Minutes after Gov. Nikki Haley's blowout win Tuesday night, speculation began anew that the governor may not finish out her second four-year term if the eventual Republican presidential nominee comes calling. "She's probably not a first-tier vice presidential candidate simply because she's from a very safe red state, and the eventual GOP nominee may be looking for a VP choice from a swing state," University of Virginia political scientist Geoffrey Skelly said Wednesday. But there are other variables that no one can predict, Skelly added.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie helped solidify his place in the national Republican Party with a series of gubernatorial election wins on Tuesday in states where he campaigned heavily. “Governors are key components of the nominating process,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center of Politics. “If they decide to go work for a candidate, that can make a big difference.”
(By Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey) It might not have been 1994 or 2010, but 2014 was a wave all its own: A late-breaking surge that lifted Republicans to some surprisingly strong performances across the country. Notably, though, the argument for this election being a “wave” has more to do with the House and gubernatorial races, as opposed to the main event—the Republican Senate takeover.
As election officials scramble to determine a winner in the Virginia Senate race, some Monday morning quarterbacking is already underway in the Republican Party. A lot of pundits say the GOP did not throw enough support at its candidate, Ed Gillespie. Meanwhile at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, experts try to figure out what happened. “It was very surprising, all the polling had shown Warner far ahead,” said Geoff Skelley of the Center for Politics.
As Republican governors across the country claimed wins Tuesday, so did Gov. Christie.The national face of the effort to elect Republican governors, Christie helped raise $106 million and visited at least 35 states as chairman of the Republican Governors Association. "The big plus for Christie is that he built up chits with new GOP governors whose states will have loads of delegates to the 2016 GOP convention," said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. "Governors matter in nomination battles as long as the candidate they endorse is a r...
Connecticut Republicans stuck to their guns in the governor's race -- and paid dearly for it. While the GOP made gains in the rest of the country and retook control of the U.S. Senate, the streak of Republican futility in the state continued. Geoffrey Skelley, an associate editor of Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center of Politics, said the dynamics of the race might have been very different if McKinney were the nominee.
With both houses of Congress in Republican control, the question in Washington yesterday was how much either side could get done during the last two years of President Barack Obama’s term in office. Not much, many agree. “Obama and (House Speaker John) Boehner are like oil and water,” said Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia. “Obama and (incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch) McConnell aren’t even elements on the same planet. How is all this supposed to happen?”
Gov. John Kasich’s smashing re-election win and Sen. Rob Portman’s key role in helping Republicans seize control of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday have propelled both Ohio Republicans into legitimate status as contenders, albeit underdogs, for the presidency in 2016. “They’re both dark horses in this thing, but they’re both in it if they want to be,” said Kyle Kondik, an Ohioan who is now managing editor of the nationally respected Sabato’s Crystal Ball website at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “Neither starts as anything close to a ...
Maine Democrats spared neither time nor money in their efforts to make the 2014 gubernatorial election a referendum on Republican Gov. Paul LePage. However, the consistently underestimated governor responded with a winning campaign that capitalized on the declining popularity of President Barack Obama and wove an economic thread into the traditional hot-button issues of welfare and immigration.Geoffrey Skelley, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said LePage probably benefited from the national mood, too.“To some degree it wa...
It wasn’t just the Ed Gillespie/Mark Warner Senate race in Virginia that pollsters missed.Geoffrey Skelley with University of Virginia’s Center for Politics said “the fact that it missed in a lot of different places would suggest there’s something more to this . . .
Like the seven-day weather forecast, Election Day 2014 proved somewhat unpredictable to the people who are supposed to know it best, with state and federal races having margins of victory or outright upsets that rained on political forecasts. Even the vaunted “Crystal Ball” political analysis by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics had cast the race as “likely” for a Democratic win — a measure of certainty beyond the “leans” designation applied to closer contests.
Michigan Republicans blew a prime opportunity to capture a U.S. Senate seat for the first time in two decades, as the GOP party rode a national wave of victories to take control of the upper chamber, state experts said Wednesday. "The fundamentals in Michigan for an open Senate seat favor Democrats," said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. "Michigan fools Republicans. They get excited in the spring and summer, but are inevitably disappointed in the fall."
Used car salesman and funny-car dragster enthusiast Mark R. Maynard visited reporters Wednesday, one day after he rode a Republican wave into the state Senate. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at University of Virginia, believes dissatisfaction with President Barack Obama expedited the state’s transition, but said the Republican tilt started before his administration and likely will continue after he leaves the White House.
Tuesday was a brutal night for the Democratic Party – yet as Republicans celebrate their impending takeover of the Senate and an increased majority in the House of Representatives, the Dems aren’t the only ones licking their wounds. Proper respect, however, has to be shown to University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato and the staff at the school’s Center for Politics. More than any other major election forecaster, Sabato’s Crystal Ball team laid it on the line Tuesday. Doing away with the wishy-washy toss-up category, as is their wont, they took a stand on ...
Democrats have a lot to be miserable about a day after losing the U.S. Senate, more seats in Congress, and several governors' mansions and state houses.But they also have reasons to step back from the ledge and dig in for next time. "it's just a classic six-year-itch election," said Larry Sabato, who runs the University of Virginia Center for Politics, which predicted a 53-seat GOP Senate would emerge from Tuesday's contest.
Massachusetts voters sent a Republican back to the statehouse after an election night featuring razor-thin margins and a wave of Republican victories in governors' races across the United States. "They benefited from a Republican-leaning electorate in a Republican-leaning year," said Kyle Kondik, an analyst at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.
There will come a time in the life of every hip-hop fan when he or she will be called upon to defend the art form. We are told that rapping is not really an art, that it is a bastardized form of gutter poetry or that it is intolerable for its glorification of drugs, violence or rabid misogyny. To the rescue comes Kreston Kent, author of “The Literary Genius of Lil Wayne: The case for Lil Wayne to be counted among Shakespeare and Dylan.” In a long essay posing as a short book, Kent presents thorough and incisive proof of Lil Wayne’s genius. He credits Lil Wayne with the c...
Former astronaut and NFL player Leland Melvin is slated to be at the University of Virginia on Thursday night to speak on science, technology, engineering and math education. Melvin received his master’s degree in materials engineering from UVa in 1991.
The University of Virginia Medical Center and Virginia Commonwealth University Medical center will be go-to hospitals for Ebola patients who cannot be transferred to a national biocontainment facility.
Giving birth to a premature daughter inspired Katie Brenner’s career. The University of Wisconsin-Madison postdoctoral researcher is one of five female scientists in the U.S. to receive the For Women in Science Fellowship this year from L’Oreal USA and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The recognition — also bestowed upon scientists at Harvard University, the University of Minnesota, Stanford University and the University of Virginia — was announced today.