Research Conferences: The Cline Conference on the 2006 Congressional Elections

The 2006 congressional elections brought change in party control of the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate. Predicting that these elections were likely to be of historic importance, the Cline Center cosponsored a unique national survey of voters, with citizens contacted both before and after Election Day. The survey, cosponsored by the Center on Congress at Indiana University, headed by former Representative Lee Hamilton, includes an over-sample of voters living in competitive U.S. House districts so that researchers could gain unprecedented insight on the impact of media effects, campaign advertising and partisan mobilization efforts. The lessons learned from this project will be reported by a distinguished team of scholars during the Illinois Conference on Congressional Elections.

The Cline Conference on Congressional Elections is sponsored by the Cline Center for Democracy, and co-hosted by Professor Jeffery Mondak and Dona-Gene Mitchell. Scheduled events include a video presentation by Representative Hamilton, and research presentations on the 2006 elections by a renowned group of scholars, including Edward Carmines (Indiana University), John Hibbing (University of Nebraska), Robert Huckfeldt (University of California, Davis), Robert Jackson (Florida State University), Gary Jacobson (University of California, San Diego), Walter Stone (University of California, Davis), Michael Wagner (University of Nebraska) and Herb Weisberg (Ohio State University).

The conference schedule includes morning and afternoon panel sessions on the 2006 elections on October 18, and evening public symposium on the 18th, and additional panel sessions on the morning of October 19. Among the topics to be addressed are the role of the Iraq War in the 2006 elections, the importance of religion in contemporary electoral politics, the nature of candidate evaluation in congressional elections, and the significance of scandals for voting behavior in the 2006 elections.