Tim Walz, a former high school football coach from a tiny town, has folksy sayings and a camo cap. JD Vance shot to fame with “Hillbilly Elegy,” aiming to speak for parts of rural America that felt left behind.

Both parties — especially with their vice-presidential candidates — are trying to convey to rural Americans that they are not forgotten.

This comes after Democrats have seen significant erosion of support in rural areas.

How have Republicans grown their rural advantage to historic levels? Can Democrats do enough to remain competitive in 2024 — especially in places like Mr. Walz’s former congressional district?

In the wake of the vice-presidential debate, The Run-Up looks at how both parties are trying to reach rural voters — with their vice-presidential candidates and their messages.

At one point, he supported the presidential aspirations of Donald Trump, a fellow reality TV star and businessman.

But now Mark Cuban — perhaps best known for his longtime ownership of the Dallas Mavericks and his perch as a “Shark Tank” shark — has taken on a surprising new role.

He is a prolific and vocal supporter of Kamala Harris. Especially when it comes to his view of what a Harris administration would mean for the economy.

So, today on The Run-Up, as we enter the homestretch toward Election Day, as Tim Walz and JD Vance are set to face off in what could be the final debate before people head to the polls, a conversation with Kamala Harris’s most surprising surrogate.

This year, Democrats and Republicans are both fighting to convince voters that their party alone can fix what both parties say is a big problem: the Southern border.

And public sentiment on the issue is shifting. According to Gallup, 55 percent of Americans want to curb immigration, the highest recorded total since 2001.

With that in mind, we wanted to talk with people who actually live and work near the border. So we traveled to El Paso, with Jazmine Ulloa, a Times politics reporter who grew up there.

On this week’s show, a conversation on the border about the border, and what people there make of the shifting politics in the battle over their backyard.

On today’s episode:

Jazmine Ulloa, a national politics reporter for The New York Times

There’s a message that Kamala Harris and the Democrats are trying to send in these final weeks: The Democrats are patriots too.

It was all over the place at the Democratic National Convention, in the chants of “U.S.A.!” that broke out on the convention floor, in the vice president’s speech and in a speech by Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland.

This effort to reclaim patriotism can be seen as a way to reclaim more white rural voters. But it’s also an appeal to disaffected voters, especially some Black voters, who have lost faith in the system altogether.

In this week’s “Run-Up,” how the Democrats are using love of country to try to reach the skeptics — the people torn on whether to vote at all.

On today’s episode:

Wes Moore, governor of Maryland

Prentiss Haney, community organizer

For the people still on the fence about 2024, Tuesday night’s debate was an important data point.

How would Vice President Kamala Harris differentiate herself from President Biden? How would former President Donald Trump come across when facing a new opponent? Would this matchup, the first time these candidates met, be enough to help these undecided voters make a decision?

On today’s “Run-Up,” we look at how they are thinking after the debate. Up first, we watch the debate with Corrie Zech, an undecided voter in Ohio.

We initially met her back in June at a watch party for the first presidential debate. Listen to that episode here.

Then we catch up with undecided voters we first talked to for this episode, ahead of the debate.

Everyone tuned in Tuesday night. They said they’re closer to making a decision but, with less than two months to go, have yet to fully make up their minds.

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will face off in Philadelphia on Tuesday night for the second presidential debate of 2024. It will be the first time the two candidates meet on a debate stage.

They enter the debate in a neck-and-neck race, with Mr. Trump leading Ms. Harris, 48 percent to 47 percent, according to the latest national polling from The New York Times and Siena College.

That means the people still on the fence — those unsure about whom to vote for or whether to vote at all — are potentially the most important audience for the debate.

Today, “The Run-Up” talks with Ruth Igielnik, a Times polling editor, about the 5 percent of voters who are still undecided. We then speak with four undecided voters to ask what they are hoping to hear tonight.

Former president Trump frequently takes credit for helping to overturn Roe v. Wade.

But in recent weeks, he has posted on Truth Social, his social media site, that his administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights.” He suggested that he might vote for a Florida ballot measure allowing abortion up to around 24 weeks, before reversing his position. And he floated the idea that under a Trump administration, in vitro fertilization treatments would be covered by insurance companies or the federal government.

With these shifting messages, Donald Trump is basically daring anti-abortion voters to turn on him. So will they?

On this week’s show, we check in with Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a leading voice for American evangelicals, to find out.

On today’s episode

Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. Listen to an earlier conversation with Dr. Mohler on “The Run-Up” here.

This election, like a lot of elections before it, may come down to which candidate voters think might help them with their grocery bills and housing costs — the essential stuff of everyday economics.

That’s what people around the country say — and what they tell pollsters too.

But the fact that life feels expensive right now is not just something voters are talking about.

Campaigns are too.

Kamala Harris just released an ad focused on how hard it is to own a home in the United States and an economic policy aimed at curbing prices. And Donald Trump has been on the trail touting his economic record.

So, this week on “The Run-Up,” we spend time talking with people who feel the economy is not working for them — and talking to Jason DeParle, who covers poverty for The New York Times, about how the candidates say they’ll help the poorest Americans.

On today’s episode

Jason DeParle, who writes about poverty in the United States for The New York Times.

On the final night of the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage and formally accepted her party’s nomination.

After the balloons fell, Astead Herndon and his colleagues Maya King and Jennifer Medina broke down the moments that stood out to them from the night — from people touched by gun violence telling their stories to the way Ms. Harris talked about Israel and the war in Gaza to how she told her own story. Plus, there was the rumored special guest who never materialized.

On today’s episode:

Maya King, a politics reporter for The New York Times

Jennifer Medina, a politics reporter for The New York Times

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Democratic National Convention tonight, formalizing her rapid ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket and capping a very unusual path to the nomination.

No primary. No serious opposition. No real robust sense of what her legislative priorities might be.

On today’s show, a quest to answer this question: Is a Harris-led Democratic Party substantively different than the Democratic Party of Joe Biden?

As they all gathered in Chicago, we put that question to Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers union — and the man hosting Democrats in his town, Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson.

After two days of the Democratic National Convention, one thing is clear.

Democrats are united behind their new nominee.

And Kamala Harris has those in the Democratic Party, from the high-profile speakers to the delegates in the hall, thinking they can win.

In fact, the unity is such that after months of worrying about whether the convention would be upended by protests over Israel’s war in Gaza, so far, things feel quiet.

But does anger over foreign policy still pose an electoral threat?

On today’s show, a conversation with Abbas Alawieh, an uncommitted delegate from Michigan, and people who came to Chicago to protest.