Midterm Elections - 5 Things You Should Know

2018 is a midterm election year in the United States. What's that mean? In short, it is the Congressional elections that happen in the middle of a president's term in office. But to find out what midterm elections really mean, students should watch 5 Things You Should Know About Midterm Elections. In this video produced by Keith Hughes students will learn why the party in the White House usually comes out behind in midterms, why voter turnout is low, what gerrymandering is, and the influence of independents in midterm elections.


Applications for Education
Keith did a great job with 5 Things You Should Know About Midterm Elections. It's the perfect length and pacing to use as an introduction to the topic. Six minutes is just long enough to cover the five distinct parts without being so detailed that it loses students who may not have much interest in the topic. Keith's use of graphs and charts is helpful too. Overall, I think the video is a great candidate for inclusion in a Civics course.

Use 5 Things You Should Know About Midterm Elections in a tool like EDpuzzle or TES Teach to build some questions of your own into the video.

5 Things Students Should Know About Midterm Elections

CNN Student News is generally a good source of current events videos to use in middle school and high school classrooms. Today's episode of CNN Student News provides students with a short explanation of midterm elections and a run-down of their significance. You can find the video and transcript here. The video is also embedded below.

CNN Student News - Impact of Midterm Elections

CNN Student News is recording in the afternoon before it airs so yesterday they did not have much on the impact of the midterm elections. Today's episode of CNN Student News features explanations of how the balance of power in the House of Representatives will shift and what that means for the legislative process. The episode also reports on the results of some gubernatorial races. The episode is embedded below.



One race that CNN Student News didn't cover, but was covered by CNN took place in Alaska where Lisa Murkowski ran for Senate as a write-in candidate against Joe Miller. In my Civics course we've been talking about some of Joe Miller's outspoken ideas about abolishing the federal minimum wage and repealing the 17th Amendment. We'll be reading and discussing this story today. The video report is embedded below.


Finally, the CNN Election Center has some maps representing the outcomes of elections in Senate, House, and Gubernatorial races across the country. The maps could be useful for showing students how people voted in different parts of the country.

3 Midterm Election Resources for Students

Tomorrow, voters will go to the polls in cities and towns across the country. If you're planning to have discussions with your students about the midterm elections, here are three resources that may be of interest to you.

CNN Student News has a short segment today about the importance of the midterm elections. The segment appears about half-way through the video below.


Elect.io is an election resource that I learned about from Larry Ferlazzo. Electi.io provides information about candidates on the ballots this fall. Enter your zip code and Elect.io will generate a list of the candidates in your area and the offices for which they're competing.

I mentioned Vote Easy early last month, but it's worth sharing again. Vote Easy is an interactive map designed to help voters identify the Congressional candidate that most closely aligned with their views on a selection of twelve issues. Answer each question then specify how important that issue is to you. Based on those responses Vote Easy will indicate which candidate in your Congressional district is most closely aligned to your views.