Midterm elections occupied headlines the past couple weeks as Republicans maintained a majority in the House of Representatives and took control of the Senate.

Dr. Jeanne Zaino, a political science professor, took part in the media coverage by serving as a political contributor for Al-Jazeera America (AJAM) during the midterm election season.

Zaino has spent 13 years at Iona. She has served both as the Honors Director and Interim Dean for Arts and Science, but she primarily teaches courses in political science.

While discussing her early academic career, Zaino gave insight on what inspired her to study political science.

“I originally went to college to become a lawyer just like my father,” Zaino said. “But I took an intro class and then fell in love with politics as I found more friends that influenced my interest. Then I said ‘forget law school, I’m going to get a PhD in Political Science,’ and the rest was history.”

Zaino took an interest in polling while pursuing a masters degree in Poland. She views polling as an art. According to Zaino, you must be tactful when working with people and nuanced in the wording of questions.

This awakened her fascination with research and data analysis. While studying at University of Connecticut for her doctorate in Political Science, Zaino found her passion for teaching while working as a teaching assistant.

Zaino has also worked as a political contributor for over 12 years and has most recently started making contributions for AJAM.

She gets called when there is a story and sometimes she does as many as 10 contributions in a day to AJAM and other news networks. According to Zaino, she often rehearses her main talking points before going live.

“If you make a mistake, its everywhere forever,” she said.

Zaino offered her thoughts on the changes in congress that resulted from the Nov. 4 elections.

“It is traditional, dating back to the early 20th century, which the president’s party loses seats in both houses of the legislature during the sixth year,” said Zaino.

Republicans have more seats in the House than they have in 60 years.

“Democrats won’t have the House for years,” Zaino said.

The losses in the presidential party were dramatic even for a second-term, midterm election.

When asked about the top three reasons why the losses for the Democratic Party were so deep, Zaino summed it up as low overall voter turnout, as only 36.6 percent of the electorate voted, the unpopularity of President Obama weighing on the poll numbers of Democratic candidates, the electoral map also working against Democrats as more were up for reelection than Republicans, and history worked against the party as the midterm election for the president’s party usually isn’t good.

“You can never as a young person complain about your voice not being heard when there’s only a 13% voter turnout between 18-29 year olds and a 60 percent voter turnout for people over 65,” Zaino said. “Whose issues do you think will get heard?”

As a professor, Zaino is highly recommended by her students. She energizes the subjects she teaches and puts life into a political system that is sometimes hard to grasp when a students first start learning about it.

Zaino has also completed interviews with Iona College Television (ICTV) that can be found on the Ionian Newspaper website and videos of her political commentary and contributions are available on YouTube.