Charles Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, highlighted the influence that national forces including the national congressional ballot, presidential approval and the state of the economy will have on this year's midterm elections. National forces will likely have a greater effect this year than local forces, which have more to do with incumbency status and the quality of the candidates, he said.
To illustrate his point, Franklin cited the current U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin between three-time Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold and Republican Ron Johnson. Although Feingold managed to defeat conservative Republicans in the 1998 and 2004 Senate races, he will lose this race because of the national forces playing against him, according to Franklin.
"It's not about Mr. Johnson versus Mr. Feingold. It's about any Republican versus any Democrat," he said.
As long as candidates are relatively well funded, campaigns would have little effect on the results of the midterm elections, according to panelist and government major Harry Enten '11. In close races, campaign action or small differences in funding could produce the needed push for the win, Enten said.
"Where campaigns are asymmetric, you're certainly going to see a campaign effect," Franklin added.
Each panelist predicted the political makeup of the Senate after the 2010 midterm election based on their experience and statistics.
"I hereby forecast 51 seats Democratic in the Senate after the election no more, no less. Exactly 51. You heard it here first," Franklin said.
Franklin also said that Republicans winning control of Congress or the Senate might be the best thing for President Barack Obama's reelection in 2012. Previous presidents, such as Harry Truman and Bill Clinton, have been able to gain political support when seeking a second term by arguing against obstructionist Congresses, he said.
Members of the panel, including Dartmouth government professor Joseph Bafumi, described statistical models for predicting midterm election results and their implications.
Bafumi's model uses generic poll results and the party of the current president to predict the midterm vote division, and then forecasts which party will take control of the Senate and House of Representatives.
"It continues to look like Republicans should be optimistic about their electoral prospects in November," Bafumi said, although he conceded that Franklin's prediction about the number of seats the Democrats would win was reasonable.
Enten argued that the results of the election could have been foreseen as far back as June.
"It's all about the fundamentals," Enten said. "Politicians don't have much control over their destiny."
Enten's prediction for the election results differed from Franklin's, however.
"I'll one up these two gentlemen and say the Republicans will gain 57 seats in the House of Representatives which would be the highest gain for any party since 1938 and [retain] 52 to 53 seats for the Democrats in the Senate," he said, eliciting a chuckle from the audience.
Fellow government major Ted Schroeder '11 focused on whether "midterm loss" the phenomenon in which the president's party loses seats in the congressional elections two years after the start of his term occurred only at the midterm. Shroeder's analysis took into account which party previously held a given seat, the turnout rate, the number of months since the presidential election, the president's party and which term the president was serving.
He found that the president's party suffered a 6 percentage-point loss in the first term and an additional 12 percentage-point loss in the second term.
"The loss is fairly constant over time," Schroeder concluded.
Columbia University political science professor Robert Erikson presented the findings of his own study, which traced changes in polls over time. He noted that the outcome of this midterm is uncertain, a view several other panelists also expressed.
"We don't know how much the poll is going to be pulled by the national forces," Erikson said.
He cited the unexpected results of the 1994 elections, when Republicans won control of Congress for the first time in 40 years, although he added that close monitoring of poll data at the time might have indicated the change.
"The more we know, the more we know we don't know," Erikson said.
During a question and answer session, audience members asked why national forces were likely to dominate this year's midterm election. Panelists said Obama's win in 2008 and his immediate pursuit of controversial policies such as the bailout and health care reform were likely lead to Democratic losses in the midterm elections.
