Yale Professor David Mayhew to Discuss 2010 Midterm Elections and Implications

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., November 8, 2010 -- On Thursday, Nov. 11, David Mayhew will discuss "The 2010 Election: What Happened and Why." The event will take place at 4 p.m. in Griffin Hall, room 3, atWilliams College.

Mayhew is the Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University. In his lecture, he will provide retrospective, interpretation, and assessment of the recent election, perhaps more closely watched than usual due to the emergence of the Tea Party. Mayhew's talk will also look to the future, hypothesizing what the results of this election season portend for the new Congress, the second half of the Obama administration, and even for the 2012 presidential election.

A preeminent author and scholar of American politics, Mayhew has been an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, a member of the American Political Science Association National Council, and a member of the board of overseers of the National Election Studies of the Center for Political Studies, among numerous other memberships and fellowships. He received the 2002 James Madison Award from the American Political Science Association for “distinguished scholarly contribution” to the discipline; awarded triennial, it is one of the highest honors a political scientist can receive.

Most of Mayhew's research concerns U.S. legislative behavior, U.S. political parties, and policymaking. He has published seven books, including "Parties and Policies: How the American Government Works" (2008), "Divided We Govern: Party Control, Lawmaking, and Investigations, 1946-2002" (2005), and "Electoral Realignments: A Critique of an American Genre" (2002). A forthcoming book is titled "Partisan Balance: The Presidency, the Senate and the House."

Mayhew received his B.A. from Amherst and his Ph.D. from Harvard.

The event is sponsored by the political science department, the leadership studies program, and the Lecture Committee.

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