Episode 18: A Mid-May Election Update

It’s your mid-May election update, where we take a look at where the campaign stands one month after our last update. The characteristics of the election that were emerging in mid-April have now taken hold, with Joe Biden consolidating the gains he made in late winter. Even though the past month has been a relatively steady period, a lot has happened. We’ve watched Nikki Haley continue to be a factor in the moribund Republican primary race—raising a big warning flag for the presumptive party nominee. We’ve seen Biden continue to maintain the fundraising and organizational advantages that had become apparent in April. Abortion continues to be a key electoral issue despite not getting the attention it deserves, and Democrats continue to overperform in special elections. We now know what it looks like to see Donald Trump as a criminal defendant. And we learned that RFK, Jr. has a brain worm. We’ll look at all these events and try to make sense of where the campaign stands during these first mild days of 2024.