Throughout the year, the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been surveying the same Midwestern battleground state voters. These surveys show President Trump was in trouble early.
Katherine Cramer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said many voters are probably holding their noses as they cast ballots.
“There are many Republicans in that part of the state who are telling themselves, ‘I am not voting for Trump, I am voting for Supreme Court seats, the unborn, the Second Amendment,’ that kind of thing,” said Cramer, who wrote a 2016 book on rural Wisconsin titled, “The Politics of Resentment.
Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, shared Hasen’s worries, outlining in an email what he views as “the most likely scenario”:President Trump falsely condemns the election as fraudulent and illegal. He will build on his allegations that millions of noncitizens voted illegally in 2016 to claim that millions of absentee ballots were submitted in duplicate or by foreign governments, neither of which will be true. He will intensify his rants against the supposed fraud as Biden’s lead in the popular vote grows in the days following the election.
Even so, Barry C. Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the number of otherwise legitimate votes that will not be counted as a result of the ruling was difficult to predict. “We don’t know what the number will be, but it won’t be zero,” he said.
“It’s a sad situation when a ballot is rejected,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s a real risk voters take. I don’t think most voters would like their odds if they knew them.”
Restaurants nervous about ordering cheese they can’t use are buying products just one month in advance versus their typical approach of booking purchases up to a year early, said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
David Canon, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, talked about the 2020 presidential campaign in the battleground state of Wisconsin
NPR’s David Greene talks to Dr. Jeffrey Pothof, an emergency room doctor in Madison and chief quality officer at the University of Wisconsin Health, about the surge in COVID-19 cases in the state.
“Some estimates are that there might be one hundred and fifty million people voting for president this year,” Barry Burden, director of Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Fox News.
Bruce Wampold, an emeritus professor of counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, has studied the impact and efficacy of psychotherapy throughout his career and wants to emphasize that, generally speaking, psychotherapy works. “For most mental disorders, psychotherapy is as effective as antidepressants or anti-anxiety medications, and it’s longer lasting — there’s less relapse when it’s over than with medication and fewer additional episodes over the life course,” he says.
Fenaba Addo is a professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and has researched this student debt gap. The following is an edited transcript of her interview with “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio.
“It’s a combination of a lot of things that have occurred at the same time,” Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin Madison, told me. “It was a perfect storm.”
But some experts say it won’t hinder most voters. “This year it looks likely that the majority of votes in Wisconsin could be submitted before election day – that’s a huge change and it’s significant,” said Barry Burden, political science professor at University of Wisconsin – Madison and director of the Elections Research Center.
Burden attributes the trends to a response to the pandemic, with voters wanting to avoid exposure to Covid-19 while waiting in line to vote, but also to an unprecedented enthusiasm for early voting.
The latest survey of likely voters in the three former “blue wall” states from the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison finds Biden nearly doubling his lead in each state compared to last month.
The survey, which was conducted by YouGov for the University of Wisconsin-Madison from October 13 to 21, shows Biden backed by 53 percent of likely voters, while just 44 percent support the president. Notably, that’s a gain of 3 percentage points for the former vice president and a loss of 2 percentage points for Trump, compared with results from the survey when it was carried out in September.
In the early days of the pandemic, Malia Jones wrote an informative letter about coronavirus to her friends and family, including tips like “wash your hands” and “don’t pick your nose.” The letter went viral, getting over one million views on USA Today and earning her an appearance on “Dr. Phil.” Jones, a social epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies how infectious diseases spread through populations, was suddenly in high demand to explain the science of outbreaks on a level that the general public could understand.
“In the more rural parts of Wisconsin, you drive by taverns and other meeting spots and they’re just packed on a Friday night,” said Katherine Cramer, a politics professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Biden has support from 52% of likely Pennsylvania voters, compared to 44% for Trump, according to the survey from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Conversations during the summer were wary, and often explosive. Yang Sao Xiong, a professor of social work and Asian American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who studies Hmong American political participation, observed that Hmong Americans sometimes have an “uneasy” relationship to the broader category of Asian American. Their higher rates of poverty are often invoked as a “negative test case” to disprove the model-minority myth, he explained, “and that’s the only time they enter into the Asian American conversation.”
But trends changed in the mid-19th century, when the U.S. began to see “astronomical” turnout, said Barry Burden, a political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“There are very few people who haven’t already made up their minds,” explained Katherine Cramer, the author of the 2016 book “The Politics of Resentment” and a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Some analysts have suggested he pour resources into Wisconsin, which began in-person early voting on Tuesday. “It’s quite a challenge for him,” said Katherine J. Cramer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It seems like Biden is really holding his own here.”
Fenaba Addo Economist, Associate ProfessorUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison
The next president should extend and expand help for the 43 million current and former college and graduate students who collectively are on the hook for more than $1.7 trillion in higher education debt, says Addo.
