2020 election: announcements, news, and updates

In her first run for president during the Democratic primary, Kamala Harris said “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking” during a 2019 town hall.

Then, when she was running to be Joe Biden’s vice president in the 2020 campaign, Harris pushed back firmly when accused by then-Vice President Mike Pence of wanting to ban hydraulic fracturing during a debate.

Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) has tested positive for the coronavirus amid her campaign to retain her Senate seat in a special election against Democratic candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock.

Loeffler reportedly tested positive Friday; according to her campaign, she received an additional inconclusive test result Saturday, and is asymptomatic. She is currently quarantining. If she follows Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, she will need to refrain from interacting with others — including holding in-person campaign events — for at least nine more days, a significant setback given Georgia’s special election is fast approaching, on January 5.

House Democrats didn’t fare as well in the 2020 election as they expected, and the blame game has started.

To moderate members like Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) and Conor Lamb (D-PA), the problem is clear: members of their own party. Both have said Democrats need to put distance between themselves and left-wing activists. But to more progressive Democrats, that’s scapegoating for broader failures. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and others argue the party’s organizing efforts largely failed in 2020 and have urged leaders to not ignore its base.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew (NJ-2), who was elected to the House of Representatives as a Democrat before switching parties and declaring his “undying support” for President Donald Trump, has won reelection.

The now-Republican first-term Congress member defeated his Democratic challenger, Amy Kennedy (yes, she’s one of those Kennedys), according to a call by Decision Desk.

I live in California. And three weeks before the election, the people in my quarantine bubble sat down in our living room for a nine-hour research project: figuring out how to vote.

Not for our elected representatives or for president, but on kidney dialysis regulations and stem-cell medical research funding and whether to uphold a law passed by the legislature replacing cash bail with a risk assessment system — and nine more propositions after those. My ballot was six pages long, many of them on issues I’d never thought about before — and, after a few frustrating hours figuring out how to vote, will never think about again.

One of the surprises in the election is that President Donald Trump actually improved his standing with Black voters over four years ago.

According to AP VoteCast, Trump won 8 percent of the Black vote, about a 2 percentage-point gain on his 2016 numbers (using the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, or CCES, a national survey of more than 50,000 confirmed voters, as a point of comparison).

Republican Tony Gonzales, a former Navy cryptologist and professor at the University of Maryland, has claimed victory in a tight race to fill the vacancy left by Rep. Will Hurd in Texas’s 23rd Congressional District, dashing Democrats’ hopes of picking up the seat.

The San Antonio native had received an endorsement from President Donald Trump and was part of the National Republican Campaign Committee’s “Young Guns” program, which aims to recruit and support candidates in battleground districts.

A new group of Black progressives has officially been elected to Congress.

It’s been a year defined in part by nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Meanwhile, unabashedly progressive Black candidates ran in — and won — races around the country. It’s another step toward meaningful representation for Black and brown constituents.

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has won reelection in North Carolina, fending off a challenge from his Republican lieutenant, Dan Forest.

Cooper’s seat was one of Democrats’ highest-priority governor’s offices to defend this cycle, but the result wasn’t particularly surprising. Although North Carolina is a battleground state and had tilted Republican in the last few election cycles, most polls showed Cooper in the lead. Forest was cutting into that margin as the election approached — Emerson polling had Cooper up by 4 percentage points in mid-October, down from 8 in a previous poll — but some other polls showed Cooper leading by double digits.

Even if Democrats pull off a Senate race sweep this fall, they’re almost certainly not going to get the 60-vote supermajority they need to pass bills if Republicans decide to block them.

The battle for the Senate majority is extremely close and competitive. Even though Democrats have undoubtedly expanded the battleground, there are a number of states within the polling margin of error. Basically, these races are statistically tied, and could swing to either the Republican or Democratic candidate.

The big question overshadowing “Who will win the presidential election?” is: “When will we actually know who won?”

The pandemic and historic levels of mail-in voting mean that we have reason to expect that certain states will be very, very slow to count their votes this year — while others will be at least relatively quicker.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is leading in two new polls from one of the most pivotal swing states in the 2020 presidential election: Pennsylvania.

The final polls of the state from Monmouth University and Morning Consult have Biden ahead of President Donald Trump.

With two days to go until Election Day, early voter turnout in the US has already reached historic levels. As of Sunday morning, around 92 million people have already cast their ballot — nearly twice as many as voted early in 2016 — and that number is sure to grow before Tuesday.

Early voter turnout this election is equivalent to just slightly more than two-thirds of the total votes cast in 2016, according to data provided by the US Elections Project, which is run by University of Florida professor Michael McDonald.

President Donald Trump on Sunday morning tweeted that he is making gains with young Black voters (which seems to be true), and that the reason for this is that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden “called Black Youth SUPER PREDATORS,” which didn’t happen (Trump followed up that Biden used the phrase “according to my sources”).

