US politics are the most fractured they have ever been. The debate over the 6 January insurrection continues, the Supreme Court have decided a number of controversial cases, and public confidence in politicians is at an all-time low.

So what will happen during the upcoming mid-term elections, and what will it all mean to a global audience? Hosted by Pavi Suryanarayan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at LSE, Benjamin Franklin House Director Márcia Balisciano is joined by US Election Expert Phil Davies to ask: will the 2022 mid-terms make any difference?

Meet our speaker and chair

Philip Davies is Chair of the American Politics Group of the Political Studies Association. He was formerly Director of the British Library's Eccles Centre for American Studies, is Professor Emeritus at De Montfort University and a Distinguished Fellow at Oxford University's Rothermere American Institute. He is the architect of the Congress to Campus UK programme that brings former US Members of Congress to meet UK audiences annually each November. He has published on many aspects of US elections and election campaigns and is the main sponsor of the Philip and Rosamund Davies US Elections Archive, housed at the Vere Harmsworth Library, Oxford.

Márcia Balisciano is the Founding Director of Benjamin Franklin House. She holds a Ph.D. in Economic History from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is also Chief Sustainability Officer and of ESG at RELX, a global provider of information-based analytics, decision tools, and events; Chair of the UN Global Compact Network UK and a Board member of the Foundation for Global Compact; and a member of the Board for the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens.

Pavithra Suryanarayan is Assistant Professor in the Government Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research studies how ethnic inequality shapes institutional development, redistributive politics, and party systems in ranked ethnic systems like India and the United States.