Roll Call Politics is tracking the 2012 presidential candidates, their campaign staffers and their activity in the early nominating states. Bookmark this page for the latest on the GOP field and President Barack Obama’s re-election effort, and keep up with Member endorsements in the GOP presidential race with Roll Call's Endorsement Watch.
Amanda Becker and John Gramlich
Efforts to improve election administration and address the long lines that greeted voters on Election Day shifted to Capitol Hill on Thursday as House and Senate lawmakers unveiled related bills.
Stuart Rothenberg
Tuesday’s results were not unexpected, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t send shock waves through the political establishment.
Eliza Newlin Carney
It’s been tempting for pundits and analysts to cast Republican super PACs and advocacy organizations as the big losers in this election.
Kyle Trygstad
The 2012 elections will go down as a victory for Democrats, who held the White House and control of the Senate, even as the party appeared likely to pick up only a handful of seats in the House.
Steven T. Dennis
Voters have granted President Barack Obama another four-year term, capping the most expensive and divisive national campaign in memory and ensuring at least two more years of divided government in Washington, D.C.
Joshua Miller, Steven T. Dennis
Voters will make their voices heard today, but there won’t be much harmony. At the end of a long and bitter campaign season, a dissonant electorate is likely to deliver a split decision that does little beyond endorse divided ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
David M. Drucker
Rather than providing a clear snapshot of the state of a campaign, the unprecedented barrage of presidential and Congressional race polling this year has generated conflict and uncertainty among the political class.
Eliza Newlin Carney
Campaign spending by unrestricted super PACs and secretive tax-exempt groups topped $1 billion in this election cycle, close to four times the amount spent by such organizations in the last presidential race.
Amanda Becker
Long lines in early-voting states, confusion over recently passed election laws and accommodations for voters affected by Hurricane Sandy are setting the stage for complications at voting precincts across the country Tuesday.
Nathan L. Gonzales
With eight presidential swing states, a dozen competitive Senate seats and more than 60 House seats in play, it’s impossible to follow them all as polls close and returns trickle in tonight. Here is a guide for when and where to focus your attention to accurately measure how things are going for each party on election night.
Stuart Rothenberg
If there is one thing that you can probably bet on, it is that the winners and losers in today’s balloting will draw the wrong conclusions from the outcome.
Sam Goldfarb
Mitt Romney has not filled in details of what the tax code would look like if he wins the presidential election, but conservatives in Washington, D.C., are formulating ambitious plans for how to get an overhaul through Congress.
Meredith Shiner
If GOP candidate Mitt Romney wins the White House, he is likely to face as much of a challenge as President Barack Obama did in persuading conservative Republicans to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a government default.
Steven T. Dennis
President Barack Obama returns to the campaign trail today, joining Mitt Romney in a final sprint to Election Day as polls continue to show a tight race.
Janie Lorber
Conservative groups are distancing themselves from a Virginia communications firm that appears to be behind a flurry of unsolicited text messages criticizing President Barack Obama that were sent to Washington-area mobile phones in recent days.
Eliza Newlin Carney
With its unrestricted super PACs, wealthy mega-donors, secret money and more than $6 billion projected price tag, this election cycle boasts more unfettered campaign spending than any in recent memory.
Niels Lesniewski
President Barack Obama will stay in Washington, D.C., at least through Wednesday, suspending his re-election campaigning to keep an eye on recovery efforts following Hurricane Sandy.
Niels Lesniewski
Even before Hurricane Sandy made landfall, political observers were analyzing the storm’s effect on the presidential race and on the logistics of the elections along the East Coast.
Morton M. Kondracke
Four years ago we had just one “Rorschach candidate” for president, with millions voting for Barack Obama, seeing in him their kind of leader. This year, we’ve got two. Obama or Mitt Romney — it’s a vote shot into the dark.
Niels Lesniewski
One of Washington’s favorite parlor games is conjecturing about the remote possibility of an Electoral College tie. Prognosticators have come up with various maps and scenarios under which the election would result in a 269-269 deadlock, which would vest the responsibility of choosing the country’s leaders squarely in what polls say is one of the least popular institutions in the country — Congress.