Trump has said this many, many times on the campaign trail — presumably because his campaign wielded the “superpredators” attack against Hillary Clinton in 2016. And while there’s no real evidence that it was a particularly effective strategy, Trump’s now-former campaign manager Brad Parscale touted it as effective. But whether or not it worked in 2016, it is true that Hillary Clinton used the word in reference to Black youths.

A study conducted by four Stanford University economic researchers determined that 18 Trump campaign rallies, the bulk of which took place over the past summer, “ultimately resulted in more than 30,000 incremental confirmed cases of COVID-19” and “likely led to more than 700 deaths.”

The study examined 18 counties that hosted Trump rallies in locations such as Tulsa, Oklahoma; Phoenix, Arizona; and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, held between June 20 and September 22. It then compared the rate of post-rally Covid-19 infections in the host counties to that of comparable counties that did not host a rally. Attendance at individual rallies varied, but Trump often draws thousands of supporters to these events.

As much change as the 2020 election might bring on a national level, it’s unlikely to shake up many states’ leadership: Of the 11 states with governor races in 2020, nine have incumbents running for reelection, many of whom are expected to coast to victory.

That makes Montana, where current Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock is leaving the seat open to run for US Senate, one of the cycle’s most contested gubernatorial races. Bullock’s lieutenant, Mike Cooney, is running against the current US House member in Montana’s at-large congressional district, Republican Greg Gianforte.

This is the fourth in a series of stories looking at the people who could cast the most decisive votes in the 2020 election. You can read Ella Nilsen’s story on suburban women here, Dylan Scott’s story on Rust Belt workers here, and Nicole Narea’s story on young Latinx voters here.

D’Angelo Crosby says the demands placed on Black Americans this year are so heavy, they’re incapacitating — leaving him undecided in the election.

This is the third in a series of stories looking at the people who could cast the most decisive votes in the 2020 election. You can read Ella Nilsen’s story on suburban women here and Dylan Scott’s story on Rust Belt workers here.

Kassandra Alvarez remembers the anxiety she felt growing up in Arizona.

Georgia, a once-solidly Republican state, has not one but two competitive Senate races this year.

Driven by booming and quickly-diversifying suburbs outside Atlanta, and suburban women fleeing the Republican party under President Donald Trump, these trends could give Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock a shot at winning.

President Donald Trump is polling significantly worse than he was at this point in 2016, both nationally and in key states. His chances of victory in the FiveThirtyEight forecast model (11 percent) are lower than they ended up last time (28 percent), as of October 28.

But those chances aren’t zero. So what would it take for Trump to win?

The polls are pretty clear at this point — Joe Biden is in position to win the presidential election.

He’s up nationally, he’s up in Pennsylvania, he’s up in Florida, and he’s even up in North Carolina. He’s definitely up in Michigan and Wisconsin. If the states go the way the polls say, he’s going to win the election, and it won’t even be particularly close.

Follow all of Vox’s coverage of the 2024 election here. Looking for a distraction instead? We’ve got you covered.

While tapping through Instagram Stories, you are likely to see at least a few of your friends posing with their voted ballots. Before you follow their lead, check to see whether your state still bans the practice — or you could end up like Justin Timberlake, who in 2016 deleted a photo of himself voting after realizing it was against the law in Tennessee.

Democrats have been trying to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for years, but they haven’t been able to do it.

Among the challenges they face is Kentucky’s conservative skew and the solid base of support McConnell has as a result. By emphasizing the funding he’s been able to bring back to Kentucky for projects like a veterans affairs medical center in Louisville and stressing how his prominent position benefits the state, McConnell has also made a case for his reelection that continues to resonate with many voters.

This is the second in a series of stories looking at the people who could cast the most decisive votes in the 2020 election. You can read Ella Nilsen’s story on suburban women here and Li Zhou’s story on Arizona youth here.

Robert Noftz is a voter Donald Trump should have been able to win in the 2020 election: He’s an anti-abortion Christian who works at a major appliance factory in northwestern Ohio.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has made a late-stage play for Texas in the hope of bringing to fruition his party’s longtime dream of flipping a once reliably red state. Local Democrats have set their sights lower on the ballot: They’re hoping to pick up nine seats in the Texas House of Representatives, enough to give them control of the state’s House for the first time since 2002.

The goal could be within their grasp. Those seats are all in districts that Democrat Beto O’Rourke won in his ultimately unsuccessful 2018 US Senate run. Even if President Donald Trump claims Texas’s 38 electoral votes in November and Sen. John Cornyn fends off newcomer MJ Hegar, Democrats hope that the state House will be the first domino to fall in their mission to remake Texas politics for good.