Quoted: “The traditional role of wives in the White House is to play hostess. They are gracious and keep the home fires burning while the president is out doing business. Barbara Bush fit into that role wonderfully,” said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: “It’s amazing, frankly. It feels to me a little bit like the stage was set when he won the primary in February,” UW-Madison political scientist Barry Burden said.
Quoted: UW-Madison political science professor David Canon said president-elect Obama’s ability to ramp up the turn out of under-30 voters in Wisconsin was not only critical to his success, but may also portend the repeat of a past president’s long term winning formula.
Quoted: Katherine Cramer Walsh, an associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Journalists from Indiana, North Carolina and Colorado talk about early voting, turnout and all the attention from candidates.
Guests include Charles Franklin, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-developer of Pollster.com. (Audio.)
Quoted: “To have the kinds of changes we’re talking about, especially after 2006, those are bigger shifts than anything we’ve seen in a long time,” said David Canon, an expert on Congress from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “Different people are influenced by different issues, but certainly the condition of the economy is the central issue now for most voters,” said John Coleman, head of the political science department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A five-year, $8.6 million grant has been awarded to the University of Wisconsin by the National Institutes of Health to help continue efforts in solving problems associated with transmitting reliable cancer information to patients.
Q. How does the National Weather Service get the official snowfall totals for Madison?
A. If you look at snow on the ground after a snowstorm, you’ll appreciate that measuring snowfall is not an easy task.
Note: This is a new weekly weather feature tapping the expertise of UW-Madison meteorologists Steven A. Ackerman and Jonathan Martin. It will appear every Tuesday in The Wisconsin State Journal.
It’s more important than ever to pay attention to your credit card accounts. Lenders across the country are curtailing credit card offers and credit limits, and UW Madison professor of consumer science, J. Michael Collins, says there’s a good reason for that. “For a long time, people have been able to use their home equity as a way to pay off their credit card debt,” says Collins. “That no longer exists, so credit card companies are responding to the changes in the housing market. It just shows how all these parts of our economy are so interlinked.”
Joseph Salmons is struck by people, many of them descendants of immigrants, who complain newcomers are not trying hard enough to speak English and assimilate.
The University of Wisconsin linguist decided to find out if immigrants in the past faced the same “English or bust” pressures many newcomers now feel.
Quoted: Howard Schweber, an associate professor of political science and law at UW-Madison.
Quoted: John Coleman, chairman of the school’s political science department.
Quoted: Barry Burden, a UW-Madison political science professor who studies voting.
Quoted: Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
Quoted: Donald Downs, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist and First Amendment expert.
Quoted: Ken Goldstein, the UW-Madison political scientist who oversees the Wisconsin Advertising Project.
Quoted: Some political scientists, including Charles Franklin at the University of Wisconsin, say young voters have the highest drop-off rates because they are less informed about local politics. Both parties and outside groups say they’ll appeal to these voters by emphasizing what’s at stake in legislative races and trying to send them targeted messages.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin political science professor Charles Franklin has crunched early-October tracking poll data and found that Regina Hansley is pretty normal.
Quoted: Itâ??s important to note that the law of probability dictates that there will always be outlier polls. As Charles Franklin, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and co-developer of Pollster.com told us recently, â??You shouldnâ??t get too excited about one unusual poll.â?
Quoted: If the young Van Morrison felt awed in such exalted company, he did not show it. In fact, he betrayed little emotion at all, and throughout the session, spoke only to the technicians. ‘There wasn’t much communication,’ recalls Richard Davis, who now teaches music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ‘As far as I can recall, I don’t think I exchanged one word with the guy. We just listened to his songs one time, and then we started playing.’
Quoted: No one has ever won the presidency as a write-in candidate and there are only two examples of successful write-in candidates in national politics, according to John Cooper, a professor of U.S. history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: UW-Madison professor Ken Goldstein is the founder of the ad project, and said watching a candidate’s television spending can tell you, better than anything else, where the real battlegrounds are in an election.
