Note: Registration is free but required to view the event live.
Americans are heading into one of the most consequential midterm elections in recent memory. With control of Congress hanging in the balance, a deeply divided electorate, and new technologies reshaping how voters gather information, the 2026 election is about more than individual candidates and races. Join UW Now Live for a timely conversation on the forces shaping the midterms and what they reveal about the future of American politics.
Key questions we’ll discuss include:
- What is the current electoral landscape and how does it compare to historical patterns?
- Which issues and races could determine control of Congress?
- How are AI, prediction markets, and social media changing elections?
Join fellow UW alumni and friends online for a livestream and Q & A with campus experts who will offer their insights. The talk will be moderated by Mike Knetter, from the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association.
Speakers
Barry Burden is a professor of political science, director of the Elections Research Center, and the Lyons Family Chair in Electoral Politics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Burden’s research and teaching focus on U.S. elections, political parties, public opinion, representation, and the U.S. Congress. His recent research examines aspects of election administration and voter participation. He is the coauthor with Marjorie Randon Hershey of Party Politics in America (19th edition), author of Personal Roots of Representation, coeditor with Charles Stewart of The Measure of American Elections, coauthor with David Kimball of Why Americans Split Their Tickets, and editor of Uncertainty in American Politics. Burden has published articles in journals such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Election Law Journal. Burden earned his doctorate at the Ohio State University and was a faculty member at Harvard University before joining UW–Madison in 2006. He is affiliated with the La Follette School of Public Affairs, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and the Center for Demography of Health and Aging. At UW–Madison he is involved with First-Generation Badgers and BadgersVote. He has been an expert witness in multiple court cases and legislative hearings concerning changes to election laws and practices.
Ross Dahlke ’18 is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He uses computational social science, data science, and software development to study political information exposure and effects on the open web and private communication channels in an information environment increasingly shaped by AI. His work has been published in venues such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Human Behavior, Political Communication, and Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. Dahlke received his doctorate from Stanford University, where he was a Knight-Hennessy Scholar and Stanford Data Science Scholar. Prior to that, he was a data scientist at a digital marketing and measurement firm, where he developed and deployed Bayesian machine learning models, conducted large-scale A/B testing, and worked with client teams to optimize digital marketing budgets for Fortune 500 companies such as Coach Bags, Calvin Klein, and Facebook Marketplace. Ross completed his undergraduate education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he graduated with comprehensive honors and won the Theodore Herfurth Award for Initiative and Efficiency, which is awarded to the top graduating male student at the UW.
This event is hosted by the Wisconsin Alumni Association®.
