As U.S. votes, profs predict Democratic gains

Two weeks ago, as national buzz continued to build about today's midterm Congressional elections, Wilson School professor and former Oklahoma congressman Mickey Edwards expected to hear students eagerly parsing possible electoral outcomes. Instead, he found undergraduate attention almost wholly focused on a different kind of midterms.

"Not a whole lot of students were talking about elections," said Edwards, who blamed the dearth of discussion on exams and heavy workloads rather than campus apathy. "Students were talking about work."

With Americans heading to the polls today in an election widely expected to deliver Democratic gains in Congress, University professors who specialize in Congressional politics depicted a restless nation, one wary of corruption, angry about the Iraqi war and ready for a change of leadership.

At the same time, faculty and students suggested that — though University students are politically aware and share the nation's frustrations — many Princetonians may cast their ballots today more out of a sense of civic duty than of zealous political activism.

Wilson School professor Nolan McCarty said he thinks students' votes will reflect views that are left of center, but not radically so.

"Campus sentiment differs from national sentiment mostly ... in that it is more liberal," he said. "Students and most Democrats nationally are quite upset with the way Iraq is going, upset that the president lacks a social or economic agenda ... [University students] are very much mainstream Democrats; it's just that there are more Democrats here than nationally."

Comparing Princeton to Columbia, where he used to teach, McCarty added that he "wouldn't say [Princeton students are] more apathetic. It's just that there are not as many Stalinists." For the first time this year, the student voter registration group P-Votes gave students the option of signing up for absentee ballots in their home states rather than voting in New Jersey. But co-chair Kris Ekdahl '07 said he had hoped the organization would register more students this year than it did. P-Votes signed up 451 students to vote this year — 234 to vote in New Jersey and 217 elsewhere — compared to 421 last year, when the group only registered students to cast ballots in New Jersey.

"The people whom P-Votes helped have less sense about being politically active, but when they're presented with the opportunity to register, they register," Ekdahl said, adding that the three-year-old group may have already registered many students in previous years, partially explaining this year's relatively small increase. He also noted that more enthusiastic students may have registered independently.

Down to the wire

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Though national polls in recent days show a slight Republican upswing — a Thursday through Sunday Gallup poll shows Democrats ahead 51 to 44 percent, compared to a 13-point Democratic lead two weeks ago — McCarty and Edwards both predicted the GOP would lose at least one legislative body.

Edwards, who served as a Republican in the House from 1977 to 1993, said he sees "a lot of parallels between now and 1994," when the GOP swept Congress in a "Republican Revolution" that was attributed to American frustration with the policies of the Clinton administration and Democratic Congress. "A lot of polls indicate that this is a worse year for Republicans than that was for Democrats," he added. "The anger is much greater, and the president was not nearly as unpopular [in 1994]."

Edwards, who predicted that Republicans would hang on to the Senate by a narrow margin but lose the House, noted that "whichever party holds the House and Senate is going to hold them by such a narrow margin" that significant post-election policy change may be difficult.

"A lot of the Democrats running this year are very conservative," he added, citing candidates such as the pro-life Pennsylvania Democrat Bob Casey. "It will be kind of a stalemate. I don't think anyone will be able to dominate Congress in the next two years."

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McCarty warned that, even if Democrats triumph today, they may have a more difficult time pushing a legislative program than Republicans — who campaigned on a unified "Contract With America" platform — did after their 1994 sweep.

"The only commonality across the races is Iraq," he said, noting that on other issues — such as stem cell research, abortion and incumbents' acceptance of funds from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff — the emphases differ from state to state.

"Unlike [Republicans in] 1994, Democrats don't really have their own program of what they're going to do. Democrats agree most on changing the policy in Iraq, but the only thing they agree on is changing the policy. They don't agree on what that policy should be." Analyzing New Jersey's closely-watched Senate race between Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Republican Tom Kean Jr., McCarty predicted the Garden State's historically blue tendencies would win out.

"Everything I see suggests Menendez is going to win," McCarty said. "This is a very difficult state for Republicans. Whereas it was close for a while, I think the race has just settled out to where the natural Democratic tendencies of the state are going to carry Menendez to victory."

While Edwards agreed that the odds favor Menendez — a recent Monmouth University/Gannett poll shows the sitting senator ahead by three points, within the poll's margin of error — he said he did not rule out a Republican upset. "I don't think Kean's out of it yet," he said.

Both professors said they thought the New Jersey Supreme Court's recent ruling in Lewis v. Harris, which said the state must allow gays and lesbians to marry or engage in civil unions with identical rights and privileges, would not significantly affect New Jersey elections but might play a role in other states.

"New Jersey is a very socially liberal state," McCarty said. "It's hard to imagine a huge backlash ... [But other] states with anti-gay marriage measures on the ballot may use it to try to stimulate turnout among conservatives. Republicans say, 'See, we need this to try to prevent our Supreme Court [from] doing what New Jersey did.' "

He added, though, that the Supreme Courts in states where such measures are on the ballot would most likely be too conservative to follow the example of New Jersey's high court.

Making your vote count

Meanwhile, computer science professor Ed Felten, who recently garnered national attention by warning of security problems in some electronic voting machines, said that the devices' safety has not improved since he publicized his critique two months ago.

Though missing electronic voting cards in Tennessee received nationwide media attention in recent days, Felten said multiple votes cast using such cards would be relatively easy to detect. The central concern, he said, remains that someone could hack into the machines themselves and tamper with electronic records or software.

Nonetheless, he urged concerned students to cast their ballots. "Go ahead and vote if you want your vote to be counted," he said. "You know your vote won't be counted if you don't vote."

When students vote today, though, he said they should "be alert for voting machines behaving strangely, people doing things they shouldn't be doing."

"Having a lot of alert eyes and ears is our best defense."