Republicans had a big day on Monday. Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance as his running mate. Two days after surviving an assassination attempt, he officially became his party’s presidential nominee. And the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee got underway, with a festive mood among the delegates. The Run-Up is here in Milwaukee for the occasion. In special episodes this week, we’ll tell you what we’re seeing — and what that tells us about Trump’s Republican Party. To kick things off, Jess Bi...
Jul 16, 2024•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast You’ve seen the image by now: Former President Donald J. Trump has blood running down the side of his face. He’s being escorted off his rally’s stage by the Secret Service, and he pauses to look at the crowd, his fist proudly in the air. It’s too soon to know how the attempt on his life on Saturday in Pennsylvania will affect the outcome of the race. But Trump’s allies have already made the shock of the assassination attempt, and the violence, part of a clear political message. To hear them tell...
Jul 15, 2024•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast President Biden is telling people to Google it . Former president Donald J. Trump is distancing himself from it. Even the actress Taraji P. Henson talked about it onstage at the B.E.T. Awards. Project 2025. It’s a blueprint for an incoming conservative president — presumably Donald Trump — spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation , a conservative think tank. And now it is everywhere in this tumultuous moment of the 2024 presidential race. But what is it? Is it a guide to a possible second Trump ad...
Jul 11, 2024•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast The latest national poll from The New York Times and Siena College shows former President Donald J. Trump leading President Biden by nine percentage points among registered voters — a pretty big shift in his direction in the week since the presidential debate. It has become clear in the past week that there is no obvious path to replacing Mr. Biden as the Democratic Party’s nominee. But there is a strong desire among Americans for something different. We heard that directly from voters we met la...
Jul 04, 2024•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast As you may have heard, Thursday night was the first debate between President Biden and former president Donald J. Trump. In short, it was not a great night for Mr. Biden. The president’s debate performance triggered significant panic among top Democrats, who for months have been dismissing concerns about Mr. Biden’s age. So, how is this happening? Despite all the concerns polls showed about age, how has the Democratic Party arrived at this moment? That’s a line of inquiry The Run-Up has been put...
Jun 29, 2024•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast We don’t know exactly what will happen when President Biden and former president Donald J. Trump take the debate stage in Atlanta tonight. We do know, however, that the first debate between the major party candidates is happening earlier in the election season than usual. And we also know that we’ve seen a version of this show before. Their past matchups have featured bitter insults, constant interruptions and were political spectacles judged more on optics than on substance. This year, consider...
Jun 27, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast For decades, the mainstream Republican position on abortion rights was clear: Overturn Roe v. Wade and send the issue back to the states. But since June 2022, when the Supreme Court’s conservative majority did exactly that, Republicans have faced a question that few seemed to consider beforehand: What comes next? In Arizona, that question is especially important. In that battleground state, Democratic groups have already mobilized to put a citizen initiative on the November ballot that would ens...
Jun 20, 2024•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Arizona is a battleground state that both parties are desperate to win in November. And right now, supporters of abortion rights in the state are in the midst of gathering signatures to ensure that, along with the presidential race and a competitive Senate contest, enshrining the right to abortion in the state’s Constitution will be on the ballot this fall. The measure has broad support in the state, and Democrats are banking on that to drive a wide range of people to the polls to vote on the ba...
Jun 13, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the days since a Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty of 34 felony counts, people have mostly been asking one big question. Will this matter in November? Over the past few days, our colleagues at The New York Times and at the Siena College Research Institute have been trying to answer that question. They spoke with 1,900 people they had previously polled to find out how they are currently thinking. Most people have not changed their mind. But some have — and they are moving away from Mr. ...
Jun 06, 2024•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast While the political world waits for a verdict in Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan, we wanted to take a moment to remember how we got here — especially the broader political context of the fall of 2016. Mr. Trump is charged with falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment to the adult film actress Stormy Daniels as part of a scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Back in 2016, Mr. Trump was down in the polls and worried about losing support fr...