QuotedL Wisconsin statutes give police the authority to place a person on an emergency mental health detention for his or her own protection or the protection of others. Two things are required to place someone on detention, said Ron Diamond, professor of psychology at UW-Madison and the medical director of the Mental Health Center of Dane County.
Quoted: Andrew Reschovsky is a professor of applied economics at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison. Reschovsky has worked extensively on the economics of school funding throughout the state.
The advertising advantage held by the Obama campaign this year puts us in uncharted waters,” said Ken Goldstein, a UW-Madison professor who directs the Wisconsin Advertising Project. “This year the spending is hugely unequal and in some cases the Obama campaign has massive advantages.”
Quoted: UW-Madison political scientist David Canon calls it a “crude and outrageous attempt to try to scare people into not voting for Barack Obama.” He says it plays up racial divisions that may exist in Wisconsin, specifically in Wausau.
Quoted: Toma Longinovic, chair of the department of Slavic languages and literature at UW-Madison, sees the vampire as a violent image that matches our increasingly violent everyday: “As a society becomes more saturated with images of violence that we must essentially accept â?? wars, murder, genocides â?? then the vampire becomes more acceptable.”
Q. Why do people like to scare themselves by watching horror movies or going on thrill rides?
A. First of all, it’s important to remember that many people don’t enjoy these experiences, said Jack Nitschke, a UW-Madison professor of psychiatry and psychology. But those who do may be seeking thrills provided by the amygdala, a brain region that controls our emotional responses to salient objects and events.
Quoted: Lewis Friedland, a UW-Madison professor of journalism, mass communication and sociology who researches social networks.
Widespread screening for high CRPwould be expensive, says James Stein of the University of Wisconsin. But if Crestor clearly saves the lives of people with high CRP counts, patients will probably find a way to get the test and the drug.
Quoted: The younger Stubergh “was a master of wax figures, an artist of the first rank,” said Blake Kellogg, professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an amateur sculptor who studied under the Stuberghs.
John McCain won’t win every single undecided. Over the past 24 hours, two of the nation’s most respected pollsters–Andy Kohut of Pew and Charles Franklin of the University of Wisconsin–conducted extensive analyses of the latest polling data and came to the same conclusion: that Obama and McCain will roughly split the five to six percent of the electorate that remains uncommitted.
Noted: Analysis by the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project shows that both candidates have used negative ads, despite Mr Obama’s accusation, in the final presidential debate, that Mr McCain had run a wholly negative campaign.
Quoted: But as University of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse, no wild-eyed liberal, pointed out, Obama â??is not saying that judges should distort the meaning of law so that people they empathize with can win cases. He’s saying judges need to understand the realities of the world, most significantly, what life is like for people.â?
Quoted: “The reality is that young people are much more supportive of Obama than McCain,” said University of Wisconsin at Madison Professor Diana Hess, who specializes young people and politics.
Quoted: “When a party is facing bad economic times and an unpopular president, over the past 50 years that party typically loses seats in the Congress,” said Charles H. Franklin, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “At some point, the tonnage of Obama commercials makes it difficult for McCain to get his message out,” said Ken Goldstein, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist who studies political advertising.
Quoted: James Johannes, director of the UW-Madison Puelicher Center for Banking Education.
Quoted: UW-Madison political science professor Robert Booth Fowler
With the presidential election less than a week away, The Capital Times’ higher education reporter, Todd Finkelmeyer, tracked down political experts from UW-Madison and Madison Area Technical College to get their take on how things might shake out on Nov. 4.
Quoted: Barry Burden, John Coleman, Kathy Cramer Walsh and Dietram Scheufele
Quoted: “There’s no competitive race in a top 10 media market,” said Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which studies political campaigns at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Quoted: Racism is far from dead in the United States, said Charles Franklin, a political-science professor at the University of Wisconsin who helped conduct a three-part national survey on race and the 2008 election.
