“He did stop some of the bleeding,” because his base voters “loved those attacks,” said Larry Sabato, a UVA political expert, on CNN. That said, “people respected the way she approached the debate substantively,” and “she is beautifully positioned” in the polls. “I’m not gonna say it’s cooked and done, but I smell it cooking,” said Sabato.
Since Trump first announced his candidacy, the Grand Old Party has performed a delicate – and uncomfortable – balancing act. In recent days, that balancing act has morphed into a full-on circus. "There has always been more resistance to Trump among the party leadership than the rank and file," veteran UVA political analyst Larry Sabato said.
Not long after he was elected district attorney for Brooklyn, New York, in 2013, Kenneth Thompson cold-called a Harvard law professor and former public defender to ask for help digging through old cases for people who had been wrongly convicted. "That staunch focus on integrity even where there was no CSI silver bullet set Thompson apart as a national figure," said Brandon Garrett, a UVA law professor and author of "Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong."
Political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia said Clinton's average lead in a variety of polls is actually about five points nationally and if it continues this would still result in a very solid win for her.
The legacy of Donald Trump’s campaign will live on for voters and other Republican candidates who plan to run again in Virginia. And Republicans in Northern Virginia, where demographic changes and growing communities are tilting the region to favor Democrats, have to be concerned about becoming collateral damage, said Geoffrey Skelley, with UVA’s Center for Politics.
New projects at UVA are giving students something to think about as they walk to class this week. The Clothesline Project and the Red Flag Campaign are both displays raising awareness about domestic violence and sexual assault.
UVA’s Miller Center is examining race and policing as part of its “American Forum” public affairs program. On Monday, Heather MacDonald, the author of the new book, "The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe," argued the criminal justice system is eroding, but not because of the officers.
Disney plans to revisit the story of “Mulan,” this time as a live-action film, as it looks to balance competing expectations of Chinese and American audiences. According to Aynne Kokas, a UVA professor of media studies, "live action is much more difficult to adapt to multiple audiences because of issues related to language. Audiences are more tolerant of dubbed animation than they are of dubbed films."
Studies show that we engage in deception two times day on average – and that’s not just “yes-your-hair-looks-great” pleasantries, but actual lies meant to mislead people on matters of at least passing consequence. And here’s an even more unsettling bit of news: The closer the relationship, the bigger the whoppers. As UVA psychologist Bella DePaulo puts it, “You save your really big lies for the person that you're closest to.”
Control of the Senate remains a dead heat with five states listed in the toss-up category according to Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the weekly newsletter compiled by UVA political analyst Larry Sabato.
Trump’s lack of preparation and political experience to turn a tough question into a critique of Clinton’s record showed in the first debate, said Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics. “No doubt he’s been told by his team regardless the question you’re asked, spend 30 seconds answering it and transition to the topics you want to talk about,” Sabato said. “That’s where experience matters.”
Trump’s lack of preparation and political experience to turn a tough question into a critique of Clinton’s record showed in the first debate, said Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics. “No doubt he’s been told by his team regardless the question you’re asked, spend 30 seconds answering it and transition to the topics you want to talk about,” Sabato said. “That’s where experience matters.”
"People are writing the obituary on Hillary's chances in Ohio a little too quickly,'' said Kyle Kondik, an Ohio native and a political analyst with UVA’s Center for Politics. He says there is only one other state where the Clinton campaign is spending more money on TV ads than in Ohio, and that state is Florida – another state Donald Trump must win and one where Clinton holds a small lead in the polls.
“The worst nightmare for Republicans is that GOP turnout craters, which could lead to deep losses down-ballot,” said Kyle Kondik, a congressional elections expert at UVA. Kondik currently projects the Democrats winning between 10 and 15 House seats – not nearly enough to erase the GOP’s 60-seat majority. Any pickup of more than 15 seats, Kondik said, would be the fault of Trump.
News21’s analysis of data from the National Conference of State Legislatures found 316 bills nationwide that would have allowed more access to voting for felons. Republican-controlled legislatures blocked 137, another 101 failed to pass in states with divided control, and 65 were unsuccessful in Democratic-controlled legislatures. Maryland’s Republican governor vetoed one bill. “Democrats are probably going to like it (felon voting) because they are going to expect a draw of votes, and Republicans tend to object,” said Lynn Sanders, a UVA professor and expert in America...
UVA hosted a debate watch party for students Sunday night. Going into it, those young voters said they wanted the candidates to discuss the issues instead of attacking each other.
Most analysts argue Mr. Trump has little chance to recover since the video has come at the worst time with only 29 days until the Nov. 8 election. Larry Sabato, a UVA politics professor, said the long odds that Mr. Trump faced were now “enormous.”
Predicting that Democrats will eject incumbent Republicans in Illinois and Wisconsin, Larry Sabato, a UVA professor, says control of the chamber will come down to Nevada, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and North Carolina.
Now less than 30 days before Election Day, Trump is dealing with nothing less than a "catastrophe," said political analyst Nicole Hemmer, assistant professor at UVA's Miller Center. "That it is one month from the election and prominent Republicans are urging him to step down is an event unprecedented in our political history," she said.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump traded insults in a bitterly contentious debate that saw the Republican regain some of his footing following a disastrous two weeks that had threatened to derail his White House campaign. Larry Sabato, a UVA politics expert, said the Republican had “enthused his base, stopped the bleeding, and stymied GOP efforts to get him to resign from the ticket” because of his debate performance.