Niels Lesniewski
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is dispensing with conventional wisdom and predicting an Electoral College landslide for GOP nominee Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential contest. But he’s leaving the door open for his own White House run as early as 2016.
Steven T. Dennis
President Barack Obama’s problem hasn’t been that he doesn’t have a second-term agenda, as challenger Mitt Romney has claimed. The difficulty for Obama has been in explaining how he could be more successful in a second term after two years of gridlock.
Stuart Rothenberg
With less than two weeks to go until the elections, the presidential race continues to revert to the norm, a development that can only worry the president and his top strategists.
Steven T. Dennis
Mitt Romney’s campaign is dismissing President Barack Obama’s plans to push for an immigration overhaul next year as merely a repeat of a broken promise from 2008.
Janie Lorber
President Barack Obama appears to have wildly outraised his Republican opponent among text message donors, capitalizing on the newly approved digital fundraising option.
Steven T. Dennis
The Des Moines Register today released a previously off-the-record interview with President Barack Obama in which he gave his frankest answers to date on his second-term agenda, including breakthroughs on a “grand bargain” on the deficit and on immigration reform next year.
Emily Cahn
CNN anchor Candy Crowley spoke candidly about her role as the moderator of the second presidential debate during a panel discussion at the Newseum on Tuesday night and defended her fact-checking moment during the 90-minute exchange between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
Steven T. Dennis
With Election Day just two weeks away, President Barack Obama repackaged his agenda for the next few years while campaign manager Jim Messina and adviser David Axelrod touted their ground game and lead in early voting.
Emily Cadei
President Barack Obama used the final presidential debate Monday night to hit back aggressively against claims that his budget will gut the U.S. military, something the Republican Party has been using as a political cudgel against him all year.
Steven T. Dennis and Emily Cadei
President Barack Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney faced off in a sharp final debate Monday night in Boca Raton, Fla., trading barbs over foreign affairs while repeatedly returning to the issue atop voters’ minds — the economy.
Steven T. Dennis
President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney begin a nonstop sprint to election day after tonight’s debate, with both campaigns giving special attention to the all-important state of Ohio.
Steven T. Dennis and Jonathan Broder
President Barack Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney face off for the last time in tonight’s foreign policy debate with starkly different challenges as they near the end of their fight to be the next commander in chief.
Steven T. Dennis
The Romney campaign is highlighting a 2006 Joint Committee on Taxation analysis of a tax plan that would eliminate most tax breaks while lowering tax rates to bolster its claims that the GOP presidential nominee’s plan would boost economic growth.
Janie Lorber
By now, Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women” have been opened, parsed and closed. But what happened in the hours after the former Massachusetts governor inadvertently spawned an online sensation in describing his efforts to hire women for his Cabinet may forever be seared in the minds of Web-savvy political strategists.
David M. Drucker and Joshua Miller
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney fought to a draw Tuesday in their second debate, but it was bloody, with each candidate scoring points in several heated exchanges.
Janie Lorber
Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson won’t be onstage tonight, but he has a few questions for the guys who will.
Roll Call Staff
President Barack Obama told reporters this morning that he’s feeling “fabulous” ahead of tonight’s debate. That was just hours before Gallup reported that GOP nominee Mitt Romney led 50 percent to 46 percent nationally among likely voters, amid a host of other polls showing the president’s re-election bid struggling.
Meredith Shiner, David M. Drucker
This evening’s presidential debate could have significant implications for downballot races across the country — a political dynamic that has Republicans hoping for a repeat performance from GOP nominee Mitt Romney and Democrats guarding against another lackluster showing from President Barack Obama.
Kate Ackley
GOP nominee Mitt Romney has pledged to create 12 million jobs if elected president. Republican lobbyists have their eyes on just a handful of positions in the executive branch should he prevail.
Eliza Newlin Carney
A nascent conservative campaign to turn out young voters is gaining steam in the homestretch to Election Day as Republicans capitalize on what some argue is a key opening for GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
Abby Livingston
With just more than three weeks before elections that are expected to be decided based on the economy, the White House appears even more on the defensive over an ongoing controversy surrounding the Sept. 11 murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya.
