With almost all of the final tallies from the midterms now in, the full scale of the G.O.P. victory is clear. Almost everywhere, the Republicans exceeded expectations. Which raises a question: Why didn’t anybody see it coming? In one sense, they did. By Election Day, virtually all of the prognosticators and forecasters were predicting a Republican takeover of the Senate. For example, Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, predicted that the G.O.P. would get fifty-three seats.
It isn’t difficult to listen to Serial, the addicting podcast spinoff fromThis American Life. It is difficult, however, to listen without being struck by the strangeness of the relationship between Sarah Koenig, the host, and Adnan Syed, the convicted murderer whose case Koenig is investigating. Over the course of the show, Koenig and Syed’s relationship has perplexed many. In episode seven, which became available Thursday, Koenig gets in touch with Deirdre Enright, a lawyer from The University of Virginia’s Innocence Project Clinic. When Enright’s team c...
How could so many polls get so many races so wrong? I want an investigation of the polls in Virginia," University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato told Fox News. "They were completely wrong, just as they were in Georgia. They were also way off in Illinois. And I could go on and on."
As the chair of the Republican Governor's Association, Governor Christie has travelled tireless across the country to help those Republican governors win Tuesday night. Kyle Kondik from the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia discussed what this means for U.S. politics.
Nearly all of the governors elected Tuesday dominated the airwaves in TV ads before voters went to the polls, bolstered by their campaign war chests and outside groups that advertised on their behalf. “It’s a Republican-leaning year, and it’s a good national trend for Republicans that is bleeding down the ballot to governors’ races,” said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Rep. Mike Honda declared victory Friday morning over challenger Ro Khanna, who conceded the nationally watched, Democrat-on-Democrat race about eight hours later. Honda during his victory speech took a dig at Khanna, saying "the voters of this district value a lifetime of service to the community more than a lifetime of serving oneself." He added that the race "could not be bought ... by millionaires and billionaires." "That was really hard-edged" for a victory speech, said Kyle Kondik, a congressional elections expert at the University of Virginia Center for Poli...
The Virginia Film Festival is putting the spotlight on a television news anchor's debut as a documentary maker. TV news anchor and University of Virginia alum Katie Couric returned to grounds Saturday for a showing at Culbreth Theater of her new documentary "Fed Up". It's an emotional account of several obese children fighting an uphill battle. "I think the most disturbing statistic in this film is that this generation of children will lead shorter life spans than their parents and if that's not a call to action I don't know what is,” said Couric.
There are many events people agree will change their lives forever. Your first day of Kindergarten. Graduating from college. Your wedding day. The birth of your child. The 2013-2014 Virginia Basketball season.
The anti-Obama wave Tuesday rippled far beyond Congress and swept up hundreds of state houses, giving Republicans a boost for 2016 and beyond. “This was a real wave that was generated by anti-Obama sentiment and went from the top to the bottom of the ballot,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
The Ebola virus has infected and killed thousands of people in the ongoing epidemic across several countries. Despite its massive impact, the infectious agent responsible is a tiny virus that carries only seven proteins in its genome. “When you have a protein with a novel amino-acid sequence, you never know if the structure is going to fall into one of the known families or if it’s going to be something new,” said study author Zygmunt Derewenda, a biophysicist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
New waves of Indians and Chinese are taking America’s business-school entrance exam, and that’s causing a big problem for America’s prospective M.B.A.s. To address those concerns, GMAC in September introduced a benchmarking tool that allows admissions officers to compare applicants against their own cohort, filtering scores and percentile rankings by world region, country, gender and college grade-point average. Sara Neher, assistant dean of M.B.A. admissions at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, said she was among those who contacted GMAC for help....
Barack Obama, could reach accords quickly on issues like immigration and tax reform, fast-track trade authority and national security issues. But on other issues — like finally stitching together a fiscal package that would lessen or replace the remaining defense and domestic sequestration cuts — those experts are predicting continued stalemate in Washington. “After Election Day, getting anything done in America’s increasingly polarized Congress will be very difficult,” said Craig Volden, a politics professor at the University of Virginia.
Teens whose parents use guilt have trouble working out disagreements well into adulthood, says a new study. “To maintain healthy relationships, it is important to be able to assert one’s own beliefs during a disagreement while also continuing to be warm toward the person,” says lead author Barbara Oudekerk, a psychologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
The Republican triumphs on Tuesday extended beyond Congress to victories in blue state governors’ races, and those successes could benefit New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association and a potential presidential candidate in 2016. But the gubernatorial wins, even while good news for possible candidates, probably say less about the mood of the voters than the results in Senate and House races. "With senators, people often vote pure ideology," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "...
Billionaire activist Tom Steyer’s drive to make climate change a winning issue in this year’s midterm election fell short as several Democratic candidates he supported lost amid the Republican sweep in Congress and state races. “This was such a bad year for Democrats that a 3 of 7 record isn’t as awful as it seems,” said Larry Sabato, political science professor at the University of Virginia. “No one, no matter how wealthy, is going to dominate American elections. There are too many checks and balances,” he said.
It looks like Lil Wayne can add the title of "literary genius" to his repertoire. University of Virginia professor and author Kreston Kent penned a short book on Weezy titled, “The Literary Genius of Lil Wayne" which looks to justify his case that the 32-year-old rapper should be listed among famous writers William Shakespeare and Bob Dylan for their iconic lyrical contributions.
In late 1986, Washington was rocked by revelations that the Ronald Reagan administration had illegally aided a stateless army known as the contras in Central America. Thus began the Iran-Contra scandal. What’s truly tragic and ironic in this whole affair is that the main allegations in Webb’s Contra reporting had been confirmed in 1998 by a CIA report authored by the agency’s inspector general, Frederick Hitz. But the mainstream media alleged that the report cleared the CIA and the Contras of drug trafficking. The report indeed concluded that the CIA had not conspired to fund...
America's leading political expert, the University of Virginia's Larry Sabato, was so annoyed by recent polling that he ranted about it during a Wednesday morning television interview. "I want an investigation of the polls in Virginia," declared Sabato. "They were completely wrong, just as they were in Georgia. They were also way off in Illinois. And I could go on and on.
Forty-eight hours after an election that all sides almost universally agree was a Republican "tsunami wave," pundits and pols are still wondering how the pollsters could get it so wrong. University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato went a step further in addressing the errant polls. "I want an investigation of the polls in Virginia," Sabato said. "They were completely wrong, just as they were in Georgia. They were also way off in Illinois. And I could go on and on."
Prosecutions of corporations are highly compromised. “Too big to jail” is a slogan for that concern. But it’s really a family of concerns. Companies get alternatives to prosecutions. They may not get prosecuted at all. In the biggest corporate crime cases, there often are no convictions. Their employees may go free. Even if they do settle criminal cases and get penalized, the penalties may be slap on the wrist type penalties. Then there is the concern that reforms don’t meaningfully change anything at these big companies. That’s the take of Brandon Garrett.Garrett...