Intimidation at polling places by armed groups has the potential to be a serious problem in places like the Midwest, said Kenneth Mayer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A private security firm has been recruiting former special operations troops to patrol polling sites on election day in Minnesota, the Washington Post has reported. Though the law varies by state, any poll watchers typically have to be certified in advance or it is illegal.
“Transmission lines transport a large amount of power, and if several such lines are turned off you can really start to see large-scale power shut-offs,” said Line Roald, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
NPR’s Ailsa Chang talks with Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control and protection at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, about a spike in coronavirus cases in Wisconsin.
Ajay K. Sethi, an associate professor in population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin, told ABC News that the state has put in place strict restrictions to make sure voters are safe.
“Since previous COVID cases were tied to polling locations during the April spring election, there certainly is awareness and concern for additional spread of the virus on Election Day,” said Sethi. “Election officials are preparing to operate polling places safely, and a record number of Wisconsinites have voted already, so I am hopeful that Election Day will not add more fuel to the fire.”
Hemant Shah, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies portrayals of race and ethnicity in film and media, said that if white children consumed content with racist portrayals that went unchecked, it could “normalize the stereotype” for them and make it “normal for them not to call out stereotypes or racist behaviors they see in their lives.”
There have been some appeals by experts over the years to take paternal PPD seriously, but those calls have been largely ignored. In January, three leading researchers, Tova Walsh, Ph.D., Neal Davis, M.D., and Craig Garfield, M.D., published a piece in Pediatrics—the influential journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics—urging pediatricians to screen for paternal PPD, just as they do for maternal postpartum depression. “It is now critical to recognize paternal depression as a community of pediatric providers and ensure consistent screening, referral, and follow-up,” they wrote.
“This just makes me feel that the winter will be more ominous. I don’t think it’s going to go down. It could, we have the time for it to go down,” said Ajay Sethi, an associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “But you really need to have a sudden and complete change in behavior across the state, and it’s hard to believe it will occur.”
Howard Schweber, a political-science professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said the conflicts in all three states reflect the intense partisan divide, with Democratic governors and one or both houses of the legislative branch controlled by Republicans.
“What we have is just a sort of state-level version of what is sometimes called constitutional hardball,” he said. “Parties pushing the rules of the game and their interests to the extreme that the system will allow, which would be unfortunate if we were talking about, say, fiscal policy, but in the case of a genuine public-health crisis, is truly disastrous.”
“I think it’s a combination of widespread national interest in racial justice and the pandemic happening simultaneously [driving engagement]—and the fact that these arenas aren’t actually being used for sports [that] makes them available,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and founding director of its Elections Research Center. “So it’s sort of a perfect storm of all these things coming together that’s made it sort of a natural extension for teams to make.”
David Canon, chair of the political science department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, agreed.But he said Trump may have committed a “tactical error” by backing out of a virtual debate with Biden.“He needed the debates more than Biden did,” Canon said. “He’s the one that needs to change the momentum in the election.”
A new study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of New Mexico used hair, fur, and bone samples to identify the diets of seven carnivore species across the Upper Midwest, from the outskirts of Albany, New York, to remote Minnesota forestland. The scientists used chemical tracers to show that the animals were relying on human food sources either directly, such as by raiding fields or trash bins, or indirectly by preying on smaller animals that do, such as mice, rabbits, or sometimes even pets.
“It’s still kind of like a volunteer fire department,” said Tom Friedrich, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the consortium. “Labs that already have the interest and capacity are sequencing, but that leaves other places lacking in coverage.”
Some of the biggest gaps are in places where outbreaks are most out of control, noted Friedrich’s University of Wisconsin colleague Dave O’Connor. “It is sort of like a street only being illuminated where there happen to be streetlights,” he said. “You can’t know anything about the areas that are dark.”
But that doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate Halloween safely this year. University of Wisconsin-Madison Epidemiologist Malia Jones answers your questions — and offers some creative alternatives to enjoying the spooky season.
The standard biography of the man is the fascinating “Spinoza: A Life,” by Steven Nadler, a philosophy professor at the University of Wisconsin. A revised edition of this much-admired book has recently appeared.
More affluent families may have chosen private schools or homeschooling because they did not like the pre-packaged curricula that many public school systems are using for online learning, and they are unlikely to return to public schools any time soon, University of Wisconsin education professor Michael Apple said.
According to Dr. Ajay K. Sethi, associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin, the testing protocol at In My Elements was solid, though not entirely fail-safe. “Multiple rounds are better than a one-time test at the time of admission,” Sethi says. “The PCR test result indicates that virus was not detected on the day that testing was performed. If someone was exposed and infected the day before PCR testing, then the test may miss detection of the virus.”
A team of researchers, including two from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has solved a long-running biological mystery, reporting the discovery of the first two viral relatives of rubella, also known as German Measles.
“I think any rejected ballot is a travesty. We don’t want any legitimate voter to have their ballot go uncounted because of an administrative mishap, a missing signature, a slow mail delivery,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who analyzed Wisconsin absentee data.
