Taipei, Nov. 1 (CNA) The Democratic Party will make gains in the upcoming mid-term elections in the United States, the only question is to what extent, an American scholar predicted Wednesday via videoconference with Taiwanese scholars.
"The Democrats will make a gain. The only problem is how much the magnitude will be, " said Thomas Schaller, a political science professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in a videoconference organized by the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT).
The 2006 general elections in the U.S. -- also referred to as midterm elections -- will take place Nov. 7. Thirty-three of 100 Senate seats, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 36 of 50 state governorships are up for election.
With Iraq and the economy the two key issues in the campaign and the low approval ratings of U.S. president George W. Bush, a Republican, the election's outcome should be in favor of the opposing Democratic Party, Schaller said.
The election can be viewed as a referendum on Bush, whose performance rating in the polls has been hanging low at around 30-40 percent because of his questionable handling of Iraq.
The Democrats have a chance to regain control of the House and the Senate for the first time since 1994, he said.
Interestingly, the results of an unofficial poll conducted by the AIT at the videoconference -- which was held in Taipei and Kaohsiung and attended by about 70 Taiwanese professors and graduate students -- showed a different perspective.
The Republican Party garnered over 60 percent of the vote in Taipei and Kaohsiung, the poll found.
The result revealed the conventional thinking in Taiwan -- that the Republican Party is "more supportive of Taiwan in cross-strait relations," said Yu Pen-li, a professor at Tamkang University.
The Taiwanese perspective on U.S. politics has been probably one-sided, Yu said, adding the Taiwanese should learn more about different positions of U.S. political parties on issues such as stem-cell research, same-sex marriage and immigration.