Ron Elving

In their tenth debate with Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz finally got real.

The two first-term senators, who have been chasing Trump in the polls and in February vote tallies, came at him on every issue their opposition research teams could muster.

They came at him for playing ...

It's big.

The five remaining candidates for the Republican presidential nomination meet tonight in Houston, Texas, the biggest city in the biggest state holding a primary on March 1, which is Super Tuesday, which is the biggest voting day so far in 2016 – and the biggest all year besides ...

The Nevada caucuses on the Republican side were a five-card game, and The Donald once again drew the ace.

The other "face cards" were Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, with Rubio once again edging his fellow senator by a narrow margin.

But it scarcely mattered. Their shares combined fell shy ...

Saturday night was a great time for victory speeches. The winners in Nevada and South Carolina each gave one. Some of the losers did, too.

Two candidates who had been fading in the latest polls came back to win — and crow about it. Several others who fell ...

On Saturday, Hillary Clinton won the Nevada caucuses, defeating rival Bernie Sanders. NPR's Ron Elving speaks with Michel Martin.

NPR's Tamara Keith has the latest results from today's Nevada Democratic caucuses.

The president says he intends to fill Antonin Scalia's vacancy, but it's unlikely the Senate will make it easy. Cases on immigration, religious liberty and abortion access may hang in the balance.

NPR's Carrie Johnson and Ron Elving talk to host Michel Martin about the political battle developing over the replacement of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia.

The sudden and shocking death of Supreme Court icon Antonin Scalia this weekend will have enormous repercussions for the U.S. legal system and political process, both in the immediate term and for many years to come.

Although Scalia's death at 79 had scarcely been confirmed Saturday, senators and presidential candidates ...

Just 48 hours after his landslide win in New Hampshire, Bernie Sanders was in Milwaukee, Wis., reminding everyone how far he had come in his quest for the presidency — and perhaps realizing how far he still has to go.

It was a night both candidates could feel good about. ...

New Hampshire prides itself on surprising people with the outcome of its first-in-the-nation presidential primary. This year, though, the top winner in each party was the candidate the polls had long predicted would win.

So if there was any surprise, it was that the candidates those polls had been smiling ...

Who will drop out after losing in New Hampshire? Possibly no one. (On to South Carolina! This race is still wide open! We can win this thing!)

We'll consider the real reasons to stick around in a moment.

But for several candidates, whether they make it official or not, the ...

At midnight Tuesday the residents of tiny Dixville Notch, N.H., will welcome camera crews for the quadrennial ritual of casting the first votes in the nation's first presidential primary.

The remote town near the Canadian border is so small that it has only a roomful of registered voters and zero ...

Sometimes it takes a Sunday morning to see how much damage was done Saturday night.

So it was this weekend, in New Hampshire and in the broader national conversation about the 2016 presidential race.

On Saturday night, many observers seized on the meatiest moment from the GOP debate staged here ...

After six months of wrangling on various TV stages, the seven Republican presidential candidates who met in Manchester, N.H., Saturday night finally produced A Moment.

The sharp exchange between Marco Rubio and Chris Christie near the beginning of the ABC News event cast a sudden shadow on Rubio's bright ...

Before they got down to debating the big issues Thursday night, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders wrangled over one big word: progressivism.

Which of them was the true progressive? Was Clinton a progressive at all?

Sanders has long billed himself as a progressive, also describing himself as a "democratic socialist." ...

The fifth debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders was their first appearance as a duet, and that helped to highlight some of their harmony – even as it heightened their crescendos of dissonance.

With Martin O'Malley having suspended his campaign earlier in the week, the two remaining rivals for ...

Iowa has once again proved its perennial resistance to political inevitability and the power of personality.

In this year's iteration of the Iowa caucuses, national polling leaders Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton had their campaign momentum slowed in significant ways by party activists who preferred their rivals.

A big win ...

The Iowa caucuses are known for hoisting the little-known hopeful to glory. But for each skyrocket that actually launched here, many more have fizzled on the pad.

The slick talkers auditioning for media gigs.

The household name whose prominence fails to translate.

The ambitious up-and-comer seeking name recognition for the ...