May 30, 2024•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast As he runs for re-election, President Biden is talking about one specific issue a lot: the economy. He emphasizes the nation’s low unemployment and slowing inflation, and even rolled out a catchy nickname for the good numbers: Bidenomics. The problem for Biden is that few Americans seem to agree that the economy is strong. They think the opposite. This week, we explore the gap between the good economy, as described by the president, and the not-so-great economy, as felt by so many Americans. And...
May 23, 2024•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast If the 2024 presidential election were a road trip, we would now be at the part where you start to wonder: Are we there yet? The matchup is set, but there’s still such a long way to go until November. And one of the things we’ve noticed about the questions that you’ve been sending in is that you’re starting to mix it up. You want to know what Donald Trump’s possible vice-presidential picks are, how down-ballot races are shaping up, and what difference celebrity endorsements could make. This week...
May 16, 2024•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Here’s what we know when it comes to the antiwar protests on college campuses and electoral politics: President Biden does seem to have a problem with young activists on the left. The disapproval only intensified in the days after the president spoke critically about the protests. But whether or not he has a larger problem with young voters in general remains to be seen. Which is why one statement from a more mainstream group, saying the administration is on a “mistaken route,” is worth consider...
May 09, 2024•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast For years, Wisconsin has been one of the most heavily gerrymandered states in the country, with legislative districts that overwhelmingly favored Republicans. In fact, the maps were so one-sided that, even though the state has a roughly equal share of Democrats and Republicans, Republicans were able to lock in large majorities in the State Assembly and Senate. But earlier this year, the state adopted new maps, which have significantly changed the political landscape in the state for Democrats. T...
May 02, 2024•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast The stakes of the 2024 presidential election could not be more serious. But in this matchup of two old, largely unpopular candidates, there is no shortage of material for comedians. This may be bad news for voters. However, it’s good news for the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner — essentially the Super Bowl of political comedy — which takes place this Saturday in Washington. The president typically attends the dinner and gives a speech, while also trying his hand at some jokes. But...
Apr 25, 2024•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast In a close election, every vote matters. But in the 2020 presidential race, there’s a good argument that young voters mattered a lot — and helped tip the scales for President Biden. This year, though, things seem much less straightforward. Polling data shows that Mr. Biden’s approval rating has tanked among young Americans. Polls also show that he continues to be hounded by the perception that he is too old for the job. And young activists are creating a public-relations nightmare for the campai...
Apr 18, 2024•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Right now, President Biden’s clearest path to re-election in November seems to run through the middle of the country. Here’s what that would look like: Biden wins the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan — plus the other states that usually go blue — and it brings him to 269 electoral votes, just one vote shy of securing the presidency. And that’s where Nebraska comes in. Nebraska is one of just two states that distributes electoral college votes proportionally rather ...
Apr 11, 2024•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Last week President Biden, flanked by former Presidents Obama and Clinton, came to Radio City Music Hall for what Biden’s campaign called “the most successful political fund-raiser in American history.” The former Presidents, alongside celebrities like Stephen Colbert, Mindy Kaling, Lizzo, and Queen Latifah, spoke to an audience of 5,000 donors. And according to the Biden campaign, the event brought in more than $25 million. That fund-raising haul further tips the scales in the money race betwee...
Apr 04, 2024•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast The people who don’t vote are often left out of the political conversation. Campaigns don’t spend much money on them, and the media doesn’t devote much coverage to them. But to understand a presidential contest like the 2024 race — one that threatens to be extremely close — we have to understand not just the people who show up to vote, but also those who sit out elections. This week, we talk to several people who skipped the last Trump-Biden matchup in 2020 and ask how they’re thinking about 202...
Mar 28, 2024•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, the Democratic National Committee formed a unit to push back against third-party candidates and independents. At the same time, a number of Biden allies have formed a super PAC called Clear Choice, which plans to do the same, signaling the seriousness of the potential impact of an outsider candidate. One such candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is polling above 10 percent in national surveys and is well known for his family lineage. Today, the candidate shares why he decided to jump in,...
