Politics & Polls #110: The Aftermath of the Kavanaugh Confirmation

Oct 10 2018
By Sophie Helmers and B. Rose Kelly
Topics Politics
Source Woodrow Wilson School

Following a bitter and contentious confirmation process, Justice Brett Kavanaugh has been sworn in to the Supreme Court. Could his confirmation galvanize Republican support in the upcoming midterm elections? And what effect will it have on the reputation of the Court?

Julian Zelizer and Sam Wang dive deep into the aftermath of Justice Kavanugh’s confirmation in this episode. They discuss Kavanaugh’s career, the increasingly politicized Supreme Court and whether this confirmation process was, indeed, historically divisive.

ABOUT THE HOSTS

Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is also a CNN Political Analyst and columnist for the Atlantic. He is the author of several books including, most recently, "The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society," which was just awarded the DB Hardeman Prize for the Best Book on Congress. He has edited and authored 19 books on American political history and published over 700 hundred op-eds, including his popular weekly column on CNN.com.

Wang is professor of neuroscience and molecular biology at Princeton University. He is known for his books "Welcome to Your Brain" and "Welcome to Your Child's Brain" and for his founding role at the Princeton Election Consortium, a blog providing U.S. election analyses. In 2004, Wang was one of the first to aggregate U.S. presidential polls using probabilistic methods. In 2012, his statistical analysis correctly predicted the presidential vote outcome in 49 of 50 states. He has also developed new statistical standards for partisan gerrymandering. A neuroscientist, Wang's academic research focuses on the neuroscience of learning, the cerebellum, and autism.