A hand-picked selection of episodes to introduce you to the people, places and issues that will make the difference on Election Day.

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Last summer, politics, country music and cultural grievance collided with the growing popularity of a new song from recording artist Jason Aldean.

Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk

Carjack an old lady at a red light

Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store

Ya think it’s cool, well, act a fool if ya like

In the lyrics, Aldean lists behaviors he associates with cities, like lawlessness and disrespect for the flag or the police. And then he warns listeners of the consequences if they “try that in a small town.”

The song quickly hit the country music charts. Then, the music video was released.

In it, images of Aldean singing alternate with newsreel footage of looting, violence and scenes from the racial justice protests that took place during the summer of 2020.

The video was quietly edited to remove some of the more contested footage, but the battle lines had already been drawn. The song quickly gained popularity on the political right. And Republican primary candidates, including Donald Trump, began praising Aldean and playing the song at their events.

And so as we were thinking about how to understand the G.O.P. presidential primary, we saw that Jason Aldean would be performing at the Iowa state fair. And we knew we had to go.

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Polls suggest that they are – and that Black voters’ support for Donald Trump, especially among men, is rising. In November 2023, Astead W. Herndon convened a special "Run-Up" Thanksgiving focus group to explore what might be behind those numbers. He spoke with family, friends and, parishioners from his father’s church, community members and people he grew up with.

Because where better to talk politics than over turkey and an ample dessert spread?

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Arizona is a battleground state that both parties are desperate to win in November.

And supporters of abortion rights in the state gathered enough 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 ballot measure — and, they hope, for Mr. Biden. But there’s no guarantee that will happen.

In this episode from June: We’re with volunteers around the state — at a trailhead outside Phoenix and at Bunco night in Bullhead City — who are working to get the measure on the ballot, and we spoke with the people who were supporting their efforts.

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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.

But what is it? Is it a guide to a possible second Trump administration? And why are Democrats seizing on it now? 

On this episode

Jonathan Swan, who covers politics and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign for The New York Times.

Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California.

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How exactly did we end up with Donald Trump as the Republican nominee again? And why?

To answer these questions, we turn to two different branches of the Republican Party today.

First, we speak with Henry Barbour, who has been a member of the Republican National Committee since 2005, a consummate party insider. He supported Nikki Haley in the primary but now supports Mr. Trump. Then we speak with Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran against Mr. Trump for the nomination, but was most similar to the former president among the other candidates in terms of ideology and style. He now fully backs his one-time rival and embraces the MAGA philosophy he represents.

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The June debate between President Biden and former president Donald Trump triggered significant panic among top Democrats, who for months had been dismissing concerns about Mr. Biden’s age.

Despite all the concerns polls showed about age, how did the Democratic Party arrive at that moment?

That’s a line of inquiry The Run-Up had been putting to senior Democratic leaders for the past 18 months. 

And we revisited it in a special episode from June that includes selections of our interviews with Vice President Harris, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison and Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s former White House chief of staff.

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Vice President Harris believes that democracy is once again on the line in a presidential election. 

In this interview from late summer 2023, as the contours of the 2024 campaign were coming into focus, Astead Herndon sat down with the vice president to discuss her life and work before Washington, and the fight ahead for her party.

This interview was conducted as part of the reporting process for a New York Times Magazine cover story on Ms. Harris, which you can read here.

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