October 30, 2020, 2:00 PM ET
Trump’s Surge Over the Blue Wall
Speaker: Chris Achen, Roger Williams Straus Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus at Princeton University (presenting work with Jeremy Darrington)
Moderator: Peter Loewen, Director of PEARL, Professor in the Department of Political Science & Munk School
How did Donald Trump win the 2016 “Blue Wall” states—Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—that made him president? Was it former Obama voters switching to the Republicans? Or a surge of people who didn’t vote in 2012? Or abstentions by usual Democratic voters? The calculation is not easy, primarily because surveys are seriously misleading about turnout while voter files provide no information about the voters’ choice of candidate. We show how to use those two data sources, along with actual vote returns, to resolve ongoing debates about how Trump won. Then we discuss the implications for the 2020 presidential election.
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November 10, 2020, 2:00 PM ET
The Rise of Independent Voters Amid Political Polarization
Speaker: Samara Klar, Associate Professor at the University of Arizona School of Government and Public Policy
Moderator: Peter Loewen, Director of PEARL, Professor in the Department of Political Science & Munk School
American politics are plagued with polarization: Democrats and Republicans appear further apart ideologically and, more troublingly, they seem to personally dislike and distrust one another at unprecedented rates. Yet, meanwhile, a growing proportion of Americans don’t identify with either party at all, instead preferring to call themselves independent. What does this mean for how Americans think about politics and how can it help to explain the outcomes of recent Presidential Elections in the USA?
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November 16, 2020, 2:00 PM ET
Explaining the 2020 U.S. Election
Speaker: John Sides, Professor and William R. Kenan, Jr. Chair in the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University
Moderator: Peter Loewen, Director of PEARL, Professor in the Department of Political Science & Munk School
John Sides is Professor of Political Science and William R. Kenan, Jr. Chair at Vanderbilt University. He studies political behavior in American and comparative politics.
He is an author of Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and The Battle for the Meaning of America, The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Election and Campaigns and Election: Rules, Reality, Strategy, Choice.
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November 25, 2020, 4:00 PM ET
After Trump?: Implications for US allies
Between the soaring COVID case count in the US and its economic costs, deep loyalty for Trump in the Republican base and deep partisan polarisation exposed by the election, what will be the points of policy change and continuity in US? While President-elect Biden promises to restore alliances and multilateralism as pillars of US foreign policy, what should close allies such as Australia and Canada reasonably expect from the new administration.
Speaker:
Simon Jackman, Professor, Chief Executive Officer of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney
Moderator:
Peter Loewen, Director of PEARL, Professor in the Department of Political Science & Munk School
Professor Simon Jackman commenced as Chief Executive Officer of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney in April 2016. Born and raised in Australia, he went to the U.S. for post-graduate study, which became a 27 year stay in the US, including twenty years as Professor of Political Science and Statistics at Stanford University. Jackman’s research interests are in elections and public opinion, with a long publishing career spanning work on both the United States and Australia. In 2016 and 2017, Jackman served as an expert witness helping to secure the first successful legal challenges to partisan gerrymandering in the United States in decades. As leader of the US Studies Centre he oversees the Centre’s research on US politics, foreign policy and defence, and trade investment, ensuring the Centre’s analysis of America provides insight for Australian policymakers, scholars, the media and the public.
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December 4, 2020, 2:00 PM ET
The Anger Gap: How Race Shapes Emotion in Politics
Speaker: Davin Phoenix, Associate Professor in political science at UC Irvine
Moderator: Peter Loewen, Director of PEARL, Professor in the Department of Political Science & Munk School
Amidst a historical groundswell of activism against systemic racism, and in the aftermath of a potentially transformational election, my research asks how race shapes the emotions that are activated and translated to political action among everyday people. I uncover a racial anger gap and underscore its relevance to politics. Rooted in the stigmatization of Black anger, the lack of collective agency felt by African Americans, and the distinct sense of racial resignation shaping the group’s perceptions of politics, this gap widens the Black-White electoral participation disparity and shapes the tenor of partisan politics, interracial coalitions and Black organizing in the current racially fraught era.
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January 28, 2021, 4:00 PM ET
Pandemic Politics: How COVID-19 affected the 2020 US Presidential Election
Speaker: Lynn Vavreck, Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics and Public Policy at UCLA
Moderator: Peter Loewen, Director of PEARL, Professor in the Department of Political Science & Munk School
Lynn Vavreck is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics and Public Policy at UCLA, a contributing columnist to The Upshot at The New York Times, and a recipient of the Andrew F. Carnegie Prize in the Humanities and Social Sciences. She is the author of five books, including the “most ominous” book on the 2016 election: Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America, and The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election, described as the “definitive account” of the 2012 election.
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