Prof. Mark Petracca, UC Irvine, “When Will It Be Over? Presidential Election of. 2016”

Prof. Mark Petracca, UC Irvine, When Will It Be Over? Presidential Election of 2016

Prof. Mark Petracca of the UC Irvine Dept. of Political Science and Associate Dean of the School of Social Sciences gave the UCI Forum on October 5, 2016. His talk was titled “When Will It Be Over? Presidential Election of 2016″.

It was a humorous and politically motivated talk to an audience of 150 educated attendees. He says that with this election, we need group therapy or an exorcism. His jokes sound much better when he says them, so I will concentrate on the political science.

He reminded us of the old song “Who’s Sorry Now”, who’s lyrics he read and which could be relevant now. They could be relevant to Joe Biden, who might wish now that he had run, or to Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, or to the American public in the future.

He mentioned the VP debate last night where Gov. Pence had constructed a phantom running mate.

The good thing about this election is that we have the first female candidate for President. On the other side, we have the nomination of the first Presidential candidate with no government experience. It is odd that both have negative ratings of around 70%. They are making President Obama look good by comparison, and his ratings are now greater than 52%.

It is normally very difficult for a party to win a third term in a row, but it might happen this time. Also, four or five Senate seats could flip to give a majority to the Democrats.

Going back to the Federalist Papers, he said our electoral college system was set up to avoid electing a President who only appealed to one state or faction. When around 2002, people were considering doing away with the electoral college, Petracca favored keeping it.

He recommended http://realclearpolitics.org to track the polls. He said Nate Silver had Clinton at 276 electoral votes, to Trump’s 261, and in the popular vote, Clinton leading 46.4% to 44.9%. Of 14 polls, Clinton wins in 12, Trump in none, and two polls, Fox and the Fix, don’t predict Clinton or Trump wins.

Of some large swing states, Ohio has Clinton up 5 percent, North Carolina has Clinton up 3, Florida has Clinton up 3, and Colorado has Clinton up 7. The election is slightly closer than in 2012.

The Democrats have an advantage in having a structure in place to get out their voters.

In Petracca’s talk to us last spring, he gave six reasons that Trump might win the primaries: (1) (Not sure what he meant); (2) there are lots of contenders so Trump would not need a majority; (3) Trump is a media magnate; (4) Trump has a populist movement behind him; (5) Trump was self funded; and (6) Trump was the last vestige of white male power.

These are absent in the general election, but Trump is still getting the media attention. It is amazing that all the talk is about Trump, not Clinton.

He recommended the book “The Hillbilly Elegy”.

Prof. Petracca gave four answers to the question “Why Not Clinton”, meaning why is she unpopular, or what could the explanation be if she lost.

First, Hillary Clinton has endured 35 years of criticism, starting when she was First Lady of Arkansas. He said you could say that she has been “harassed” for 35 years.

Second, American politics is characterized by misogyny (applause by women). Men and women seem to want a man in the White House. This seems more true among young women.

Third, there is anti-dynastic sentiment, or Clinton Fatigue. The Clinton’s have been present in younger people’s entire lives.

With the electoral college giving all of a state’s votes to one candidate, you can now win with the largest 12-13 states out of the 50 states.

His conclusion was that Clinton could win.

In the Question and Answer segment, he said that Trump was really not bringing in new voters. He was bringing in Independents, who could now vote for a Republican, since there was not a viable third candidate for them.

To the question “would there be a Brexit surprise?”, he said our polling was pretty good. Some people voted for Brexit, thinking that it really wouldn’t win, who might have voted against it.

Clinton has inherited President Obama’s voters list that will help her get out the vote.

To the question whether America has a problem with women as leaders in general, he answered “absolutely”.

Asked why younger women were against Hillary, he answered that they have bought into the outlook that there is no problem for women in America to overcome.

He said that he does not think that the third parties will take Clinton’s votes.

Two states have proportional distribution of their electoral votes, Maine and Nebraska.

Will the voter registration acts have an effect on the election? Not really, since they are in red states already.

Young people are not into activism, because they have so much else that they are interested in.

The voter turnout percentage in caucus states is comparable to other states’ turnout in the general election.

He reminded us that political parties and primaries are not in the Constitution.

What could happen in the next five weeks? Trump might acquire a ground game (his son, Donald Trump Jr., has hired a data mining firm for this). Clinton might have another health problem.

For the income tax form release, he guessed it might be one of his children or an angry ex-wife (I argued against this in my earlier post on the tax form leak).

There might be more data released before the election (maybe hurting either side).

The talk was roundly enjoyed by all.

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
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