Title:  ‘Holding power to account? Looking forward to the U.S. Midterms elections and back to the Scottish elections’ by Prof Chris Carman

Summary:   It's often said that elections are how we hold those in power to account — but do voters really behave that way? This talk looks ahead to the US midterm elections in November to consider whether (and how) American voters will use their vote to judge the record of those in office, then looks back to Scotland's own Parliament election earlier this year. Using fresh data from the Scottish Election Study, it asks whether Scottish voters did the same.

 Speaker:  Prof Christopher Carman holds the Stevenson Chair of Citizenship at the University of Glasgow and has been part of the Scottish Election Study team since 2011. He is the author of several books and articles spanning Scottish and US politics, most recently Dealmakers (OUP, 2025), which explores public support for political compromise in the United States.