Virginia Gov.-elect Ralph Northam on Wednesday unveiled his transportation team, naming Shannon Valentine secretary of transportation. Valentine is a graduate UVA, where she earned a bachelor’s in economics.
As UVA psychology professor Daniel Willingham points out, small children can think critically about subjects that they know something about and trained scientists can fail to think critically about subjects they know little about.
Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley of UVA’s Center for Politics wrote, “Republican turnout was OK, just like in the Virginia gubernatorial race, but Democratic turnout was a lot better, both in urban and suburban parts of Alabama and also in the Black Belt – a rural, heavily African-American part of the state that gets its name from the color of the soil (turnout was exceptionally high throughout this region).” Kondik and Skelley pointed out that this makes it theoretically possible for the Democrats to reclaim the Senate in the 2018 midterm elections.
“For a Democrat, to be attacked by Donald Trump is a medal of honor,” said Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics. “It is something you will wear forever in primaries and general elections, whatever you’re running for. You will get you a lot of votes just because voters know Donald Trump hates you.”
Larry Sabato, a UVA political scientist, said the split between establishment and populist Republicans is an “extension of 2016” when the bulk of traditional party members supported someone else, but Trump won the nomination anyway. “The No. 1 reason Roy Moore lost is Roy Moore,” Sabato said. “I don’t know how much Bannon is to blame.” But to the extent that Bannon can fundraise and use his role as head of Breitbart News to promote anti-establishment candidates, Sabato said, “he is a problem for the Republicans.”
“Now with 49 Democrats in the Senate, a path to a 2018 Democratic Senate majority is possible – still very tough given the seats up, but possible,” tweeted Larry Sabato, a UVA professor of politics.
“I don’t think the general electorate is looking for Trump clones next year,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the UVA Center for Politics.
“The division in Washington has influenced not just how they campaign in the states, but actually how they govern,” says Ray Scheppach, a UVA public policy professor. “You get those divisions and it’s just harder to do the practical things on a bipartisan basis.”
Darden School Dean Scott Beardsley looks at how the top job is evolving in the U.S., while Susie Hills shares advice from UK business executives on being a vice chancellor.
(By Chris Lu, U.S. deputy secretary of labor during the Obama administration and a senior fellow at UVA’s Miller Center) For Democrats to retake the House and Senate, they will have to drive turnout among college graduates, women, young people and minority voters, while reaching out to independents who supported Trump in 2016 but are now having regrets.
The rest of the year, Santa is Dr. Robert Sinkin, division head of neonatology and director of the NICU. The visit and photos help give families a break from the stressful environment of the NICU, he said. “We know how important it is to many families who celebrate Christmas with an ill child, not being able to go to the mall and get photos,” Sinkin said. “Our nursing and support staff know that the holidays are a special time, and we want to make it special.”
UVA researchers have discovered a critical trigger for macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss among the elderly. The finding may allow doctors to halt the inflammation early on, potentially saving millions of patients from blindness.
Research from the UVA School of Medicine has shown that between 1969 and 2011, cancer incidence declined in every region of the country except rural Appalachia, and mortality rates soared.
The bill from Del. R. Steven Landes (R-Augusta), HB3, calls for the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia to work with state and public university officials to set new quality standards for dual enrollment courses. It also envisions a system to ensure that courses that meet those standards will be accepted for credit at any of the state’s four-year public universities, including the College of William & Mary, the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University.
The University of Bristol has become the first university in England to join Universities Studying Slavery, a UVA-based multi-institutional collaboration dedicated to furthering the study of slavery’s legacy and wider historical and contemporary race inequalities.
A series of data will be collected as MU69 passes in front of a distant star and the New Horizon team prepare to steer it away from any hazards. UVA astronomer Anne Verbiscer said: “Using New Horizons’ suite of seven instruments, we’ll be characterizing the geology and morphology of the surface, looking to see whether there are any craters. We certainly expect to see craters.”
Jonathan Bartells, a nurse at the UVA Medical Center, was nominated for a prestigious award this year. He did something that took less than a minute but made a big difference in the lives of health care professionals whose patients died.
“The kookiness and unsavory nature of Roy Moore,” UVA’s Larry Sabato said, ultimately did his campaign in, aided by "the failure of Donald Trump – who struck out twice in Alabama this year, in a state he won by 28 percent."
Meg Heubeck sits on the carefully landscaped, kelly green lawn behind Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello home, assessing the state of our democracy and talking about what was planted this year. It’s been an uneven year for Heubeck, the UVA Center for Politics youth programs educator who kicked off our national USA TODAY NETWORK weekly series this year on Americans leading positively in the wake of last year’s divisive election.
The United States has about 11.3 million undocumented immigrants. But how many of them are living in Virginia? “At the national level, ballpark estimates are credible.” That’s Qian Cai at the University of Virginia, who says she's often asked to give a ballpark estimate for undocumented immigrants in Virginia. “But the smaller the geography gets to, even at the state level, the margin of error gets to be quite large. And that’s why it’s not often produced or cited at the state level for illegal immigration statistics.”