Political science professors discuss what wins an election

With a slices of pizza and paper plates in their hands, faculty and students packed the Benjamin Franklin Room of Houston Hall to enjoy a lively discussion about the final moments of the 2012 presidential election.

The Knowledge by the Slice series hosted “Election 2012 — What Just Happened?” on Thursday, featuring professor and director of the Fox Leadership Program John DiIulio, School of Arts and Sciences undergraduate chair of the political science department John Lapinski and political science professor Matthew Levendusky.

Levendusky began the lecture by discussing three groups key to President Barack Obama’s re-election: Latinos, unmarried women and young voters. “If it weren’t for the population increase of Latinos over the years, states like Colorado and Nevada would not even be in play for the president.”

He moved on to the gender gap, emphasizing that Obama won the votes of women because he “made a great deal of effort” in his ads to stress women’s issues.

Levendusky mentioned young voters last. “I would have guessed that young voter turnout would have fallen off this year,” he said. But it turned out to be the opposite.

He elaborated on the impact of social media on voter turnout. As a social experiment, Facebook allowed users to see which of their friends voted at the top of their newsfeed. By putting “social pressure” on users to go out and vote, social media actually increased young voter turnout, he said.

Moving on to demographics, Lapinski focused on race and ethnicity. “It was just a different game than it was 20 years ago,” Lapinski said. “You can’t lose groups of African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans and expect to win the election.”

DiIulio talked about the Republicans’ confidence in previous elections. After losing the last two election cycles, however, DiIulio said, “It’s time for the GOP to reconsider, to change their policies.”

He added, “If you’re the GOP, you don’t have any choice but to change. There’s no other alternative.”

College junior Hugh Hamilton found the discussion to be a “substantive analysis.”

“It was refreshing to get a deep analysis rather than surface-level talking,” Hamilton said.

The Knowledge by the Slice series began in January 2011 and since then has been getting good responses from those who attend.

Associate Director of Programs and Events Juliana Walker said the School of Arts and Sciences began sponsoring the series so students and staff “would have an opportunity to hear from our faculty and experience a little bit of the intellectual life of the School in an informal setting.”

College senior Sally Bronston shared her opinion. “These kind of talks are one of the reasons it’s great to be a Penn student,” she said.

She feels fortunate because “as Penn students, we have the opportunity to hear what they have to say and ask questions.”

This article has been updated to reflect what College junior Hugh Hamilton actually said about the discussion. He said, “It was refreshing to get a deep analysis rather than surface-level talking,” not “service-level” talking.

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