Presented in collaboration with The Connecticut Moderate Caucus and The World Affairs Council of Connecticut, the panel met on September 23 on the Mount Carmel Campus. Additional panelists were political analyst John Ashford, Chairman of Washington, D.C.-based The Hawthorn Group; and Connecticut State Representative Lucy Dathan (D - New Canaan and Norwalk).

The panel’s robust, hour-long discussion was a semester highlight for Political Science Professor Candice Travis’ Elections and Parties class. Travis’s students also participated by asking their own questions of the panel.

Joe McGee, former VP of Public Policy and Programs, The Business Council of Fairfield County, and Commissioner of the CT Department of Economic and Community Development, moderated the panel.

McGee led the panel in a discussion on what America can learn from the U.K. elections; how policy affects elections and creates voting blocks; and how those voting blocks can change over time.

“The world is a big place,” McGee told the students. “But there’s a lot of commonalities, and we can learn from one another.”

McGee opened the discussion with Buckland by tracing back to the July 4, 2024 U.K. elections, in which the Labour Party handed a tremendous defeat to the Conservative Party.

As a member of the Conservative Party, Buckland was first elected to Parliament in 2010 and held the seat until the 2024 general election. Buckland also served the U.K. as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice from 2019 to 2021, and as Secretary of State for Wales from July to October 2022.

Buckland said the 2024 elections presented “the perfect storm” for the Conservative Party, which had been in power for 14 years. Buckland said its hurdles included a controversial decision by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (2022-2024), who had the power to choose when to call the election.

“The Prime Minister had a choice to make. He had six months of the term left,” said Buckland. “It was a bit of a surprise. None of the advice he had, suggested an election in July. All the advice was to go long, probably in the autumn, because of two key things: the economy in the U.K., which was, and is, predicted to continue to pick up and improve; and interest rates, which are predicted to come down a bit.”

It would also have allowed for “…more time to turn the heat on the Labour Party opposition,” Buckland said, adding, “but there were many other things that sowed the seeds of this disaster.”

Buckland said the top issues driving the 2024 U.K. election were the economy, the cost of living, immigration/mass migration in Western Europe, and the state of the U.K.’s residence-based National Health Service (NHS), which was negatively impacted by the pandemic.

“The NHS was a very big issue in the election, giving rise to this feeling that some of the system was broken; and therefore, for an incumbent, really difficult to argue that after 14 years of stewardship that you have got answers to what many people thought were already broken services,” said Buckland.

McGee asked Buckland if the U.K.’s 2024 election results raised concerns regarding issues of democracy and fair elections, a conversation that’s prevalent in the current US election cycle.

“We don’t have that problem; no question of it. The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, conceded graciously. It was a fair result,” said Buckland. “However, underneath all of this is a turnout issue. Turnout went down to just under 60%, the second lowest in modern times. I think that there is an issue about voter enthusiasm. At the moment, I think the advantage has been with Labour. I think their voters are more motivated to come out. I think a lot of Conservative voters stayed home.”

Additionally, the U.K.’s smaller political parties, traditionally eclipsed by voter support for Britain’s Labour and Conservative parties, also picked up millions of votes; such as the ideologically centrist Liberal Democrats.

“It’s notable that the areas of strength, the sort of commuter belt, prosperous middle class in London which would have voted Conservative for 100 years; in this election flipped to yellow, which is the color of the Liberals. The Liberals won 72 seats, their highest since 1929,” said Buckland. “So politics in the U.K. is fracturing.”

While the U.K.’s Labour Party was originally driven by organized labor, famously supplanting the Liberal Party in the 1920’s, “that is changing,” Buckland said.

“You get a lot more middle-class intelligentsia voting Labour,” said Buckland. “There’s definitely been quite a sea change in the perception of both parties and what they now represent.”

“You’re certainly seeing that in the United States,” Ashford responded. “The Democrats managed to make themselves irrelevant if not offensive to the struggling, blue collar, working class/middle class. And we’ve seen in the realities of our economy a growing underclass in America: a middle-lower middle class that once was comfortable is now struggling. And the Democrats don’t seem to have a good answer for that.”

This new class of Americans strikes a “resonant chord” with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s rhetoric.

