Frank Talty is director of UMass Lowell&#8217;s Center for  Public Opinion. Courtesy photo
Frank Talty is director of UMass Lowell's Center for Public Opinion. Courtesy photo

LOWELL -- As the director of UMass Lowell's Center for Public Opinion, Frank Talty has spent more time than most people following today's elections.

The center got national exposure recently when it sponsored the televised debate at the Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell between U. S. Sen. Scott Brown and challenger Elizabeth Warren.

"That was a huge event. When you have over 5,000 people in the audience and you're on national TV, it takes a lot of effort," Talty said.

Mostly, if you hear about the center, it is because of a poll it has conducted. Recently, Talty co-directed a study with professional pollster Joshua Dick that turns over some typical conceptions about how many "moderate" voters are really out there.

Typically, Talty said, pollsters just ask people whether they rate themselves as a liberal, moderate or conservative. What ends up happening, however, is that many people are split on fiscal and social issues, Talty said.

"Gallup for years has been asking it and it overrepresents the number of people who are really moderates and what drives voting decisions," he said.

People who are conservative on fiscal issues but liberal on social issues, or who are conservative on social issues but liberal on fiscal issues, will often describe themselves as moderates, even if, in some cases, neither their positions on social or fiscal issues would be considered moderate when compared to the general population, Talty said.

In the presidential race, with very close polls in New Hampshire making it a swing state, Talty said it should be no surprise to political observers that both candidates have campaigned there regularly.

People sometimes point out that New Hampshire only has four electoral votes, but the state's importance cannot be overlooked, he noted.

"If Al Gore had won New Hampshire, he would have been president. He lost by one electoral vote," Talty said.

He predicted that 75 to 80 percent of registered voters would turn out to vote today.

A graduate of Keith Academy, Lowell High School and ULowell, Talty has been on the UML staff since 1979, including the past seven years as a full-time tenured faculty member. He previously had his own general civil litigation law practice in Lowell, Tewksbury and Chelmsford.

His wife, Patricia Sullivan Talty, is a practicing real estate and family lawyer who also teaches at UML as an adjunct professor.

In addition to his role as assistant dean of the College of Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Talty has served as a faculty leader for both this year's Republican National Convention and the 2008 Democratic National Convention, where he took UML students to work as interns.

He also advises pre-law students and teaches a class on American courts and the judicial process and has previously taught various political science classes over the years, covering everything from local issues to the political situation in other countries, like Myanmar.

Additionally, Talty is the co-director of UML's Center for Irish Politics.

"I was over in Ireland recently talking about the U.S. presidential election and the students there asked about the Electoral College. My stock answer is, if we didn't change it after the 2000 election, we never will. Amending the Constitution requires three-fourths of the states to approve and a two-thirds vote of Congress. It would be hard to get enough states to take an interest, so people win and lose by the rules they're given," he said.