The barriers to women’s decisions to run are backed up by research from UVA’s Jennifer Lawless and Loyola Marymount’s Richard Fox; women tend to be more risk-averse and may be less inclined to run given negative perceptions of how other women politicians are treated.
Jennifer L. Lawless, UVA’s Commonwealth Professor of Politics, said Republican incumbent Will Hurd’s win over Gina Jones in Texas’ 23rd Congressional District race demonstrates three important lessons about the midterms.
Clarke County School District Superintendent Demond Means told the Clarke County Board of Education at its Thursday work session that the University of Virginia School Turnaround Program is a “unique, strong program” that involves both the university’s business school and its education school, one recognized by the federal government as one of the best in the country.
(Subscription required) New campus polling places, organizing strategies, and anti-Trump energy helped drive vote totals in college towns and counties with large student populations. About 7,000 more voters in Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia, cast ballots in that state’s U.S. Senate race in 2018 compared with 2014, according to data gathered by the Associated Press.
“Stars are powered by nuclear reactions that create new chemical elements,” said Thomas Bisbas, a UVA postdoctoral researcher and the lead author on the paper describing these new results. “The very existence of life on earth is the product of a star that exploded billions of years ago, but we still don't know how these stars – including our own sun – form.”
“Our study found no evidence for an effect of echinacea on common cold illnesses,” says Dr. Ronald Turner, a professor of pediatrics at the UVA School of Medicine, referring to his 2005 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“It is a critical check on Trump,” says UVA analyst Larry Sabato. “Big legislation with an ideological tint, left or right, won’t pass for the next two years. Democrats now have the power of subpoena, so Trump and his administration can expect to be investigated rather than protected by the House.”
Kaine has raised more than $22 million and has spent more than $4.5 million on ads, according to numbers from the Virginia Public Access Project. Meanwhile, Corey Stewart has raised almost $3 million and spent about $297,000 on ads. Stewart is succeeding in the cheaper arena of social media. "He was not going to have the kind of money that a candidate that is fully backed and has the enthusiasm of the Republican Party was going to have," said Professor Bruce Williams. "Tim Kaine has that." Professor Williams is the Henry S. Taylor Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia.
Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the UVA Center for Politics had categorized the race in the historically Republican 5th as a “toss-up” before updating it Monday to “leans Republican.” However, according to Kyle Kondik, managing editor for Sabato’s Crystal Ball, that doesn’t mean a GOP victory is a given.
In the last hours before election day, voters are already breaking records, casting more than 35 million early ballots. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows 59 percent of voters want a major change in direction from President Trump, but even experts are skeptical of the polls in a midterm cycle unlike any other. "You can't rely on the way it once was in terms of turnout or registrants or much of anything else," says Larry Sabato of UVA’s Center for Politics.
"The midterm history is pretty stark in that the president's party usually loses ground in the midterms and it is usually a question of how much ground they lose," UVA analyst Kyle Kondik said. "That is particularly true when a president is unpopular, as this president is." Kondik notes that in the 29 congressional midterm elections held since 1900, the president's party has lost House seats in all but three — 1934, 1998 and 2002.
The University of Virginia's political team is out with their final projection of Tuesday’s national elections and they are giving the Democrats a comfortable victory in the House. Political gurus Larry J. Sabato and Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball, expect the Democrats to net 34 seats, 11 more than the 23 needed to take control of the chamber and install Rep. Nancy Pelosi as the new House speaker.
On the eve of Election Day, the UVA Center for Politics is waiting to see if its final predictions come true. Prognosticators from all across the county have put out their final predictions on races that could reshape the balance of power. Larry Sabato of UVA’s Center or Politics says that the tight race will likely go in favor of the Democrats.
Research from the University of Virginia’s Jennifer Lawless and Loyola Marymount’s Richard Fox has found that it’s tougher to get women to run for office because women candidates are more likely to question their qualifications or see political office as a viable career path.
Trump focused his final campaign blitz on turning out the Republican vote in states with close Senate contests. His campaign stops did not include Wisconsin, Pennsylvania or Michigan – states Trump narrowly carried, but where the Democratic incumbents have had easier re-election campaigns than expected. Larry Sabato, director of UVA's Center for Politics, called them “snap-back” states. Trump’s small 2016 margin means there are many voters "who have a party ID not aligned with the president.” “Given the first opportunity, they reassert their old selves,” he said.
Poor weather has the potential to affect turnout, though estimates on the number of early voters are now up to 38 million people, up from 27 million in the 2014 midterm elections. Thirty states plus the District of Columbia exceeded the 2014 numbers. "It’s raining here and lots of places. So what? You won’t melt unless you’re the Wicked Witch of the West," Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics wrote on Twitter just after 9 a.m. "Go Vote!!"
Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a website run by UVA Center for Politics Director Larry Sabato, predicted that Democrats would easily pick up the necessary 23 seats. But it also cautioned that anything was possible with the country so deeply divided and memories of Trump’s upset win in 2016 still fresh in mind.
The Virginia Film Festival, held in Charlottesville, had another successful year. The 31st annual event had more than 30,000 people attend in the four-day span.
The University of Virginia has developed scalpel-free surgery for Parkinson’s patients.
Historically, the president's party routinely loses House seats in midterm elections. Indeed UVA’s Center for Politics points out that the president's party has lost seats in all but three of the 29 midterms held since 1900.