Mar 21, 2024•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast On Tuesday night, Donald J. Trump won another four nominating contests and officially became the presumptive Republican nominee. That’s despite the criminal charges, the judgments made against him in defamation and sexual abuse cases, the hundreds of millions of dollars in legal penalties and the continued fallout from the events of Jan. 6, 2021. Considering all of that, we want to ask Republicans the same questions we posed to Democrats last week — and to answer them more directly than we have ...
Mar 14, 2024•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast With Super Tuesday behind us, this week is the end of one chapter of this campaign. On the Republican side, former President Donald Trump’s only remaining challenger, Nikki Haley, is out of the race. And on the Democratic side, President Biden has so far secured more than 70 percent of the delegates he needs to secure the nomination. The general election is here. And so too is the rematch we’ve been expecting, despite the fact that the majority of Americans continue to say they wish they had oth...
Mar 07, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s Super Tuesday. That means that people in 15 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia) and one territory (American Samoa) are going to the polls. Usually, Super Tuesday is one of the biggest dates on the primary calendar — a day when a lot of people across the country make their voices heard. This year is different. There’s no reason to believe that today’s results will alt...
Mar 05, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast For a lot of his most loyal supporters, Donald Trump isn’t just the former president or even the potential next president. He is, in their view, the true president — because many of them believe the 2020 election was stolen. So with Mr. Trump marching toward the Republican nomination and a likely rematch with President Biden in November, we went to this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference for a temperature check on election denial. Can the MAGA movement move on? Or is the only result...
Feb 29, 2024•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast For the past few months, we’ve been asking our listeners to write in with questions, and we’ve gotten some great ones. Things like: How does polling work ? Does Joe Biden’s stance on Gaza present a campaign challenge ? And who might Donald Trump select as his running mate? But as we were sorting through them, an underlying theme started to emerge: People can’t seem to fathom that we’re careening toward a Biden-Trump rematch — and they want to know if anything could alter this seemingly inevitabl...
Feb 22, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you had just a few minutes to win someone’s affection, how political would you get? Would you dive right in, or avoid politics altogether? The Run-Up went speed dating in suburban Philadelphia to find out. Usually when we’re out in the field, we’re at rallies or campaign events – places where people are vocal about their political beliefs. But for many participants at the dating event, talking politics was a complete turn off. This got us thinking: How do political divisions — the things that...
Feb 15, 2024•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Our listeners have lots of questions about polling. Questions such as: Is it still relevant? How does it work? How do you get a reliable sample when people don’t answer the phone? At this point in a usual primary season, still weeks away from Super Tuesday, most of the attention of polling would be on who might capture the nomination. But this year, with the race all but set, we’re anticipating nine months of polling on two men we already know very well. Today, to prepare for that future and to ...
Feb 08, 2024•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nevada is doing things differently this year. Or at least, it tried to. The first presidential nominating contest in the west takes place on Tuesday — and on Thursday. But that’s not what state officials were hoping would happen when they decided to move from a caucus to a primary in 2021. Democrats got on board — and President Biden is expected to win that contest handily on Tuesday. On the Republican side, however, things did not go according to plan. A caucus was seen as being beneficial to f...
Feb 06, 2024•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast President Biden has started to switch gears into campaign mode. On the trail, he’s particularly focused on South Carolina, which holds the first official Democratic primary contest on Saturday. And one of his first campaign events of the year took him to Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, for a speech that addressed the dangers of white supremacy. But a few minutes into the speech, he was interrupted by protesters calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. Since that day in early January, it seems as i...
Feb 01, 2024•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Donald Trump’s victory over Nikki Haley in the New Hampshire primary made two things clear: The MAGA wing of the G.O.P. is ready for his coronation, while anti-Trump Republicans believe the race is far from over. From inside Trump’s victory party on Tuesday night, we hear from supporters of the former president and from the stars of his orbit, who see themselves as being on the verge of “obliterating the establishment.” And from Tim Draper, a billionaire venture capitalist who is backing Haley. ...
Jan 25, 2024•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