Tong said America is in a period of great disruption within coalitions on both sides of U.S. politics.

“It’s said that Kennedy broke or abandoned the New Deal coalition that Roosevelt had architected; and we, as Democrats, are now reaping what we have sown, in that way. Southern Democrats are now Republicans, and they’re no longer part of our coalition,” said Tong. “Lucy and I literally represent the new part of the Democratic coalition in Connecticut, which is Fairfield County and upwardly mobile, relatively affluent towns from Bridgeport south.”

Tong said the area’s political shift began in about 2006, the same year that he became the first Asian American elected to any state office in Connecticut history.

“The challenge for Democrats – what’s scary for us – is that we took for granted that people in the cities, particularly people of color and immigrants, and second-generation children of immigrants, would stay with Democrats. And they’re not,” Tong said. “When Black men turn on Democrats and start to move toward Trump; when Latinos in Nevada and in Florida start to move away from Democrats, that’s very concerning, because you’re watching your coalition disintegrate.”

McGee asked Dathan, currently serving her third consecutive term, what actions she took to flip a long-held Republican seat to Democratic during her first elective run in 2019. Dathan said she took Tong’s advice to “knock on a lot of doors.” She introduced herself to her constituents, shared what she stood for, and asked what was important to them.

“That resonated with a lot of people,” said Dathan.

Dathan, who now serves as Vice Chair of the Human Services Committee, said she learned the cost of healthcare was a major concern.

“People’s premiums were rising and they were not getting as many things covered as they had in the past, because the insurance companies were squeezing out folks and their ability to access healthcare,” said Dathan. “I attribute a lot of that to the tearing down of the Affordable Care Act, because that is something that was really fundamental.”

Dathan said making sure people have access to affordable healthcare is a priority. As a member of The Connecticut Moderate Caucus, Dathan said she feels a lot of good progressive policies are also fiscally responsible.

Prior to holding elective office, Dathan’s career in finance and accounting spanned more than 25 years, including a period in the U.K. when she received healthcare through the NHS.

“For our young people today, who are mostly on their parents’ insurance policies, it can cause an issue of ‘What job do I want to take? If I don’t have access to good health care, my options are limited.’” Dathan said. “If you have a preexisting condition, that can make it even worse."

Ashford advised students seeking to understand the process that drives voters to make their ballot decisions to look at The New York Times columnist Ezra Klein’s current U.S. election observations.

“His theory of tribal voting, I think, is the most correct for this cycle: that the number one reason people vote is to vote against the greatest danger to their tribe; and a far distant second reason is to vote for whoever will be good for their tribe,” said Ashford.

Tong said current political views are being heavily impacted by a fast-changing world.

“The world is changing so fast,” said Tong. “Everybody has whiplash; and what’s making it worse is that social media and technology is like gasoline on this fire. In some places it’s creating community, but in many places, it’s destroying community. It’s pushing us apart from each other.”

Tong said “…people teaching us, and each other, how to hate each other,” is not policy debate or disagreement.

“That’s what’s happening online, and that’s why we have so much disruption and so much uncertainty in this presidential election,” Tong said.

Buckland answered a student’s question on whether the English-speaking world, or the world in general, is beginning a political shift to the left.

“I think in a world where we are increasing our expectations for public services, we are at the same time are having a real challenge in having the tax base to pay for it,” said Buckland, noting governments are incurring exponential debt.

McGee asked Tong if the country’s attorney generals are preparing to address a potentially contested 2024 U.S. election.

“Yes,” Tong said, adding the key to preserving the union will be collaboration during a time when division will be a compelling force.

It’s going to be ugly. It was ugly in 2020. My worst day as Attorney General was when the Deputy Attorney General called me and said, “Eighteen of your Republican colleagues have gone to the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the results of the presidential election,’” said Tong. “It’s going to happen. Democrats are preparing for every contingency. Republicans are preparing for every contingency."

Travis said having these experienced political practitioners visit Quinnipiac so that students could learn from their discussion, and participate in the discourse, was a unique educational opportunity.

“I could never recreate this kind of conversation for them,” said Travis. “I think it’s really important, in a class about political parties, elections and campaigns, that we get a chance to hear from the folks who are doing it.”