Shira Toeplitz, Joshua Miller
A testy Vice President Joseph Biden wrangled with House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan on Thursday night in their only debate, which focused mostly on foreign policy.
Jonathan Strong
Democratic Members of Congress were missing from President Barack Obama’s post-debate spin team last week, but they will be in on the action after tonight’s debate between Vice President Joseph Biden and the GOP vice presidential nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.).
David M. Drucker
As Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney moves to capitalize on his October surge in the polls, his campaign is relying on ground-game and social-media strategies that aides believe have been underestimated.
Stuart Rothenberg
The surprise about Mitt Romney’s recent move to the middle isn’t that it occurred but that it took so long.
Norman Ornstein
One assertion by Mitt Romney in the presidential debate especially caught my attention. He said he would turn Medicaid into a block grant to the states and that they would “get what they got last year, plus inflation, plus 1 percent.” Sounds reasonable — except when you look at Romney’s other pledges, his support for Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget and what Romney has promised in terms of fiscal restraint overall.
Shira Toeplitz, Steven T. Dennis
The presidential candidates uttered “Congress” just four times during their first debate last week. That probably won’t be the case on Thursday night, when two Capitol Hill veterans meet for the sole vice presidential debate.
Jonathan Strong
House Democrats are hanging tough and hewing closely to their talking points as new polls show a significant bounce for GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney following his performance at Wednesday’s debate with President Barack Obama.
Lauren W. Whittington and David M. Drucker
So many races; so many questions. Who will win; who will lose? And above all: Why? Below, we examine 12 of the many questions surrounding Election Day 2012. After a long and at times unpredictable election cycle, there is only a month left until everything is decided. Of course, a month can be an eternity in electoral politics, meaning the answers to some of the questions we've posed might not be as simple and automatic as they appear on first glance.
Emily Cahn
Surrogates for President Barack Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney took to the airwaves today to defend their respective candidates and hammer home themes that cropped up in the first presidential debate last week.
Janie Lorber
Immigration groups, campaign finance reformers and other advocacy organizations that say they got shorted in the first presidential debate are preparing a fresh push for airtime.
Jonathan Strong
In the minutes and hours after a debate in which GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney was broadly seen as winning against President Barack Obama, Republicans relied on a chorus of Congressional voices to herald Romney's performance.
Steven T. Dennis
During Wednesday's debate, Republican nominee Mitt Romney muddied the waters over how he might pay for his 20 percent tax rate cut, even as he clarified that his top principle would be not to add to the deficit.
Steven T. Dennis and Abby Livingston
At the first presidential debate Wednesday night in Denver, GOP challenger Mitt Romney aggressively rebutted President Barack Obama's charges that he would cut taxes for the wealthy and vowed not to pass any tax cuts that add to the deficit.
Steven T. Dennis, Sam Goldfarb
GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his campaign have started to get specific about how he might pay for his signature 20 percent cut in tax rates, and his latest idea is sure to create both winners and losers.
Stuart Rothenberg
A few months ago, I expected this Friday to be a crucial day in the presidential race. After all, it would be the day when September's unemployment and new jobs numbers would be released, right in the heart of the contest.
Steven T. Dennis
Heading into tonight's critical first presidential debate, the Romney campaign is aggressively parrying President Barack Obama's attacks on his tax reform plan while jumping on Vice President Joseph Biden's gaffe Tuesday that the middle class has been "buried" during the past four years.
Emily Pierce
GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan today downplayed expectations for Mitt Romney's debate performance Wednesday, saying the campaign's goal is not necessarily to score a decisive rhetorical win but to present Americans with a clear choice between the GOP nominee and President Barack Obama.
Steven T. Dennis
President Barack Obama and Republican vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan both weighed in against the replacement referee debacle that had the Green Bay Packers from Ryan's home swing state of Wisconsin lose on the last play of the game in a Monday Night Football thriller in Seattle.
