“Decision 2016: What’s Trending – #ImWithHer or #MAGA?” at Georgetown Law on October 24 brought together six experts — Republican and Democrat, military and civilian, pollsters and journalists, men and women — to glean their thoughts on the 2016 presidential election. Moderated by Sam Feist (L’99), Washington bureau chief and senior vice president of CNN, and hosted by Georgetown Law’s Office of Admissions, the event sought to gauge the political landscape and the mood of the voters just weeks before the election.

“When I travel around the country and talk about the advantages of coming to Georgetown Law…something like this is at the top of the list,” said Dean of Admissions Andy Cornblatt at the start of the program.

Joining Feist on stage in Hart Auditorium were Paris Dennard, a GOP political commentator/consultant and NPR political analyst; E.J. Dionne, Jr., a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, syndicated Washington Post columnist, and a professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy; Peter D. Hart, a pollster for NBC News and the Wall Street Journal; Lieutenant General Joseph K. Kellogg, Jr., a foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign; Celinda Lake of the Democratic polling firm Lake Research Partners; Kathleen Parker, syndicated columnist for the Washington Post; and Karen Tumulty, national political correspondent for the Washington Post.

With such a panel, opinions and predictions (of course) varied. But if there was one thing that everyone generally agreed upon, it was that the 2016 presidential race has been unlike anything that has gone before. “This election has absorbed the whole country in a way that I’ve never seen in my lifetime,” said Dean William M. Treanor. “To have people of this insight, talking about what’s going to happen and why…what an amazing event.”