3 Questions: Charles Stewart sizes up the 2012 election
With the 2012 campaign in the home stretch, the presidential race and many congressional matchups are too close to call. To hear more about them, MIT News spoke this week with Charles Stewart III, the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science and a leading expert in elections, voting technology, congressional politics and American political history. Q. Since the first presidential debate, we’ve seen a polling shift away from Barack Obama and toward Mitt Romney. What do you think is the state of the race right now? A. We’re where we’ve been for at least six months, which is a really close election in which the incumbent has a bare lead. Most observers would normally predict that given the state of the economy, the incumbent should not have a bare lead, but that the challenger should be well ahead at this point. … I think there are two special factors...