Steven T. Dennis
While voters may think they'll be casting their vote on Nov. 6 for Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, lawmakers are starting to acknowledge that the electorate will also decide how Congress should resolve the fiscal cliff.
Daniel Newhauser
Speaker John Boehner today teed off on President Barack Obama's recent comments that you cannot change Washington, D.C., from the inside, saying that in his more than two decades on Capitol Hill, he has.
Kate Ackley
In a presidential election where the nation's 104 million female voters will be a much-wooed bloc, NARAL Pro-Choice America has narrowed its top targets to just more than 300,000 women in 25 swing counties.
Shira Toeplitz
Republican nominee Mitt Romney's turbulent few weeks underscore a new reality for embattled Congressional Republicans: They might be on their own in November.
Meredith Shiner
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), a self-proclaimed lover of baseball, has developed a fondness for a new pastime: attacking Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
Jonathan Strong
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) this morning kept up the Democratic onslaught on Mitt Romney on NBC's "Today," saying a videotape of the Republican presidential nominee's now-infamous "47 percent" comments from a May fundraiser "demonstrated the demeaning attitude" Romney has "toward a large segment of the American people."
Steven T. Dennis
Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama have traded superheated barbs in the past week over who would be tougher on China's trade practices, but neither has tried to take advantage of a Senate-passed currency manipulation bill that has been sitting on the House calendar for almost a year.
Jonathan Broder
GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney has been criticized in the media for a lack of thoughtful or detailed foreign policy prescriptions, but the discord among Republicans in Congress last week showed why he might need to tread carefully on the subject as the new GOP standard-bearer.
Meredith Shiner
Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan today leveled one of the sharpest critiques yet of the Obama administration's position on abortion in front of a standing-room-only crowd at the conservative Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C.
Meredith Shiner
At a Values Voter Summit here in Washington, D.C., today, Republican vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan addressed the ongoing tumult in the Arab world by calling for "consistent American leadership" and "moral clarity" in U.S. foreign policy.
Daniel Newhauser
Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan stopped by the Capitol today to hold court with his House colleagues before voting in favor of a continuing resolution that would fund the government through March.
Steven T. Dennis
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney tapped Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) for his running mate - and the would-be vice president could be the leading edge of a wave of current or former Hill talent heading to the administration next year if Romney wins.
Daniel Newhauser, Humberto Sanchez
Congressional Republican leaders are downplaying GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney's comments that he would preserve some parts of Democrats' health care reforms, but the remarks are causing some conservatives to question whether the former Massachusetts governor is committed to fully repealing the law.
Steven T. Dennis
After rallying their parties in Charlotte, N.C., and Tampa, Fla., President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney have begun the sprint to the end of their titanic struggle over the role of government and the president's record on the economy.
Kate Ackley
Democratic fundraiser Mike Fraioli had attended every one of his party's political conventions since 1980. Until this year.
Steven T. Dennis
Democrats in Charlotte, N.C., this week focused an aggressive counterpunch to the GOP's concerted efforts to reach out to female voters and shrink the gender gap in a messaging war that could determine the outcome of the election.
Steven T. Dennis
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - President Barack Obama accepted his party's nomination for a second term Thursday, asking the American people to trust in his leadership in the face of difficult economic times.
Joshua Miller
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D) took to the stage Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention and delivered a strong rebuke of his predecessor's record.
Nathan L. Gonzales
Not long ago, Democrats had it all: the first African-American president sitting in the Oval Office, the first female Speaker of the House and even a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Four years later, the only remaining piece - the presidency - might be taken away from them.
Daniel Newhauser
First lady Michelle Obama took to the stage to showcase President Barack Obama's personal side Tuesday night, capping a day of sharp political attacks with a gentler and more positive message.
Abby Livingston
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro delivered his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention tonight and broke through on the national stage in a way not seen among Texas Democrats since the days of Ann Richards and Barbara Jordan.
Kristin Coyner
The big venues for this week's Democratic National Convention have long aroused the ire of local Democrats. And that's in addition to organized labor's outrage at holding the gathering in a right-to-work state.
