fourth, it would bode well for their chances of flipping the state back to Democrats. A recent Des Moines Register poll found a generic Democrat beating a generic Republican by comfortable margins in the First, Second, and Third districts, while the Republican was running just 5 points ahead in the Fourth.
That translated to a 48-44 lead for Democrats statewide, a good indicator of how a relatively weak performance in the Fourth would doom Republicans if they struggle in other parts of the state.
“Gotta run up the margins,” the Republican operative said of the Fourth.
Ernst is trying to recapture her 2014 magic, but Trump is making that hard
Trump dominates the political climate in Iowa, and that’s where Ernst’s struggles begin.
Trump won Iowa with 51 percent of the vote, but he’s lost some support during his first term. A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed the president has a 46 percent approval and 52 percent disapproval rating. Trump’s average support against Biden in the polls is also 46 percent, according to RealClearPolitics.
Timothy Hagle, a political scientist at the University of Iowa, pinned Trump’s troubles on less engaged, less partisan voters. They may not have liked Trump’s style, but they voted for him in 2016 anyway as a political outsider running against Hillary Clinton. But between Trump’s record of trying to roll back the Affordable Care Act and the economy’s downturn during the Covid-19 pandemic, those voters, who are most preoccupied with “pocketbook” issues, may be looking for a change from Trump.
“If the pandemic hadn’t hit, the economy would have been a real selling point,” Hagle told me. “Then, boom, the economy tanked. Not everybody has been helped. A lot of businesses are hurting.”
And because Ernst had only two years in the Senate before Trump took over Washington, her record is largely his. She voted to repeal Obamacare and in favor of the Republican tax bill. She’s been a reliable vote for Trump’s agenda, and that will be a problem for her if Iowa voters don’t like the president.
Last month’s Des Moines Register poll found that most Iowans, 56 percent, thought Ernst had not done enough for the state in her first term; 33 percent said she had. Voters were evenly divided on whether she was too close to Trump (37 percent), or whether she gets it about right (43 percent). Her overall job approval rating has been middling.
“You’re a young new US senator. You have a majority in the Senate, you have the House. Then the president comes in, and the ability to stand out and be unique is pretty hard,” the GOP operative told me. “It’s difficult to find your voice.”
The incumbent senator might have also been undermined by Trump’s and Reynolds’s handling of Covid-19. Iowa voters say they disapprove of the job both the president and their governor are doing, recent polls found.
Additionally, coronavirus cases are nearing their previous peak from August, and more Iowans are hospitalized with the virus than at any point in the outbreak. Reynolds has pointedly refused to issue a mask mandate and pushed ahead with reopening schools and businesses. Iowa’s college towns have been the site of notable outbreaks among students.
Ernst may not have helped either when she appeared to entertain conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 death count, comments that she tried to walk back at a debate with Greenfield.
“Between President Trump’s unpopularity and the criticisms of Governor Reynolds, that has all led to a pox on all their houses and dragged down Ernst,” Karen Kedrowski, a political science professor at Iowa State University, told me. “Ernst has been a good soldier on the Republican side, and Greenfield has used that against her.”
The Ernst campaign points to the huge spending by outside Democratic groups — the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Senate Majority PAC have already spent more than $45 million combined — to explain the senator’s apparent weakness in the polls.
They believe a focus on her Iowa bona fides and the issues where she’s distinguished herself from her party (Ernst was ranked as one of the more bipartisan senators of the last 25 years in a Lugar Center analysis) can carry her to a victory.
“As I learned from my time in the Iowa Legislature, not much gets done unless you work with both Democrats and Republicans,” Ernst wrote in a recent Des Moines Register op-ed, which highlighted her opposition to some of the Trump EPA’s policies that she said would hurt Iowa farmers. “From fighting for relief for our farmers to helping our working families, more than 60 percent of my bills have bipartisan support.”
In the final weeks of the campaign, she’s running on her record on domestic violence (seeking more government assistance for victims during the pandemic) and on sexual assault in the military (she has authored bipartisan bills to reform how such crimes are investigated and prosecuted). Ernst is recently divorced from her husband, who she said had been abusive; she has also said she was raped in college.
She’s been appearing at events with Grassley, who has served in the Senate since 1981 and is the most popular politician in the state. The strategy is one reason some experts in Iowa believe Ernst could run ahead of Trump on Election Day, even though she is polling behind the president right now.
Either way, Ernst’s fate will be tied closely to Trump’s — and that could be an advantage for Democrats.
Greenfield is challenging Ernst’s record on health care and agriculture
Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield’s prospects are likely dependent, in large part, on how Joe Biden performs in Iowa because, as a political novice, she is still establishing herself with voters. She has sought to weave her personal story — about growing up on a farm, losing her first husband in her 20s, and later going into business to become a real estate developer — into a message aimed squarely at the voters with whom Republicans are already struggling.
She’s turned that personal story partly into a policy critique of Ernst by associating the senator with Republican plans to privatize Social Security. The program provided benefits for Greenfield when her husband died in a work-related accident when she was 24.
“I saw what a difference it made,” Greenfield said. “I will carry that with me all my life.”
She’s also focused on some Iowa-centric issues, like biofuel waivers, and tried to undercut Ernst’s image as a born-and-bred Iowan. Her campaign seized on a moment in the candidates’ most recent debate when the senator was asked about the price of soybeans and flubbed the answer.
A Senator from Iowa should know the price of soybeans, @joniernst. #IASen pic.twitter.com/QrbNIdWgdk — Theresa Greenfield (@GreenfieldIowa) October 16, 2020
The Greenfield campaign has accused Ernst of being too close with the oil industry to be a good ally for the ethanol industry, part of her message about the dangers of political corruption. The candidate told me her first priority as senator would be reversing Citizens United.
Like many Democrats in competitive states, Greenfield doesn’t spend as much time talking about Trump. In one recent tweet, she conspicuously named the renewable fuel standards waiver that she said is harmful for ethanol interests, mentioning Ernst and acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler — but not the president.
Just like her opponent is trying to do, Greenfield is striking a more moderate message on health care. She supports a public option, like Joe Biden, but not Medicare-for-all. It appears to be having the desired effect: The Des Moines Register poll found that 42 percent of Iowa voters thought Greenfield’s political views were “about right” for the state; 34 percent said she was too liberal.
Ernst has attacked Greenfield’s record as a developer, pointing (with questionable legitimacy) to layoffs and evictions at her company. Business interest groups have also tried to tar Greenfield with progressive policies like the Green New Deal.
So far, with big spending on both sides, Greenfield is holding on to a lead in the polling averages. The Senate election is probably going to be close, no matter what, because this is Iowa. But something about the Democrat’s message seems to be working.
“The thing people like about Joni Ernst, she was real and relatable,” the Democratic strategist said. “Greenfield has that in spades. ... Voters want to vote for somebody they think understands the life they’re leading.”