“Understanding the Midterm Elections” with Amy Walter

Making sense out of this year’s midterm elections will be the topic of an upcoming talk at Monmouth College, given by one of the nation’s top political analysts.

“Understanding the Midterm Elections” will be discussed by political journalist Amy Walter. Her talk will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 27, in the College’s Wells Theater. The program is free is open to the public.

Walter’s talk, which is part of the College’s Midwest Matters initiative, is made possible by support from Security Savings Bank of Monmouth.

Walter is the national editor of The Cook Political Report, an online political newsletter that is considered to be one of the best non-partisan news sources for politics.

Walter will dissect and deconstruct the meaning of the recent midterm elections, in which Democrats recaptured the U.S. House of Representatives and Republicans held on control of the Senate, giving President Donald Trump a divided Congress for the last two years of his first term.

“Democrats wanted this election to be about more than just winning the House or the Senate. They wanted 2018 to be a total rebuke of Trump. A wipeout of epic proportions all across the country. That didn’t happen,” Walter wrote in a recent column on The Cook Political Report. “What we saw instead was more of a retrenchment. Red areas stayed red; blue areas stayed blue. The only real movement was in districts that were purple – districts that had voted for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or had narrowly supported Trump – tipped overwhelmingly to Democrats.”

With more than 20 years of experience, Walter has earned a reputation for being accurate and objective with unparalleled access to campaign insiders and decision-makers. She was named one of the “50 Top Journalists” in Washington, D.C., by Washingtonian Magazine in 2009.

Walter is also host of WNYC-FM’s The Takeaway (Politics with Amy Walter), and a regular contributor to the PBS NewsHour, where she offers her perspective weekly on “Politics Monday,” as well as NBC’s Meet the Press, Fox News’ Special Report with Bret Baier and CBS’ Face the Nation.

A summa cum laude graduate from Colby (Maine) College, Walter also received an honorary degree from her alma mater, where she now serves as a trustee emerita.