Duke in the News: Family Political Divides; COVID Third Wave; Wilmington, 1898

Is it possible to change a loved one’s voting preferences? How can we curb the rise in coronavirus cases? Duke faculty shared their expertise in top media outlets on these and other critical topics over the past week. Read their comments below along with other highlights.

For daily media coverage of Duke people and research, visit the Duke News site.

The Atlantic

How to Change a Loved One’s Vote

“The thing that I say,” says Sunshine Hillygus, a political scientist and the co-author of the book “The Persuadable Voter,” “is that you can have the biggest impact by contacting people that you know” because individuals are generally more receptive to appeals from those they know and trust.

United Press International

Election Ripe for Challenges Over Mail-in Ballots, Recounts, Electoral Votes

If Joe Biden is perceived to have won in a landslide, Trump "would have to persuade many, many people who are currently in government, most of whom are civil servants, they have to go along" with any effort to remain in power, said political scientist Peter Feaver.

FOX Business

How to Know Whether the US Should Shut Down as Coronavirus Cases Rise

Video interview with Dr. Mark McClellan, director of the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy and a former FDA director. Rising cases mean more steps are needed to restrict local businesses and to encourage masks, social distancing and smaller gatherings, which can help curb the surges, he said. (starts at :25 mark)

MSN/Washington Post

A Black Voting Rights Activist Confronts the Ghosts of Racial Terror in North Carolina

Wilmington had become a national symbol of Black success in the decades following the Civil War. African Americans, who were in the majority, owned 10 of the city’s 11 dining establishments and 20 of its 22 barbershops, according to Timothy B. Tyson, a Duke University historian and co-author of “Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy.”