The findings strongly suggest that at some point in the past, a similar virus jumped from animals to humans, giving rise to today’s rubella virus, the researchers say. Although neither of the new viruses is known to infect humans, the fact that a related virus jumped species raises concerns that the two viruses or other, as-yet-unknown relatives could cause human outbreaks. “We would be remiss not to be concerned, given what’s going on in the world today,” says epidemiologist Tony Goldberg of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a senior author of the study.
Dr. William Hartman, who is leading several Covid-19 clinical trials at University of Wisconsin Health in Madison, said it is unusual for patients to go home before they have finished their IV medications. But “the White House is a different situation, obviously,” Hartman said. “He can get that type of care there.”
But the stroke was not made public while Wilson remained in office. Neither was a urinary infection that “nearly killed him,” according to John Milton Cooper, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who wrote “Woodrow Wilson: A Biography.
Other archived data could prove useful, too. Sousa-Silva is currently looking through old infrared telescope observations of Venus, hunting for additional overlooked evidence of phosphine. And Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who is a co-author of Mogul’s preprint paper, says old data from the Soviet Venera probes—while unlikely to have been sensitive enough to detect phosphine—may contain evidence for atomic phosphorus, which could hint at the presence of molecular phosphine, too. He notes, however, that the whereabouts of much of those data is unknown. Still, Limaye says, “somebody probably has some records.”
“Reading these papers gives me the sense that they’re going to have the controlled thermonuclear fusion plasma that we all dream about,” said Cary Forest, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin who is not involved in the project. “But if I were to estimate where they’re going to be, I’d give them a factor of two that I give to all my grad students when they say how long something is going to take.”
“There have been some reports about how viruses are able to manipulate hosts, but this one is so unique,” said Aurelie Rakotondrafara, a plant pathologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the study. “You can’t help but ask: How is this possible?
Climate change is also tipping the scales toward larger fires. Monica Turner, a fire researcher and a professor of integrative biology at the University of Wisconsin Madison, said in an email that climate is a big driver of megafires, those burning through an area larger than 100,000 acres.
Schools can step in and provide support when parents themselves are traumatized. Familiar adults at school can also provide a buffering effect against trauma, said Travis Wright, an associate professor of counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Reading these papers gives me the sense that they’re going to have the controlled thermonuclear fusion plasma that we all dream about,” said Cary Forest, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin who is not involved in the project. “But if I were to estimate where they’re going to be, I’d give them a factor of two that I give to all my grad students when they say how long something is going to take.”
Core battlegrounds: A new Franklin & Marshall survey of Pennsylvania put Biden’s lead at 9 points among all registered voters, up from 7 points last month. The race tightens to a 6-point Biden advantage among likely voters. New surveys from the University of Wisconsin-Madison find Biden leading in Michigan (+8), Pennsylvania (+5) and Wisconsin (+5) among registered voters.
Biden has led in every major poll of Pennsylvania going back to June and currently leads by an average of 4.1 points. A Franklin & Marshall survey of Pennsylvania released Thursday found Biden ahead by 6 points among likely voters, although a University of Wisconsin-Madison survey found his lead shrink from 9 points to 5 points over the past month.
Though it may seem counterintuitive, large, formal settings are often safer than small, informal ones, because they typically require people to follow stringent rules to minimize risk, said Dr. Arwady.
At school, for instance, “even though the kids are in the classroom, their activities are very much prescribed,” said Dr. Ellen Wald, an infectious disease pediatrician at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. They are typically required to wear masks and sit at desks spaced six feet apart.
But it’s an important role for journalists to advocate for public release of as much information as possible, said Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin.
“I have no problem with a reporter telling an author that it’s in the public interest to see that the tapes are released,” Culver said.
But this could be the year that freshwater mussels get the attention that Jordan Richard, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the University of Wisconsin, believes they’re owed.
After years of searching for a potential explanation for the mysterious and massive die-offs that have suddenly killed thousands of mussels in streams from Washington to Virginia, Mr. Richard and his colleagues have finally identified a potential “mussel-bola” culprit.
“If you had to find a part of the country that is an example of white flight, Milwaukee would be a poster child,” said Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
But Ryan Owens, a political science professor and director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership, isn’t so sure.
“There’s a lot of suspicion among hard-core Trump supporters, and hard-core Trump opponents, about people trying to manipulate the voting system,” said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s just very tempting for people to believe that something nefarious has happened when the results don’t seem to be going in the way they expected.”
“This is something more that we can’t explain about Venus,” Sanjay Limaye, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who wasn’t involved in the new study, told Space.com. “Venus has got more questions [about it] than Mars, which is why we are suggesting that Venus should be considered an astrobiology target.”
Tiffany Green, an assistant professor in the Departments of Population Health Sciences and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has pointed out that physical distancing is difficult to achieve in some essential occupations and while using public transport.
