Republican candidates for governor and U.S. senator in Wisconsin are facing uphill battles in the November election, according to a UW-Eau Claire professor whose expertise includes election processes and outcomes.
Geoff Peterson, chair of the university’s Political Science department, spoke Thursday noon to just under 100 people at the fall luncheon of the UW-EC Emeriti Association. He offered some tentative predictions for national election results this year, and called the battle for control of the U.S. Senate “a train wreck” of an election because of the “insane number of close races.”
The most likely outcome in the Senate is a 51-49 margin, he said, but he isn’t sure which party will be in the majority.
“Your Right to Know”: Pay attention to political candidates’ positions on ‘open government’
Perhaps no other political issue receives so little attention, relative to its importance, as open government.
Virtually all candidates, when asked, will say they are big fans of transparency. It’s an easy position to take, a harder one to live up to. But in Wisconsin’s fall elections this year, fidelity to open government as a basic tenet of a democratic society has come up in several races: for governor, attorney general and U.S. Senate.