Steven T. Dennis
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - A passel of President Barack Obama's spokespeople defended the president's self-imposed grade of "incomplete" for his job on the economy Tuesday and reiterated Vice President Joseph Biden's attack on Mitt Romney as the recipient of a federal "bailout."
Eliza Newlin Carney
In setting out to pay for a $37 million "people's convention" with low-dollar citizen donations instead of big corporate checks, Democrats have either embarked on a fool's errand, a bold experiment or both.
Humberto Sanchez
Looking to ramp up attention for next week’s Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., Obama campaign officials said they plan to highlight the president’s efforts to turn around the economy, including the auto industry bailout, and provide details of what still needs to be done.
Steven T. Dennis
TAMPA, Fla. - Congressional allies close to Mitt Romney are already looking ahead to a GOP takeover next year and are trying to set the stage for a burst of post-inauguration activity, lawmakers, aides and GOP strategists told Roll Call this week.
Kyle Trygstad
TAMPA, Fla. - Mitt Romney made the case Thursday night for why Republicans long ready to oust the president should be equally excited to vote for the former Massachusetts governor.
Meredith Shiner
TAMPA, Fla. - In the final night of the convention here, as Republicans made clear and repeated overtures to Hispanic voters, one giant elephant in the room remained: immigration reform.
Steven T. Dennis
Rep. Paul Ryan's speech had Republicans on their feet Wednesday evening in the Tampa Bay Times Forum, but Democrats quickly countered, accusing the newly minted vice presidential nominee of repeatedly lying about President Barack Obama's record.
David M. Drucker
Talk to Mitt Romney's closest friends and associates, those who have known him throughout his business and political career, and you will hear affection, pride and reverence typically reserved for family members and lifelong childhood chums. But voters do not feel the same way, according to public opinion polls, and if they did, it is unlikely the battle for the White House would be so close, given the economic headwinds facing President Obama's re-election bid.
Kyle Trygstad
TAMPA, Fla. - Four years of frustration by Nevada supporters of Texas Rep. Ron Paul bubbled over on the floor of the Republican National Convention on Tuesday.
Shira Toeplitz
TAMPA, Fla. - Ann Romney sought to humanize her husband in her introductory remarks tonight at the Republican National Convention, an opening program filled with feminine overtones.
Niels Lesniewski
Hurricane Isaac’s arrival on the Gulf Coast could bring a Congressional debate about disaster relief spending into the presidential race.
Meredith Shiner
TAMPA, Fla. - As party tents crop up all over the Tampa Bay area, Republicans are grappling with a serious question: How can they yet again become the big-tent party the GOP likely needs to be to capture the Senate and White House?
Warren Rojas
TAMPA, Fla. - With the tropical storm now in the rearview mirror, House and Senate Republicans joined Mitt Romney surrogates in breaking out their crystal balls to forecast what could realistically get done if the GOP claims the White House this fall.
Steven T. Dennis
TAMPA, Fla. - He didn't get the call to join Mitt Romney on the Republican ticket, but Ohio Sen. Rob Portman appears set to play a key role getting the Romney agenda passed next year.
Janie Lorber
When the 2012 Tampa Bay Host Committee pledged to raise $55 million to cover the cost of staging the Republican National Convention, organizers expected much of the money to come from companies hoping to capitalize on five days of almost unfettered access to America's political elite.
Lauren Hepler
The venue for this year's Republican National Convention in Tampa has been known by many names during its 16 years: the Ice Palace, the St. Pete Times Forum and now the Tampa Bay Times Forum. Its history is marked by money squabbles between a publicly financed arena and a privately owned sports team.
Ambreen Ali
Although many tea party activists denounced Mitt Romney during the primaries as an establishment Republican moderate who doesn't reflect the diverse movement's upstart ideals, tea partiers seemingly have no desire to play into the Democrats' hands by hijacking the Republican convention.
Niels Lesniewski
President Barack Obama launched a local media pushback against the defense sequester in a set of interviews Monday.
Janie Lorber
For a presidential contest that was supposed to revolve around jobs, surrogates for the Romney and Obama campaigns spent today talking about everything but the economy.
