What actually matters this week, according to our politics team

Good morning, and welcome to election week! Tens of millions of people have already cast their ballots early, with tens of millions more bound for the polls tomorrow as Americans decide whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump will be the next US president.  

Between the presidential election, congressional races, and ballot measures, there’s a lot at stake in this election, from the economy to women’s health care to civil rights to the future for immigrants and their families. If you’re feeling particularly unnerved going into the week, be sure to check out our story on the unique dread that is political anxiety and how you can cope with it. 

And follow Today Explained all week as we bring election results and analysis straight to your inbox, and our writers break down what the news means for the nation and for you. 

But first, we’re setting the stage with a preview of the themes, races, and storylines that our politics and policy team will be looking at closely throughout the week. 

Andrew Prokop, senior politics correspondent

I’ve been watching with growing alarm how Trump and the people around him are voicing certainty that he will win — and that, if he loses, it will mean the election was rigged. What I wonder is just how mobilized his supporters would end up being in the event of a narrow Harris win, just how far they’d go. As I wrote last week, there are some procedural and legal reasons to expect a Trump electoral challenge would be even less successful in 2024 than it was in 2020, but there is a real risk that ends up mattering less than force and partisanship.

Patrick Reis, senior politics and ideas editor

I’m curious to see how the vote breaks down among young men, particularly young men who are voting in their first election. While Kamala Harris does better with younger voters overall thanks to a massive advantage among young women, the New York Times/Siena College polls have found Donald Trump winning among young men overall (58 percent to 37 percent). There’s a reason Trump and JD Vance both went on Joe Rogan’s podcast — which is massively popular, especially among young men — and why Tim Walz appeared on a World of Warcraft Twitch stream. The campaigns are trying to find these voters where they are.

Rachel Cohen, policy correspondent 

Ten states have abortion measures on their ballots, making it one of the biggest opportunities for voters to make their voices heard on the subject since the rollback of Roe v. Wade. Some could overturn sweeping state abortion bans, while others would strengthen protections against future restrictions on reproductive rights. 

Among the most anticipated contests is Florida, where abortion is almost entirely banned. Advocates in Florida have raised over $100 million to restore access up to fetal viability — around 22 to 24 weeks — but the measure, known as Amendment 4, needs approval from 60 percent of voters, a high threshold to meet.   

Zack Beauchamp, senior correspondent and author of Vox’s On the Right newsletter

There are two X factors that I’m looking for to determine whether Harris will outperform her polls. The first is North Carolina, a state where Trump is favored but Republicans have nominated a sure loser for governor: self-described “Black Nazi” Mark Robinson. Will Harris get a “reverse coattails” effect, where voters turn out to stop Robinson and vote for her, or will there be a lot of folks who split their tickets at the governor and state level?

The second is Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania. In the wake of the “floating island of garbage” comments, the Puerto Rican community seems to have mobilized to a degree I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this late in a presidential race. Given that there are about 473,000 Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania alone, significant anti-Trump turnout in this group could end up being critical.

Christian Paz, senior politics reporter

It’s not impossible for me to conceive of a situation where we see a strong rightward shift of Latino voters in places like California, Illinois, Texas, Florida, and New York, but less of a shift in battleground states where they generally may have a bit more of a Democratic tilt. I’m very curious to see how Latino voters turn out in this election, and whether we see more ideological sorting (Latino moderates and conservatives shifting toward Republicans) and where they prove decisive. 

Given how young this voting group is, I’m also curious to see if rates of voting participation increase — if we see nonvoters turn out at higher rates, like the Trump campaign has been counting on.

Abdallah Fayyad, policy correspondent and author of Vox’s Within Our Means newsletter

Arab Americans make up hundreds of thousands of voters in key swing states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania, and they have tended to vote Democrat in recent cycles. I’m looking to see how Israel’s war in Gaza might sway voters. A couple of polls show Donald Trump having a slight edge over Kamala Harris. Although many of those voters fear the prospect of another Trump presidency, there’s also a sense that Democrats have to face electoral consequences for what the Biden administration has done to Gaza. One pollster told me that the “punish Democrats” vote might be smaller than we expect. But even so, he says, “those are a lot of votes Democrats will have left on the table.”

Ian Millhiser, senior correspondent

One of the biggest things that keeps me up at night is that the Supreme Court’s Republican majority, the same majority that recently ruled that Donald Trump was allowed to commit crimes while he was in office, will attempt to flip the election if Harris is the legitimate winner. Realistically, this outcome is only likely if the election is extraordinarily close. The Supreme Court chose the winner of the 2000 election, which came down to a nail-biter in Florida. It stayed its hand in 2020, an election in which Biden won by a large enough margin that the Court would have had to flip three states to deny him victory.

Nicole Narea, senior reporter, politics and society

Trump’s closing argument has been a redux of his 2016 campaign on steroids: fearmongering about criminal immigrants, threatening mass deportations, and racist attacks like his lies about Haitians eating pets and his assertion that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country. By engaging in such extreme rhetoric, he has managed to pull Harris, and Democrats overall, further to the right on the issue of immigration. 

That’s despite the fact that his portrayal of immigration isn’t grounded in reality. Border crossings have come down significantly throughout 2024. Still, Republicans could read the election results as either a vindication or a rebuke of Trump’s approach.

Angela Chen, senior editor, policy and ideas

I’m tracking a lot of important races, but I’m always interested in what’s going on in my home state of California, particularly when it comes to housing. This year, that means watching Prop 33, which would expand rent control, and Prop 5, which would lower voting thresholds so it’s easier for local governments to build affordable housing. Then there’s the purely symbolic Prop 3. This one would repeal Prop 8, an infamous anti-same-sex marriage measure that passed when I was just too young to vote against it.