Quoted: Stephen Ward, a journalism ethics professor at the School of Journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the payment of money to a charity was less worrisome than putting cash in the pocket of the person who was interviewed.
Quoted: The election is now just a week away, and on UW-Madison political scientist says it’s doubtful the race is still competitive for Republican nominee John McCain.
Tom Holbrook says the unpopularity of President Bush and the tanking economy have been real drags on McCain’s bid for the White House. He says Democrat Barack Obama maintains a sizeable lead in most polls as well.
Noted: Senior strategists in both campaigns said in interviews this week that they had identified women, specifically the so-called â??security momsâ? who are worried about national defense, as a crucial part of the undecided vote.
That both campaigns have tried hard to reach them this year is underscored by the list of their top shows compiled by the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project: â??The Oprah Winfrey Showâ? is the top, non-news program for the advertising of both campaigns, followed by programs like â??Regis & Kelly,â? â??Rachel Rayâ? (one of the few programs that has included more advertisements from Mr. McCain than from Mr. Obama) and â??The View.â?
Quoted: â??When I walk down the street carrying my campaign materials, people yell at me,â? said Katie Nix, 22, the statewide co-chairwoman of Students for McCain who is a senior majoring in molecular biology and French at the University of Wisconsin. â??I just keep hearing, â??Obama! Obama!â?? â?
Quoted: Another researcher, Song Jin, a chemist at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, is experimenting with nanometer-scale wires instead of clusters of molecules to convert solar energy (light) into chemical energy (fuel).
Noted: â??Thatâ??s an enormous part of this phenomenon â?? no one has the time to collect all that information,â? said Mark Blumenthal, who started Pollster.com in 2006 with a University of Wisconsin professor, Charles Franklin.
Quoted: â??What weâ??ve really seen is an increase in the salt load in childrenâ??s diet,â? said Dr. Bruce L. Slaughenhoupt, co-director of pediatric urology and of the pediatric kidney stone clinic at the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Wisconsin State Journal have both endorsed Democrat Barack Obama. James Baughman, Director UW Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, says this hasn’t happened since Bob Dole versus Bill Clinton when in 1996 both papers endorsed the Republican Dole.
UW-Madison is in the midst of implementing an important initiative to reduce the energy consumption on campus and to promote grassroots efforts to motivate the community.
The results of the Big Ten Battleground Poll are astonishing too.
The survey of between 562 to 586 registered voters in the eight states that are home to the 11 universities in the Big Ten conference was this week, from Sunday to Wednesday.
In each state, Mr. Obama holds a double-digit lead. The poll was conducted by University of Wisconsin political scientists Charles Franklin and Ken Golstein.
Quoted: Barry Orton, UW-Madison telecommunications expert.
Noted: Richard Davidson, who directs the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, used a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (fMRI) to “read” the minds of meditating monks in a 2003 study. While engaged in a type of Buddhist contemplation known as compassion meditation, these monks showed extraordinarily high levels of activity in the left dorsolateral regions of their prefrontal cortex.
Quoted: The younger Stubergh “was a master of wax figures, an artist of the first rank,” said Blake Kellogg, professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an amateur sculptor who studied under the Stuberghs.
Quoted: There are also questions whether street protests can change anything, said Jeremi Suri, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the 2005 book “Power and Protest.”
Quoted: The falling prices are a result of less speculation in the crude oil market because of the world’s shaky financial situation and less consumption by consumers, said Rodney Stevenson, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor specializing in energy and regulation.
The depth of their challenge was made plain yesterday by eight surveys produced by the Big Ten Battleground Poll. Obama not only leads in all eight Midwestern states by hefty margins but has improved his standing since the last time the group surveyed these states.
Recently, I wrote here about how a search of the candidatesâ?? own websites shows that supporters of Barack Obama have many more events literally all over the country, even in presumed GOP strongholds, than John McCain.
The Obama campaign has built a machine that is crushing what passes for the McCain/Palin effort. The latest evidence is the Big Ten Battleground Poll, which covers the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
