North Central faculty discuss unpredictable presidential campaign

Two faculty members from North Central College were recently featured in the Chicago Tribune about the unpredictability of the 2016 presidential campaign in the U.S.

Suzanne Chod is an associate professor of political science at the college, and Abigaile VanHorn is the assistant director of leadership programs.

The article, titled “2016 campaign fun for political scientists,” was published after Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were named the presumptive nominees for their presidential parties. In the publication, VanHorn and Chod discussed the varying views of the U.S. having its first businessman and first woman running as their presidential candidates. They also discussed the gender and roles of the two campaigners.

The two faculty members state the unpredictable nature of the 2016 election campaign has given students interesting classroom discussions. The two faculty have even changed their predictions of the elections – Chod said she believed Trump could never rise to the leading position between the candidates.

“As a result, I’ve decided to stop prognosticating,” Chod said. “As political scientists, we are always predicting what will happen. This time we missed things and we will need to look at that to see why we got it wrong.”

VanHorn is more interested in seeing the role that Bill Clinton will have in the future.

“I don’t see Bill as having a surrogate role on the campaign trail,” he said.