On Nov. 8, Sarah Treul Roberts gave a talk at Colorado College as part of the 2016 Sondermann Presidential Symposium. Roberts is the assistant professor of American Political Institutions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an expert on Congress.
The Cossitt Hall faculty lounge was packed with CC students, mostly Political Science majors. Roberts’ presentation previewed what she believed would be the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. However, the focus was not on Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Roberts believed that Clinton would win handily, and the rest of her predictions pertained to the congressional elections. These down-ballot races were important because they decide which party is in control of both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. The outcome will largely affect the path that the U.S. takes in the upcoming years.
“The Democratic party needs four or five seats to win a majority in the senate,” said Roberts. “Democrats in the house have a little bit of a tougher game, they would need to flip 29 seats in order to take the house. I think that’s impossible.”
Roberts proved to be correct in this prediction, as we all saw two nights ago. As of Wednesday evening, the New York Times projected that Republicans would win 241 seats in the House of Representatives, easily surpassing the 218 seats needed to control the chamber.
According to Roberts, there were not enough competitive seats for the Democratic Party to take control of the House of Representatives. However, Roberts believed 10 to 14 seats could flip Democratic. On the other hand, taking the Senate was a much more realistic possibility in Roberts’ mind. She believed that the four or five seats the Democratic party needed to win the majority would flip.
This prediction proved to go against what Roberts had envisioned. The Times had projected that Republicans would win a majority in the Senate as well, just barely by taking 52 seats. Despite some higher-profile wins for Democrats, like retaining outgoing minority leader Harry Reid’s seat in Nevada and unseating soon-to-be former Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, they were unable to gain control of the Senate as well.
Although the majority of time was spent talking about down-ballot races, Roberts also hit on early voting and “straight ticket voting.” These two topics were hot in the political science arena during this election. Early voting is up in a major way according to Roberts.
“In 2012 we saw that 30 percent came in via early voting,” said Roberts. “So far in early voting returns it seems that early voting is up nationwide. We’re expecting early voter turnout to be maybe 40 or approaching high 40 percent.” Some estimates before the election suggested that nearly 40 million Americans had voted before what we typically consider to be “election day.”
Roberts contributed much of this early vote uptick to the increase in Latinx voter turnout. Almost 15 percent of the early vote in Florida was made up of Latino voters. In 2012, Latinx voters in Florida made up around 12 percent of the vote.
“Already, in the early vote alone, Latinxs have exceeded their vote return from 2012,” said Roberts. “That’s amazing.”
Roberts pointed out that while the Latinx vote was mobilized for this election, the African American vote was lacking in mobilization. For Roberts, the big question was whether the uptick in Latinx turnout would make up for the lack of African American turnout. Evidently, it wasn’t enough for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to make gains in urban areas such as Philadelphia and Detroit, areas that saw a high turnout for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.